When I was travelling for the holidays, I stopped by a bookstore to browse for a while. I didn’t have anything in particular that I was looking for, but when I came across a copy of Ursula K. Le Guin’s novella The Word for World is Forest, I immediately picked it up. In part, it’s because it’s a novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, and in part because the story was captivating to me: a piercing, environmentally-minded story that felt ...
On the evening of December 7th, 1972, a cruise ship named the SS Statendam coasted in the dark waters off the shores of Cape Canaveral. It carried a light load: only one hundred passengers occupied the vessel meant to carry over six times that number. Onboard, everyone had their eyes trained towards the shore. At 12:33 am, Apollo 17, took off into the night sky, carrying astronauts Gene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt on America’s final lunar ...
There are few short stories out there that have captured the public’s attention like “The Lottery”. When the story hit newsstands in June of 1948, it sparked a fervor, with many readers believing that it was true. The story helped to establish her reputation as one of the country’s greatest modern horror authors.
Shirley Jackson was born on December 14th, 1916, and grew up around California. Her childhood was a cold one, according to a new biography by Ruth ...
It’s something we take for granted nowadays: a glowing screen tucked away in a home office, at the dinner table, or on the coffee table in the living room. Computers have become ubiquitous in our lives in the last couple of decades, upending the way in which we receive information from all across the world. For decades, science fiction has been synonymous with technology and robotics, and, in many stories, predicted the use of computers. But what about the impact ...
On September 8th, 1966, NBC aired the first episode of a new television show: Star Trek. The science fiction adventure series had been imagined by Gene Roddenberry as a bold new vision for the future. Little did he know that his creation would grow into one of the largest science-fiction franchises of all time, influencing innumerable authors and creators. But Star Trek’s greatest influence was greater: it helped to introduce science fiction to the world at large, in ...
In the post-World War II era, the lives of the American public had begun to change radically: we began to cope with incredible advances in technology, from cars to radios to jets and television. Our collective imaginations were supercharged, and a particular phenomenon began to emerge in the middle of the century: people began to see Unidentified Flying Objects in the skies above.
Raymond A. Palmer was sixteen years old when he came across a newsstand in July of 1926 ...
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born on November 11th, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana. His family had immigrated to the United States from Germany. His mother was the heiress to a major brewery, Lieber Lager Beer, which had earned her family a considerable fortune in the early 20th Century, while his father was a notable architect.The family was hit hard by the Great Depression, losing almost everything. His mother attempted to become a writer, and Vonnegut noted that his house was ...
There are some authors who write so much that they seem to fade into the background. Frequently, as I’ve researched this column, I’ve referenced books that group authors together, either by the magazines they’ve published in, or with cohorts of similar writers. One name that pops up frequently is Poul Anderson, one of the sci-fi genre’s more popular and prolific authors in the second half of the 20th century.
Anderson was born on November 25th, 1926 in Bristol ...