Cyril M. Kornbluth was an American science fiction author and a member of the Futurians. He used a variety of pen-names, including Cecil Corwin, S. D. Gottesman, Edward J. Bellin, Kenneth Falconer, Walter C. Davies, Simon Eisner, Jordan Park, Arthur Cooke, Paul Dennis Lavond, and Scott Mariner. The "M" in Kornbluth's name may have been in tribute to his wife, Mary Byers; Kornbluth's colleague and collaborator Frederik Pohl confirmed Kornbluth's lack of any actual middle name in at least one interview.
James Benjamin Blish was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is best known for his Cities in Flight novels and his series of Star Trek novelizations written with his wife, J. A. Lawrence. His novel A Case of Conscience won the Hugo Award. He is credited with creating the term "gas giant" to refer to large planetary bodies.
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including 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.
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.
If was an American science fiction magazine launched in March 1952 by Quinn Publications, owned by James L. Quinn.
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.
Murray Fletcher Pratt was an American writer of history, science fiction, and fantasy. He is best known for his works on naval history and the American Civil War and for fiction written with L. Sprague de Camp.
Untouched by Human Hands is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Robert Sheckley. It was first published in 1954 simultaneously by Ballantine Books, both in hardback and paperback.
"There Shall Be No Darkness" is a horror story by the American writer James Blish that was published in 1950. It concerns a group of people on a remote country manor who discover that one of their number is a ravenous werewolf. The story was adapted for the screen in 1974 as The Beast Must Die. Blish himself described the story as "a schoolboy pastiche of Dracula". The story originally appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories. It was first published in book form by Twayne Publishers in 1952 in the fantasy anthology Witches Three, a volume that also included Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife and Fletcher Pratt's The Blue Star.
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.
Galaxy novels, sometimes titled Galaxy Science Fiction Novels, were a series of mostly reprint American science fiction novels published between 1950 and 1961.
The Undesired Princess is a 51,000 word fantasy novella by American writer L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in the fantasy magazine Unknown Worlds for February 1942. It was published in book form by Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. in 1951. The book version also includes the 10,000 word fantasy short story "Mr. Arson", first published in Unknown for December 1941. The book was bound together with Stanley G. Weinbaum's The Dark Other in the omnibus collection Fantasy Twin by the same publisher in 1953. The title story was also published in paperback by Baen Books in 1990 together with David Drake's story The Enchanted Bunny, under the combined title The Undesired Princess & the Enchanted Bunny.
There have been many attempts at defining science fiction. This is a list of definitions that have been offered by authors, editors, critics and fans over the years since science fiction became a genre. Definitions of related terms such as "science fantasy", "speculative fiction", and "fabulation" are included where they are intended as definitions of aspects of science fiction or because they illuminate related definitions—see e.g. Robert Scholes's definitions of "fabulation" and "structural fabulation" below. Some definitions of sub-types of science fiction are included, too; for example see David Ketterer's definition of "philosophically-oriented science fiction". In addition, some definitions are included that define, for example, a science fiction story, rather than science fiction itself, since these also illuminate an underlying definition of science fiction.
Jack Banham Coggins was an illustrator, author and artist, who is best known in the United States for his oil paintings of predominantly marine subjects and for his books on space travel.
In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction is a collection of critical essays by American writer Damon Knight. Most of the material in the original version of the book was originally published between 1952 and 1955 in various science fiction magazines including Infinity Science Fiction, Original SF Stories, and Future SF. The essays were highly influential, and contributed to Knight's stature as the foremost critic of science fiction of his generation. The book also constitutes an informal record of the "Boom Years" of science fiction from 1950-1955.
Conjure Wife (1943) is a supernatural horror novel by American writer Fritz Leiber. Its premise is that witchcraft flourishes as an open secret among women. The story is told from the point of view of a small-town college professor who discovers that his wife is a witch.
Double Jeopardy is a science fiction novel by Fletcher Pratt. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1952, and reprinted as a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club in 1953. The first paperback edition was issued in digest form by Galaxy Publishing Corporation as its Galaxy Science Fiction Novel #30 in 1957; a second paperback edition was issued by Curtis Books in 1967. The novel has been translated into Italian. The book is a combination of two shorter pieces, the novellas "Double Jeopardy" and "The Square Cube Law," originally published in the magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories in the issues for April, 1952 and June, 1952, respectively.
Witches Three is an anthology of three original fantasy stories, edited by the uncredited Fletcher Pratt and published in hardcover by Twayne in 1952. No further editions of the anthology were issued, but each of the stories was later republished.
The Undying Fire is a science fiction novel by Fletcher Pratt. It was first published in both hardcover and paperback by Ballantine Books in 1953. The novel has also been translated into Italian. The book is an expansion of the author's novella "The Conditioned Captain," originally published in the magazine Startling Stories in the issue for May, 1953.
Two Complete Science-Adventure Books was an American pulp science fiction magazine, published by Fiction House, which lasted for eleven issues between 1950 and 1954 as a companion to Planet Stories. Each issue carried two novels or long novellas. It was initially intended to carry only reprints, but soon began to publish original stories. Contributors included Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, John Brunner, and James Blish. The magazine folded in 1954, almost at the end of the pulp era.
