Mari Wolf (born August 27, 1927) was an American science fiction writer and magazine columnist. She is credited with the first use of the word "droid" for a robot, in a science fiction story.
Mari Wolf (born August 27, 1927) was an American science fiction writer and magazine columnist. She is credited with the first use of the word "droid" for a robot, in a science fiction story.
Mari Wolf was raised in Laguna Beach, California, and studied mathematics at the University of California Los Angeles. She was also interested in rocketry as a young woman. [1]
Wolf worked in the aerospace industry in Southern California, [1] and was described as a "calculating-machine operator" at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1955. [2] She was active in the earliest days of science fiction fandom and publishing in Los Angeles, and a member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. [3] She wrote a monthly column about fandom, including fan conventions and fanzines. "Fandora's Box" appeared in Imagination magazine from 1951 to 1956. [4] [5] When she resigned from the column after her divorce, Robert Bloch took over as the feature's author. [6]
Stories by Wolf include "Robots of the World! Arise!" ( If: Worlds of Science Fiction , 1952), "An Empty Bottle" (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, 1952), "The House on the Vacant Lot" (Fantastic Story, 1952), "Prejudice" (Destiny, 1953), "The Statue" (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, 1953), "Homo Inferior" (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, 1953), "The First Day of Spring" (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, 1954), and "The Very Secret Agent" (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, 1954). The word "droid" for a robot first appears in a 1952 story by Wolf ("Robots of the World! Arise!"). [7] Her mystery novel, The Golden Frame, was published in 1961.
A retrospective anthology, Mari Wolf Resurrected: The Complete Short Stories of Mari Wolf, was published in 2011. [8]
Mari Wolf married fellow science fiction writer Rog Phillips in 1951, in Chicago. They divorced in 1955. [8]
Forrest James Ackerman was an American magazine editor; science fiction writer and literary agent; a founder of science fiction fandom; a leading expert on science fiction, horror, and fantasy films; a prominent advocate of the Esperanto language; and one of the world's most avid collectors of genre books and film memorabilia. He was based in Los Angeles, California.
Science fiction fandom or SF fandom is a community or fandom of people interested in science fiction in contact with one another based upon that interest. SF fandom has a life of its own, but not much in the way of formal organization.
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American science fiction writer called "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before the film went into production. She was the first woman shortlisted for the Hugo Award. In 2020, she won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as "Shadow Over Mars".
A zine is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group, and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation. A fanzine is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest. The term was coined in an October 1940 science fiction fanzine by Russ Chauvenet and popularized within science fiction fandom, entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1949.
Lester del Rey was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the author of many books in the juvenile Winston Science Fiction series, and the editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction imprint of Ballantine Books, along with his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.
Dallas McCord "Mack" Reynolds was an American science fiction writer. His pen names included Dallas Ross, Mark Mallory, Clark Collins, Dallas Rose, Guy McCord, Maxine Reynolds, Bob Belmont, and Todd Harding. His work focused on socioeconomic speculation, usually expressed in thought-provoking explorations of utopian societies from a radical, sometime satiric perspective. He was a popular author from the 1950s to the 1970s, especially with readers of science fiction and fantasy magazines.
Sam Moskowitz was an American writer, critic, and historian of science fiction.
Margaret St. Clair was an American fantasy and science fiction writer, who also wrote under the pseudonyms Idris Seabright and Wilton Hazzard.
Mike Glyer is both the editor and publisher of the long-running science fiction fan newszine File 770. He has won the Hugo Award 12 times in two categories: File 770 won the Best Fanzine Hugo in 1984, 1985, 1989, 2000, 2001, 2008, 2016 and 2018. Glyer won the Best Fan Writer Hugo in 1984, 1986, 1988, and 2016. The 1982 World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) committee presented Glyer a special award in 1982 for "Keeping the Fan in Fanzine Publishing."
Arthur Wilson "Bob" Tucker was an American theater technician who became well known as a writer of mystery, action adventure, and science fiction under the name Wilson Tucker.
Miriam Allen deFord was an American writer best known for her mysteries and science fiction. During the 1920s, she wrote for a number of left-wing magazines including The Masses, The Liberator, and the Federated Press Bulletin. Her short story, A Death in the Family, appeared on the second season, episode #2, segment one, of Night Gallery.
Frederick Walter Patten was an American writer and historian known for his work in the science fiction, fantasy, anime, manga, and furry fandoms, where he gained great distinction through a substantial contribution to both print and online books, magazines, and other media.
Imagination was an American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in October 1950 by Raymond Palmer's Clark Publishing Company. The magazine was sold almost immediately to Greenleaf Publishing Company, owned by William Hamling, who published and edited it from the third issue, February 1951, for the rest of the magazine's life. Hamling launched a sister magazine, Imaginative Tales, in 1954; both ceased publication at the end of 1958 in the aftermath of major changes in US magazine distribution due to the liquidation of American News Company.
Roger Phillip Graham was an American science fiction writer who was published most often using the name Rog Phillips, but also used other names. Of his other pseudonyms, only Craig Browning is notable in the genre. He is associated most with Amazing Stories and is known best for short fiction. He was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 1959.
Arthur Langley Searles was an American chemist, a science fiction enthusiast and bibliographer and historian of the field, from Bronxville, New York.
The role of women in speculative fiction has changed a great deal since the early to mid-20th century. There are several aspects to women's roles, including their participation as authors of speculative fiction and their role in science fiction fandom. Regarding authorship, in 1948, 10–15% of science fiction writers were female. Women's role in speculative fiction has grown since then, and in 1999, women comprised 36% of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's professional members. Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley has been called the first science fiction novel, although women wrote utopian novels even before that, with Margaret Cavendish publishing the first in the seventeenth century. Early published fantasy was written by and for any gender. However, speculative fiction, with science fiction in particular, has traditionally been viewed as a male-oriented genre.
Lucile Taylor Hansen was a writer of science fiction and popular science articles and books who used a male writing persona for the early part of her career. She is the author of eight short stories, nearly sixty nonfiction articles popularizing anthropology and geology, and three nonfiction books.
Charles Hornig was one of the earliest contributors to the science fiction genre. He not only created one of the first fanzines in 1933, as a teenager, he became the managing editor for Wonder Stories magazine from November, 1933 to April, 1936.
Marilyn "Lynn" Venable is an American writer.
Garen Lewis Drussai was an American science fiction and mystery writer, born Clara Hettler.
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