Horror is a genre of speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which are in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length ... which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for larger fears of a society.
Anne Inez McCaffrey was an American writer known for the Dragonriders of Pern science fiction series. She was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction and the first to win a Nebula Award. Her 1978 novel The White Dragon became one of the first science-fiction books to appear on the New York Times Best Seller list.
Robert Rick McCammon is an American novelist from Birmingham, Alabama. One of the influential names in the late 1970s–early 1990s American horror literature boom, by 1991 McCammon had three New York Times bestsellers and around 5 million books in print. Since 2002 he's written several books in a historical mystery series featuring an 18th-century magistrate’s clerk, Matthew Corbett, as he unravels mysteries in colonial America.
Kim James Newman is an English journalist, film critic and fiction writer. He is interested in film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternative history. He has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award and the BSFA award.
Robert Silverberg is a prolific American science fiction author and editor. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a Grand Master of SF since 2004.
Tik-Tok is a 1983 science fiction novel by American writer John Sladek. It received a 1983 British Science Fiction Association Award.
David Pringle is a Scottish science fiction editor and critic.
Planetary romance is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy in which the bulk of the action consists of adventures on one or more exotic alien planets, characterized by distinctive physical and cultural backgrounds. Some planetary romances take place against the background of a future culture where travel between worlds by spaceship is commonplace; others, particularly the earliest examples of the genre, do not, and invoke flying carpets, astral projection, or other methods of getting between planets. In either case, it is the planetside adventures which are the focus of the story, not the mode of travel.
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.
John Fenwick Anderson Blackburn was a British novelist who wrote thrillers, and horror novels. Blackburn was described as "today's Master of Horror" by The Times Literary Supplement.
Robert Paul Holdstock was an English novelist and author best known for his works of Celtic, Nordic, Gothic and Pictish fantasy literature, predominantly in the fantasy subgenre of mythic fiction.
The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time is a list published in book form in 1990 by the British-based Crime Writers' Association. Five years later, the Mystery Writers of America published a similar list titled The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time. Many titles can be found in both lists.
Lee Goldberg is an American author, screenwriter, publisher and producer known for his bestselling novels Lost Hills and True Fiction and his work on a wide variety of TV crime series, including Diagnosis: Murder, A Nero Wolfe Mystery, Hunter, Spenser: For Hire, Martial Law, She-Wolf of London, SeaQuest, 1-800-Missing, The Glades and Monk.
Maxim Jakubowski is an English writer of crime fiction, erotica, and science fiction, and also a rock music critic.
The Killings at Badger's Drift is a mystery novel by English writer Caroline Graham and published by Century in 1987. The story follows Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby investigating the murder of an elderly spinster in a rural village. It is the first volume in Graham's Chief Inspector Barnaby series, followed by Death of a Hollow Man. In 1997, it was adapted as the pilot of Midsomer Murders, a popular ITV television series based on Graham's books.
The False Inspector Dew is a 1982 humorous crime novel by Peter Lovesey and his ninth book. It won the Gold Dagger award by the Crime Writers' Association in 1982 and has featured on many "Best of" lists since.
Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1949–1984 is a nonfiction book by David Pringle, published by Xanadu in 1985 with a foreword by Michael Moorcock. Primarily, the book comprises 100 short essays on the selected works, covered in order of publication, without any ranking. It is considered an important critical summary of the science fiction field.
Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1946–1987 is a nonfiction book written by David Pringle, published by Grafton Books in 1988 in the United Kingdom and the following year by Peter Bedrick Books in the United States. The foreword is by Brian W. Aldiss.
James Cawthorn was born in Gateshead on 21 December 1929 and died 2 December 2008. He was a critic, a writer and an illustrator, associated through much of his career with Michael Moorcock.
