"Finis" is a short story written by American-Canadian science fiction author Frank Lillie Pollock (sometimes misspelled as Frank Lillie Pollack), and published in The Argosy magazine, June 1906. It has been reprinted in magazines, translated, and anthologized numerous times, occasionally under the title "The Last Dawn". The story text is now out of copyright.
"Finis" is the story of a new star that is discovered which turns out to be a new, hotter sun. It is a short, but hard hitting story which shows a man and woman who stay up the night to watch the expected new star arise. Though published in 1906, it is set in the future of the mid 20th century.
The story starts with two men and two women at an observatory in New York City. They are awaiting the appearance of a new star that has been predicted by top scientists that will rival the moon in intensity. The entire world is excited about this new heavenly body and people stay up the night waiting. It is February and very cold but around midnight the temperature starts to climb and the snow melts. Then a very bright moon rises, which is brighter than normal because it is reflecting the new star's light. Then the sky turns ablaze with color as the new sun is seen and the blast of heat is almost immediate. One of the women screams as a nearby flag catches fire. The city starts to go up in smoke and those directly in the heat quickly die. One of the men in the observatory flees with his wife and it is assumed that they die outside. The remaining man and woman quickly try to get to the cellar as the building they are in starts to collapse. The extreme heat has evaporated the sea water which now comes back as a torrential rain. The city starts to flood and a thick cloud of steam fills the air. The couple makes it down to the cellar and the heat is almost unbearable as they just lie on the floor going in and out of consciousness. Finally the rain stops and the heat starts to go up again but then the new sun goes down and darkness brings some coolness to them. They talk about their future and realize that when the new sun comes up the next morning, the heat will kill them and everyone left. They realize that they will be dead soon and have a last kiss. The sun then comes up and the world is burnt to a crisp.
Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 until around 1955. The term "pulp" derives from the wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed, due to their cheap nature. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century.
Murray Leinster was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.
Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L. Gold, who rapidly made Galaxy the leading science fiction magazine of its time, focusing on stories about social issues rather than technology.
Argosy was an American magazine, founded in 1882 as The Golden Argosy, a children's weekly, edited by Frank Munsey and published by E. G. Rideout. Munsey took over as publisher when Rideout went bankrupt in 1883, and after many struggles made the magazine profitable. He shortened the title to The Argosy in 1888 and targeted an audience of men and boys with adventure stories. In 1894 he switched it to a monthly schedule and in 1896 he eliminated all non-fiction and started using cheap pulp paper, making it the first pulp magazine. Circulation had reached half a million by 1907, and remained strong until the 1930s. The name was changed to Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1920 after the magazine merged with All-Story Weekly, another Munsey pulp, and from 1929 it became just Argosy.
This is a bibliography of the books written or edited by Isaac Asimov, arranged alphabetically. Asimov was a prolific author, and he engaged in many collaborations with other authors. This list may not yet be complete. The total number of books listed here is over 500. Asimov died in 1992 at age 72; a small number of his books were published posthumously.
"Nightfall" is a 1941 science fiction short story by the American writer Isaac Asimov about the coming of darkness to the people of a planet ordinarily illuminated by sunlight at all times. It was adapted into a novel with Robert Silverberg in 1990. The short story has appeared in many anthologies and six collections of Asimov stories. In 1968, the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story written prior to the 1965 establishment of the Nebula Awards and included it in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964.
Martin Harry Greenberg was an American academic and anthologist in many genres, including mysteries and horror, but especially in speculative fiction. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. He was also a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel. Greenberg was also an expert in terrorism and the Middle East. He was a longtime friend, colleague and business partner of Isaac Asimov.
Gnome Press was an American small-press publishing company active 1948 – 1962 and primarily known for fantasy and science fiction, many later regarded as classics.
Popular Publications was one of the largest publishers of pulp magazines during its existence, at one point publishing 42 different titles per month. Company titles included detective, adventure, romance, and Western fiction. They were also known for the several 'weird menace' titles. They also published several pulp hero or character pulps.
Miles John Breuer was an American physician and science fiction writer of Czech origin. Although he had published elsewhere since the early 20th century, he is considered the part of the first generation of writers to appear regularly in the pulp science fiction magazines, publishing his first story, "The Man with the Strange Head", in the January 1927 issue of Amazing Stories. His best known works are "The Gostak and the Doshes" (1930) and two stories written jointly with Jack Williamson, "The Girl from Mars" (1929) and The Birth of a New Republic (1931).
Francis Lillie Pollock was an early twentieth-century Canadian science fiction writer. He was born in Huron County, Ontario, Canada in 1876. He wrote 'commercial fiction' under the pseudonym Frank L. Pollock, western or adventure fiction under the name Frank Lillie Pollock, and literary fiction under his own name. Some of Pollock's early commercial fiction can be found in The Youth's Companion. He also regularly published short stories and poetry in Munsey's Magazine, The Smart Set, The Atlantic, The Bookman and The Blue Jay.
Henry Slesar was an American author and playwright. He is famous for his use of irony and twist endings. After reading Slesar's "M Is for the Many" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock bought it for adaptation and they began many successful collaborations. Slesar wrote hundreds of scripts for television series and soap operas, leading TV Guide to call him "the writer with the largest audience in America."
More Than One Universe: The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke is a collection of science fiction short stories by Arthur C. Clarke originally published in 1991.
Arbor House was an independent publishing house founded by Donald Fine in 1969. Specializing in hardcover publications, Arbor House published works by Hortense Calisher, Ken Follett, Cynthia Freeman, Elmore Leonard and Irwin Shaw before being acquired by the Hearst Corporation in 1979 to move into paperback publishing. Arbor House became an imprint of William Morrow & Company in 1988.
Gilgamesh in the Outback is a science fiction novella by American writer Robert Silverberg, a sequel to his historical novel Gilgamesh the King as well as a story in the shared universe series Heroes in Hell. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1987 and was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1986. Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, it was then printed in Rebels in Hell before being incorporated into Silverberg's novel To the Land of the Living. Real-life writers Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft feature as characters in the novella.
Lou Anders is a US-based author, known for the Thrones & Bones series of middle grade fantasy novels. Anders is a Hugo Award-winning editor, a Chesley Award-winning art director, a journalist, a children's author, and a tabletop roleplaying game designer. In 2001, Anders launched Lazy Wolf Studios to publish tabletop roleplaying game material set in the world of his novels.
Super-Science Fiction was an American digest science fiction magazine published from 1956 to 1959, edited by W. W. Scott and published by Feature Publications. Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison, who were at the start of their careers at the time, were already selling crime stories to Scott for his other magazines, Trapped and Guilty, and quickly started bringing Scott science fiction stories as well. Scott bought scores of stories from the pair during the magazine's short life; Silverberg in particular had at least one story in every single issue, and often two or three. Much of the remainder was sent in by literary agents, and generally comprised material rejected by other magazines first, though Scott did obtain two stories from Isaac Asimov.
This is the bibliography of American space opera and hard science fiction author Catherine Asaro.
List of the published work of Robert Silverberg, American science fiction author and editor. A complete list would include over 500 books.