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.
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction literature. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, both novels and works of non-fiction, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Man Who Sold the Moon is the title of a 1950 collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Robert A. Heinlein.
"The Variable Man" is a science fiction novella by American writer Philip K. Dick, which he wrote and sold before he had an agent. It was first published in the British magazine Space Science Fiction Vol. 2 No. 2, July 1953, and in the American version on September 1953, with the US publication illustrated by Alex Ebel. Despite the magazine cover dates it is unclear whether the first publication was in the UK or in the United States where magazines tended to be published farther ahead of their cover dates than in the UK. The Variable Man can be found in several collections of Dick's short stories, including The Variable Man and The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford.
"Rautavaara's Case" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published in 1980 in Omni magazine and subsequently in the 1985 short story collection I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon. The story was also included on We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, volume five of the Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick in 2003.
Before the Golden Age: A Science Fiction Anthology of the 1930s is an anthology of 25 science fiction stories from 1930s pulp magazines, edited by American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. It also includes "Big Game", a short story written by Asimov in 1941 and never sold. The anthology was first published in April 1974, and won the 1975 Locus Award for Best reprint anthology.
The Ragged Edge of Science is a science book by L. Sprague de Camp, illustrated by Don Simpson. It was first published by Owlswick Press in 1980.
"A Logic Named Joe" is a science fiction short story by American writer Murray Leinster, first published in the March 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The story is particularly noteworthy as a prediction of massively networked personal computers and their drawbacks, written at a time when computing was in its infancy.
"Proxima Centauri" is a science fiction short story by American writer Murray Leinster, originally published in the March 1935 issue of Astounding Stories. Unusually for the time, the story adhered to the laws of physics as they were known by showing a starship that was limited by the speed of light and took several years to travel between the stars. In his comments on the story in Before the Golden Age, Isaac Asimov thought that "Proxima Centauri" must have influenced Robert A. Heinlein's later story "Universe" and stated that it influenced his own Pebble in the Sky.
"Sidewise in Time" is a science fiction short story by American writer Murray Leinster that was first published in the June 1934 issue of Astounding Stories. "Sidewise in Time" served as the title story for Leinster's second story collection in 1950.
Men Against the Stars is a 1950 anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Martin Greenberg, originally published in hardcover by Gnome Press. A British hardcover was issued by Grayson & Grayson in 1951. Pyramid Books published several abridged paperback versions in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Address: Centauri is a science fiction novel by American writer F. L. Wallace. It was published in 1955 by Gnome Press in an edition of 4,000 copies. The novel is an expansion of Wallace's story "Accidental Flight", which first appeared in the magazine Galaxy Science Fiction in 1952.
The Incredible Planet is a science fiction fix-up novel by American author John W. Campbell, Jr. It was published in 1949 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 3,998 copies. The novel is a collection of three linked novelettes that were not accepted for the magazine Astounding SF. The stories are sequels to Campbell's 1934 novel The Mightiest Machine.
The Red Peri is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Stanley G. Weinbaum. It was first published in 1952 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 1,732 copies. The stories originally appeared in the magazines Amazing Stories, Astounding and Thrilling Wonder Stories.
Without Sorcery is a collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories by American writer Theodore Sturgeon. The collection was first published in 1948 by Prime Press in an edition of 2,862 copies of which 80 were specially bound, slipcased and signed by the author and artist. The stories first appeared in the magazines Astounding and Unknown.
Shasta Publishers was a science fiction and fantasy small press specialty publishing house founded in 1947 by Erle Melvin Korshak, T. E. Dikty, and Mark Reinsberg, who were all science fiction fans from the Chicago area. The name of the press was suggested by Reinsberg in remembrance of a summer job that he and Korshak had held at Mount Shasta.
Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled Astounding Stories of Super-Science, the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William Clayton, and edited by Harry Bates. Clayton went bankrupt in 1933 and the magazine was sold to Street & Smith. The new editor was F. Orlin Tremaine, who soon made Astounding the leading magazine in the nascent pulp science fiction field, publishing well-regarded stories such as Jack Williamson's Legion of Space and John W. Campbell's "Twilight". At the end of 1937, Campbell took over editorial duties under Tremaine's supervision, and the following year Tremaine was let go, giving Campbell more independence. Over the next few years Campbell published many stories that became classics in the field, including Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, A. E. van Vogt's Slan, and several novels and stories by Robert A. Heinlein. The period beginning with Campbell's editorship is often referred to as the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
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.
Science-fiction and fantasy magazines began to be published in the United States in the 1920s. Stories with science-fiction themes had been appearing for decades in pulp magazines such as Argosy, but there were no magazines that specialized in a single genre until 1915, when Street & Smith, one of the major pulp publishers, brought out Detective Story Magazine. The first magazine to focus solely on fantasy and horror was Weird Tales, which was launched in 1923, and established itself as the leading weird fiction magazine over the next two decades; writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard became regular contributors. In 1926 Weird Tales was joined by Amazing Stories, published by Hugo Gernsback; Amazing printed only science fiction, and no fantasy. Gernsback included a letter column in Amazing Stories, and this led to the creation of organized science-fiction fandom, as fans contacted each other using the addresses published with the letters. Gernsback wanted the fiction he printed to be scientifically accurate, and educational, as well as entertaining, but found it difficult to obtain stories that met his goals; he printed "The Moon Pool" by Abraham Merritt in 1927, despite it being completely unscientific. Gernsback lost control of Amazing Stories in 1929, but quickly started several new magazines. Wonder Stories, one of Gernsback's titles, was edited by David Lasser, who worked to improve the quality of the fiction he received. Another early competitor was Astounding Stories of Super-Science, which appeared in 1930, edited by Harry Bates, but Bates printed only the most basic adventure stories with minimal scientific content, and little of the material from his era is now remembered.
The Best of Murray Leinster is the title of two collections of science fiction short stories by American author Murray Leinster. The first, a British edition edited by Brian Davis, was first published in paperback by Corgi in December 1976. The second, an American edition edited by J. J. Pierce, was first published in paperback by Del Rey/Ballantine in April 1978 as a volume in its Classic Library of Science Fiction. The American edition has since been translated into German and Italian.
