 Cover art for The Tomorrow People | |
| Author | Judith Merril |
|---|---|
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Pyramid |
Publication date | 1960 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
The Tomorrow People is a 1960 science fiction novel by American writer Judith Merril.
Only one man, Johnny Wendt, has returned from the first expedition to Mars. Efforts to determine what happened to the others are in vain; four pages of the ship's log are missing, and Johnny's companion, Doug Laughlin, apparently wandered off to die in the desert. Johnny's girlfriend, Lisa Trovi, and a psychiatrist named Phil Kutler try to cure Johnny by luring him to the Moon and getting him to grapple with whatever happened on Mars. Johnny reacts so badly that they return to Earth as quickly as possible.
Damon Knight wrote of the novel: [1]
Parts of this book are relatively painless to read: the only irritants in the dialogue are coyness, feminine overemphasis and an unaccountable sprinkling of 1960 jive talk...What is objectionable in the book is its lack of any internal discipline, either in the writing or the thinking. Under the crisp surface it is soft and saccharine: wherever you bite it, custard dribbles out. Is this the "woman's viewpoint"? I don't believe it; I think it is the woman's-magazine viewpoint, from which God preserve us.
David V. Barrett wrote in The Independent : [2]
The Tomorrow People (1960), a psychological mystery, is generally thought less emotionally powerful than her earlier work.
Elisabeth Carey wrote: [3]
Despite some obvious changes in background assumptions (the Cold War, and what a pregnancy outside of marriage means socially), this is still a solid, interesting, enjoyable short novel.
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.
Donald Allen Wollheim was an American science fiction editor, publisher, writer, and fan. As an author, he published under his own name as well as under pseudonyms, including David Grinnell.
Frederik George Pohl Jr. was an American science-fiction writer, editor, and fan, with a career spanning nearly 75 years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", to the 2011 novel All the Lives He Led.
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. He is credited with creating the term "gas giant" to refer to large planetary bodies.
The New Wave is a movement in science fiction produced in the 1960s and 1970s and characterized by a high degree of experimentation in both form and content, a "literary" or artistic sensibility, and a focus on "soft" as opposed to hard science. New Wave writers often saw themselves as part of the modernist tradition in fiction, and the New Wave was conceived as a deliberate break from the traditions of pulp science fiction (SF), which many of the New Wave writers involved considered irrelevant and unambitious. The New Wave science fiction writers of the 1960s thus emphasized stylistic experimentation and literary merit over the scientific accuracy or prediction of hard science fiction writers.
Judith Josephine Grossman, who took the pen-name Judith Merril around 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer, editor and political activist, and one of the first women to be widely influential in those roles.
Edwin Charles Tubb, also known as E. C. Tubb, was a British writer of science fiction, fantasy and western novels. The author of over 140 novels and 230 short stories and novellas, Tubb is best known for The Dumarest Saga, an epic science-fiction saga set in the far future. Michael Moorcock wrote, "His reputation for fast-moving and colourful SF writing is unmatched by anyone in Britain."
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.
Tomorrow, the Stars is an anthology of speculative fiction short stories, presented as edited by American author Robert A. Heinlein and published in 1952.
NESFA Press is the publishing arm of the New England Science Fiction Association, Inc. The NESFA Press primarily produces three types of books:
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.
Tomorrow is a novel by Graham Swift first published in 2007 about the impending disclosure of a family secret. Set in Putney, London on the night of Friday, 16 June 1995, the novel takes the form of an interior monologue by a 49-year-old mother addressed to her sleeping teenage children. It takes her a few hours—from late at night until dawn—to collect her thoughts and rehearse what she and her husband, who is asleep next to her, are going to tell their son and daughter on the following morning, which for the latter will amount to a rewriting of the family history reaching back as far as 1944. The family narrative completed, the novel ends in the early hours of Saturday, 17 June 1995, before anybody has stirred.
Virginia Kidd was an American literary agent, writer and editor, who worked in particular in science fiction and related fields. She represented science fiction American authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, R.A. Lafferty, Anne McCaffrey, Judith Merril, and Gene Wolfe. Wolfe modeled Ann Schindler, a character in his 1990 novel Castleview, in large part on Kidd.
One in Three Hundred is a science fiction novel by British writer J. T. McIntosh. It was originally published as three novellas in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953-54, and was then published by Doubleday & Company, Inc.. During 1956 the novel was reissued by Ace as Ace Double D-113, in a dos-à-dos binding with Dwight V. Swain's The Transposed Man.
The Petrified Planet is an anthology of three original science fiction stories, edited by the un-credited Fletcher Pratt and published by Twayne in 1952. It was the first in a series of planned "Twayne Triplets," "a series of books to be produced by the 'joint efforts' of a scientist and a trio of writers." No further editions of the anthology were issued, although each of the stories was later republished.
Gunner Cade is a science fiction novel by American writers Cyril M. Kornbluth and Judith Merril, originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in 1952. It was issued in hardcover by Simon & Schuster later that year, with an Ace Double paperback following in 1957. Gollancz issued a British hardcover in 1964, with a Penguin paperback following in 1966. The Science Fiction Book Club published an edition in 1965, with a Dell paperback appearing in 1969. Reprint editions continued to appear in the 1970s and 1980s. NESFA Press included the novel in a 2008 omnibus of Kornbluth and Merril novels, Spaced Out.
Shadow on the Hearth is a science fiction novel by American writer Judith Merril, originally published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1950. It was her first novel. A British hardcover was published by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1953, with a paperback following from Compact Books in 1966. Italian translations appeared in 1956 and 1992; a German translation was issued in 1982. It was included in Spaced Out: Three Novels of Tomorrow, a 2008 NESFA Press omnibus compiling all Merril's novels. No American paperback of Shadow on the Hearth has ever been published, although a book club edition appeared.
The Hydra Club was a social organization of science fiction professionals and fans. It met in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s.
Six Great Short Science Fiction Novels is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Groff Conklin. It was first published in paperback by Dell in November 1960. The book should not be confused with his similarly titled earlier anthology, 6 Great Short Novels of Science Fiction.
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