James Graham Ballard was an English novelist and short story writer, satirist and essayist known for psychologically provocative works of fiction that explore the relations between human psychology, technology, sex and mass media. Ballard first became associated with New Wave science fiction for post-apocalyptic novels such as The Drowned World (1962), but later courted political controversy with the short-story collection The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which includes the story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" (1968) and the novel Crash (1973), a story about car-crash fetishists.
William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans, a "combination of lowlife and high tech"—and helped to create an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" for "widespread, interconnected digital technology" in his short story "Burning Chrome" (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer (1984). These early works of Gibson's have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature in the 1980s.
James White was a Northern Irish author of science fiction novellas, short stories and novels. He was born in Belfast and returned there after spending some early years in Canada. After a few years working in the clothing industry, he worked at Short Brothers Ltd., an aircraft company based in Belfast, from 1965 until taking early retirement in 1984 as a result of diabetes. White married Margaret Sarah Martin, another science fiction fan, in 1955 and the couple had three children. He died of a stroke.
Midnight's Children is a 1981 novel by Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape with cover design by Bill Botten, about India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. It is a postcolonial, postmodern and magical realist story told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, set in the context of historical events. The style of preserving history with fictional accounts is self-reflexive.
Labyrinth is a 1986 musical fantasy film directed by Jim Henson with George Lucas as executive producer. Based on conceptual designs by Brian Froud, the film was written by Terry Jones, and many of its characters are played by puppets produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. The film stars Jennifer Connelly as 16-year-old Sarah and David Bowie as Jareth, the Goblin King. In Labyrinth, Sarah embarks on a quest to reach the center of an enormous, otherworldly maze to rescue her infant half-brother Toby, whom she wished away to Jareth.
Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy. The trilogy's first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland. Among VanderMeer's other novels are Shriek: An Afterword and Borne. He has also edited with his wife Ann VanderMeer such influential and award-winning anthologies as The New Weird, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction.
Spider Robinson is an American-born Canadian science fiction author. He has won a number of awards for his hard science fiction and humorous stories, including the Hugo Award 1977 and 1983, and another Hugo with his co-author and wife Jeanne Robinson in 1978.
Lynn Coady is a Canadian novelist and journalist.
Treasure Planet is a 2002 American animated science fiction action-adventure film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. It is a science fiction adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure novel Treasure Island (1883), and it is the third retelling of the story in an outer space setting, following the Bulgarian film Treasure Planet (1982) and the Italian miniseries Treasure Island in Outer Space (1987). It is the third Disney adaptation of the novel, following Treasure Island (1950) and Muppet Treasure Island (1996). In the film's setting, spaceships are powered by solar sails and resemble the 18th-century sailing vessels of the original Treasure Island.
Charles John Klosterman is an American author and essayist whose work focuses on American popular culture. He has been a columnist for Esquire and ESPN.com and wrote "The Ethicist" column for The New York Times Magazine. Klosterman is the author of twelve books, including two novels and the essay collection Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto. He was awarded the ASCAP Deems Taylor award for music criticism in 2002.
Jim Munroe is a Canadian science fiction author, who publishes his works independently under the imprint No Media Kings. Munroe was managing editor at the magazine Adbusters in the 1990s, before publishing his debut novel Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask in 1999. The novel was put out by HarperCollins, a major publishing company owned by Rupert Murdoch, and though the book was successful, Munroe so disliked the experience that he launched No Media Kings as a venue for publishing and promoting his own works independently, and a guide to self-publishing for other prospective writers. The book was shortlisted for the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 2000.
TMNT is a 2007 animated superhero film written and directed by Kevin Munroe in his feature directorial debut. It is the fourth theatrical Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film. The first animated film in the franchise, it features an ensemble voice cast including Chris Evans, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mako, Kevin Smith, Patrick Stewart, and Ziyi Zhang with narration by Laurence Fishburne. In the film, after having grown apart following the final defeat of their arch-enemy, the Shredder, the four Turtles — Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo — are set to reunite and overcome their faults to save the world from evil ancient creatures.
Jim Butcher is an American author. He has written the contemporary fantasy The Dresden Files, Codex Alera, and Cinder Spires book series.
Paul Nicholas Mason is an English-born Canadian novelist, playwright, and actor.
James Michael Ward III was an American game designer and fantasy author who worked for TSR, Inc. for more than 20 years, most notably on the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. He wrote various books relating to Dungeons & Dragons, including guidebooks such as Deities & Demigods, and novels including Pool of Radiance, based on the computer game of the same name.
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff is an American sci-fi and fantasy author and filk musician. As an author, she collaborated on several novels in the Batman and Star Wars franchise with Michael Reaves, and as a filk musician, she is a three-time Pegasus Award winner.
Bruno P. Maddox is a British literary novelist and journalist who is best known for his novel My Little Blue Dress (2001) and for his satirical magazine essays.
Lisa Smedman is a science fiction and fantasy author and journalist. Her novel Extinction, set in the Forgotten Realms universe, was a New York Times bestseller. Smedman first became known for gaming adventure novels, and later published her own independent fantasy novels.
Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist, designer, and visual artist. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized the terms Generation X and McJob. He has published 13 novels, two collections of short stories, seven non-fiction books, and a number of dramatic works and screenplays for film and television. He is a columnist for the Financial Times, as well as a frequent contributor to The New York Times, e-flux journal, DIS Magazine, and Vice. His art exhibits include Everywhere Is Anywhere Is Anything Is Everything, which was exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, now the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada, and Bit Rot at Rotterdam's Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, as well as the Villa Stuck.
The Patriots novel series is a five-novel series by survivalist novelist and former U.S. Army officer and blogger, James Wesley Rawles. It is followed by his Counter-Caliphate Chronicles novel series.
