 Dust-jacket from the first edition | |
| Author | William Gray Beyer |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Edd Cartier |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Gnome Press |
Publication date | 1950 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 190 |
| OCLC | 1296689 |
Minions of the Moon is a science fiction novel by American writer William Gray Beyer, originally serialized in the magazine Argosy in 1939. It was published in book form in 1950 by Gnome Press in an edition of 5,000.
The novel is a space opera about a contemporary man who awakens in the far future.
Boucher and McComas gave Minions a mixed review, describing it as "a conventional enough sleeper-wakes-into-retrograde-world story, but told with a fine blend of high romantic adventure and lively absurdity.". [1] Damon Knight found the novel an "old-style romance, somewhat the worse for wear". [2] P. Schuyler Miller declared that the author's treatment of "Omega, [the] puckish, hammish disembodied superintelligence, last survivor of the lunar race of whatsits," sets the novel apart from the routine. [3]
Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, sentient artificial intelligence, cybernetics, certain forms of immortality, and the singularity. It has been called the "literature of ideas", and it often explores the potential consequences of scientific, social, and technological innovations.
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".
The Man Who Sold the Moon is the title of a 1950 collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Robert A. Heinlein.
Andre Alice Norton was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy, who also wrote works of historical and contemporary fiction. She wrote primarily under the pen name Andre Norton, but also under Andrew North and Allen Weston. She was the first woman to be Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy, to be SFWA Grand Master, and to be inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Damien Francis Broderick is an Australian science fiction and popular science writer and editor of some 74 books. His science fiction novel The Dreaming Dragons (1980) introduced the trope of the generation time machine, his The Judas Mandala (1982) contains the first appearance of the term "virtual reality" in science fiction, and his 1997 popular science book The Spike was the first to investigate the technological singularity in detail.
Ian McDonald is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.
Patricia Briggs is an American writer of fantasy since 1993, and author of the Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series.
Jonathan Strahan is an editor and publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His family moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1968, and he graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Arts in 1986.
Gnome Press was an American small-press publishing company primarily known for publishing many science fiction classics. Gnome was one of the most eminent of the fan publishers of SF, producing 86 titles in its lifespan — many considered classic works of SF and Fantasy today. Gnome was important in the transitional period between Genre SF as a magazine phenomenon and its arrival in mass-market book publishing, but proved too underfunded to make the leap from fan-based publishing to the professional level. The company existed for just over a decade, ultimately failing due to inability to compete with major publishers who also started to publish science fiction. In its heyday, Gnome published many of the major SF authors, and in some cases, as with Robert E. Howard's Conan series and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, was responsible for the manner in which their stories were collected into book form.
Richard "Rick" Dirrane Bowes is an American author of science fiction and fantasy.
Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, has appeared in works of fiction across several centuries. The way the planet has been depicted has evolved as more has become known about its composition; it was initially portrayed as being entirely solid, later as having a high-pressure atmosphere with a solid surface underneath, and finally as being entirely gaseous. It was a popular setting during the pulp era of science fiction. Life on the planet has variously been depicted as identical to humans, larger versions of humans, and non-human. Non-human life on Jupiter has been portrayed as primitive in some works and more advanced than humans in others.
Fantasy Press was an American publishing house specialising in fantasy and science fiction titles. Established in 1946 by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach in Reading, Pennsylvania, it was most notable for publishing the works of authors such as Robert A. Heinlein and E. E. Smith. One of its more notable offerings was the Lensman series.
Elizabeth A. Lynn is a US writer most known for fantasy and to a lesser extent science fiction. She is particularly known for being one of the first writers in science fiction or fantasy to introduce gay and lesbian characters; in honor of Lynn, the widely known California and New York-based chain of LGBT bookstores A Different Light took its name from her novel. She is a recipient of the World Fantasy Award—Novel.
The Legion of Space is a science fiction novel by the American writer Jack Williamson. It was originally serialized in Astounding Stories in 1934, then published in book form by Fantasy Press in 1947 in an edition of 2,970 copies. A magazine-sized reprint was issued by Galaxy in 1950, with a standard paperback following from Pyramid Books in 1967. The first British edition was published by Sphere Books in 1977. The Legion of Space has been translated into German, French, Italian and Japanese . It has also appeared in the omnibus Three from the Legion, which compiles the novel and all but one of its sequels.
William Gray Beyer was an American writer of science fiction and mystery.
The Bridge of Light is a science fiction novel by American writer A. Hyatt Verrill. It was originally published in the Fall 1929 edition of the pulp magazine Amazing Stories Quarterly. It was subsequently republished in book form in 1950 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 2,556 copies.
The Moon Is Hell! is a collection of science fiction stories by American writer John W. Campbell Jr. It was published in 1950 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 4,206 copies. The title story deals with a team of scientists stranded on the Moon when their spacecraft crashes, and how they use their combined skills and knowledge to survive until rescue, including building shelter from meteor showers, and creating their own oxygen from Lunar rock. The second story, "The Elder Gods", Campbell rewrote, on a short deadline, from a story by Arthur J. Burks purchased for Unknown but later deemed unsatisfactory. It originally appeared in that magazine under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart. The title of the eponymous story is generally reported without the exclamation point, although the punctuation is used for the title of most editions of the collection itself.
The World Below is a science fiction novel by British writer S. Fowler Wright. It was first published in 1929 by Collins. The novel was originally intended as a trilogy, however, the third part was never written. The first part was originally published separately as The Amphibians by Merton Press in 1924. The second part was published separately by Galaxy Science Fiction Novels in 1951 and was also titled The Worlds Below.
Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc., or FPCI, was an American science fiction and fantasy small press specialty publishing company established in 1946. It was the fourth small press company founded by William L. Crawford.
The Incomplete Enchanter is a collection of two fantasy novellas by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, the first volume in their Harold Shea series. The pieces were originally published in the magazine Unknown in the issues for May and August 1940. The collection was first published in hardcover by Henry Holt and Company in 1941 and in paperback by Pyramid Books in 1960.
