Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theater and films, playwright and chess expert. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber can be regarded as one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fantasy, having coined the term.
Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction focused on theories that include feminist themes including but not limited to gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, and reproduction. Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to critique the dominant culture. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue.
Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which women's contributions are recognized and valued, worlds that explore the diversity of women's desire and sexuality, and worlds that move beyond gender.
Pat Cadigan is an American science fiction author, whose work is most often identified with the cyberpunk movement. Her novels and short stories all share a common theme of exploring the relationship between the human mind and technology.
Starship Troopers is a military science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. Written in a few weeks in reaction to the U.S. suspending nuclear tests, the story was first published as a two-part serial in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction as Starship Soldier, and published as a book by G. P. Putnam's Sons in December 1959.
Mad scientist is a caricature of a scientist who is described as "mad" or "insane" owing to a combination of unusual or unsettling personality traits and the unabashedly ambitious, taboo or hubristic nature of their experiments. As a motif in fiction, the mad scientist may be villainous or antagonistic, benign or neutral; may be insane, eccentric, or clumsy; and often works with fictional technology or fails to recognize or value common human objections to attempting to play God. Some may have benevolent or good-spirited intentions, even if their actions are dangerous or questionable, which can make them accidental villains. They are often aided by a hunchback lab assistant named Igor.
Sexual themes are frequently used in science fiction or related genres. Such elements may include depictions of realistic sexual interactions in a science fictional setting, a protagonist with an alternative sexuality, or exploration of the varieties of sexual experience that deviate from the conventional.
John Dann MacDonald was an American writer of novels and short stories, known for his thrillers.
A visual novel is an interactive game genre, which originated in Japan, featuring text-based story with narrative style of literature and interactivity aided by static or sprite-based visuals, most often using anime-style art or occasionally live-action stills. As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels.
Cleo Virginia Andrews, better known as V. C. Andrews or Virginia C. Andrews, was an American novelist. She was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. Andrews died of breast cancer at the age of 63.
Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan is an Irish-born American author of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including ten novels, many comic books, and more than two hundred and fifty published short stories, novellas, and vignettes. She is also the author of scientific papers in the field of paleontology. Kiernan is a two-time recipient of both the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards.
Strawberry Panic! is a series of Japanese illustrated short stories written by Sakurako Kimino, which focus on a group of teenage girls attending three affiliated all-girl schools on Astraea Hill. A common theme throughout the stories is the intimate lesbian relationships between the characters. The original artist was Chitose Maki, who was succeeded by Namuchi Takumi when production of the manga and light novels began.
Gather Yourselves Together is an early novel by the science fiction author Philip K. Dick, written around 1948–1950, and published posthumously by WCS Books in 1994. As with many of his early books which were considered unsuitable for publication when they were first submitted as manuscripts, this was not science fiction, but rather a work of straight literary fiction. The manuscript was 481 pages in length. At the time it was published, it was one of only two Dick novels for which the manuscript was known to exist which remained unpublished. The other, Voices from the Street, was published in 2007.
Paolo Tadini Bacigalupi is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, John. W. Campbell, Compton Crook, Theodore Sturgeon, and Michael L. Printz awards, and has been nominated for the National Book Award. His fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, and the environmental journal High Country News. Nonfiction essays of his have appeared in Salon.com and High Country News, and have been syndicated in newspapers, including the Idaho Statesman, the Albuquerque Journal, and the Salt Lake Tribune. He was a webmaster for High Country News, starting in 2003.
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.
Heinlein juveniles are the young adult novels written by Robert A. Heinlein. The twelve novels were published by Scribner's between 1947 and 1958, which together tell a single story of space exploration. A thirteenth, Starship Troopers, was submitted to Scribner's but rejected and instead published by Putnam. A fourteenth novel, Podkayne of Mars, is often listed as a "Heinlein juvenile", although Heinlein himself did not consider it to be one.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a science fiction novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui. It tells the story of a high-school girl who accidentally acquires the ability to time travel.
Karl Stig-Erland "Stieg" Larsson was a Swedish journalist and writer. He is best known for writing the Millennium trilogy of crime novels, which were published posthumously, starting in 2005, after the author died suddenly of a heart attack. The trilogy was adapted as four motion pictures in Sweden and the U.S.. The publisher commissioned David Lagercrantz to expand the trilogy into a longer series, which has 5 novels as of April 2019. For much of his life, Larsson lived and worked in Stockholm. His journalistic work covered socialist politics and he acted as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism.
Book Girl is a collection of Japanese light novels by Mizuki Nomura, with illustrations by Miho Takeoka. The series contains 16 volumes: eight cover the original series, four are short story collections, and four are of a side story. The novels were published between April 2006 and April 2011 by Enterbrain under their Famitsu Bunko imprint. Yen Press licensed the light novel series and began releasing it in English in North America in July 2010. There have been four manga adaptations serialized in Square Enix's shōnen Gangan Powered and Gangan Joker, and Kadokawa Shoten's shōjo Beans Ace and Monthly Asuka. An anime film adaptation produced by Production I.G was released in Japanese theaters on May 1, 2010.
The City & the City is a novel by British author China Miéville that follows a wide-reaching murder investigation in two separate cities that occupy the same space simultaneously, combining weird fiction with the police procedural. It was written as a gift for Miéville's terminally ill mother, who was a fan of the latter genre. The novel was published by Macmillan on 15 May 2009.
The Left Hand of Darkness is a science fiction novel by U.S. writer Ursula K. Le Guin, published in 1969. The novel became immensely popular and established Le Guin's status as a major author of science fiction. The novel is part of the Hainish Cycle, a series of novels and short stories by Le Guin set in the fictional Hainish universe, which she introduced in 1964 with "The Dowry of the Angyar". Among the Hainish novels, it was preceded in the sequence of writing by City of Illusions and followed by The Word for World Is Forest.
