The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is a children's fantasy novel by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction. The book is recognized as a classic in children's literature and is one of the best-selling books of all time, with over 100 million copies sold.
The Wombles are fictional pointy-nosed, furry creatures created by Elisabeth Beresford and originally appearing in a series of children's novels from 1968. They live in burrows, where they aim to help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in creative ways. Although Wombles supposedly live in every country in the world, Beresford's stories are primarily concerned with the lives of the inhabitants of the burrow on Wimbledon Common in London, England.
Thomas Alan Shippey is a British medievalist, a retired scholar of Middle and Old English literature as well as of modern fantasy and science fiction. He is considered one of the world's leading academic experts on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien about whom he has written several books and many scholarly papers. His book The Road to Middle-Earth has been called "the single best thing written on Tolkien".
Jo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She is best known for the fantasy novel Among Others, which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012, and Tooth and Claw, a Victorian-era novel with dragons which won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. Other works by Walton include the Small Change series, in which she blends alternate history with the cozy mystery genre, comprising Farthing, Ha'penny and Half a Crown. Her fantasy novel Lifelode won the 2010 Mythopoeic Award, and her alternate history My Real Children received the 2015 Tiptree Award.
David Rowland Langford is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science-fiction fanzine and newsletter Ansible and holds the all-time record for most Hugo Awards, with a total of 29 wins.
Michael de Larrabeiti was an English novelist and travel writer. He is best known for writing The Borrible Trilogy, which has been cited as an influence by writers in the New Weird movement.
Sector General is a series of twelve science fiction novels and various short stories (1957–1999) by the Northern Irish author James White. The series derives its name from the setting of the majority of the books, the Sector 12 General Hospital, a huge hospital space station located in deep space, designed to treat a wide variety of life forms with a wide range of ailments and life-support requirements, and to house an equally diverse staff. The Hospital was founded to promote peace after humanity's first interstellar war, and in the fourth book the authorities conclude that its emergency services are the most effective way to make peaceful contact with new species.
John Michael Scalzi II is an American science fiction author and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his Old Man's War series, three novels of which have been nominated for the Hugo Award, and for his blog Whatever, where he has written on a number of topics since 1998. He won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2008 based predominantly on that blog, which he has also used for several charity drives. His novel Redshirts won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel. He has written non-fiction books and columns on diverse topics such as finance, video games, films, astronomy, writing and politics, and served as a creative consultant for the TV series Stargate Universe.
Island of the Lizard King is a single-player adventure gamebook written by Ian Livingstone, and illustrated by Alan Langford. Originally published by Puffin Books in 1984, the title is the seventh gamebook in the Fighting Fantasy series. It was later republished by Wizard Books in 2002. A digital version developed by Tin Man Games was released for Android and iOS.
Martha Wells is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has published a number of fantasy novels, young adult novels, media tie-ins, short stories, and nonfiction essays on fantasy and science fiction subjects. Her novels have been translated into twelve languages. Wells has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and three Locus Awards for her science fiction series The Murderbot Diaries. She is also known for her fantasy series Ile-Rien and The Books of the Raksura. Wells is praised for the complex, realistically detailed societies she creates; this is often credited to her academic background in anthropology.
The Borribles Go For Broke is the second volume of the Borrible Trilogy, written by Michael de Larrabeiti and first published in 1981 by The Bodley Head in the United Kingdom.
The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis is the third volume of the Borrible Trilogy, written by Michael de Larrabeiti and first published in 1986 by Piccolo Books in the United Kingdom.
Christopher Rowley is an American writer specializing in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He is also a former journalist and television screenwriter.
The War of Powers is a series of six epic fantasy fiction novels, co-written by American authors Robert E. Vardeman and Victor Milán. The books were first published from 1980 to 1982.
Mary Robinette Kowal is an American author, translator, art director, and puppeteer. She has worked on puppetry for shows including Jim Henson Productions and the children's show LazyTown. As an author, she is a four-time Hugo Award winner, and served as the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 2019-2021.
Caroline Spector is a science fiction and fantasy writer who has also written role-playing game modules and computer game hint books. She also spent two years as associate editor at Amazing Stories magazine. She is a member of George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards consortium, the group of contributing authors to the ongoing Wild Cards shared world original story anthology series edited by Martin, now in its 22nd volume, and currently published by Tor Books.
Remembrance of Earth's Past is a science fiction novel series by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. The series is also popularly referred to as Three-Body from part of the title of its first novel, The Three-Body Problem. The series details humanity's discovery of and preparation for an alien invasion force from the planet Trisolaris.
Their Bright Ascendency, also called the Ascendant trilogy, is a trilogy of epistolary epic fantasy novels by the American writer K. Arsenault Rivera. It consists of Rivera's debut novel The Tiger's Daughter (2017), The Phoenix Empress (2018), and The Warrior Moon (2019).
Trolls of the Misty Mountains is a supplement published by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) in 1986 for the fantasy role-playing game Middle-earth Role Playing (MERP), which is itself based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
