The Futurians and the 1939 World Science Fiction Convention

The Futurians were pissed. It was July 2^nd 1939, and the first ever World Science Fiction Convention, Nycon I, was about to begin. The convention was held in conjunction with the New York World's Fair, with an appropriate theme: “The World of Tomorrow.”  Long anticipated by the region’s fans, six members of the fan group—Donald Wollheim, Frederik Pohl, John Michel, Robert A. W. Lowndes and Jack Gillespie—weren't allowed through the doors by James Taurasi, one of the convention’s organizers. The confrontation was the culmination of a series of rivalries and personality conflicts that ...

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The Connections of Judith Merril

As a reminder, for readers in the Burlington, Vt.  area, I'll be presenting a paper for the upcoming 75 Years of Science Fiction conference this weekend, April 27th at UVM. The paper will be on the evolutionary roots of the genre, and draws heavily upon this column!

The Golden Age of Science Fiction was more than just an explosion of fiction and outlets for a new generation of authors: It was a complicated meeting place for this new generation of authors— fans who had grown up with the genre from an early age, now trying their hands at writing ...

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Asimov, de Camp and Heinlein at the Naval Aviation Experimental Station

On December 8th, 1941, the United States found itself entering World War II. The Naval Station at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii had been attacked by elements of the Japanese military, killing thousands and damaging numerous ships. Author Robert Heinlein had been listening to the radio, realized that a ship he had been stationed on had been sunk during the attack, and felt a great sense of personal loss with the attack. While he would be rejected from active duty in the Navy, Heinlein found other ways to contribute to the war effort, where he found himself working alongside fellow authors Isaac ...

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Leigh Brackett's Planetary Romances

Before we step off this week, I have an announcement for any readers in the Burlington, Vermont area: I'll be presenting a paper for the upcoming 75 Years of Science Fiction conference on April 27th at UVM. The paper will be on the evolutionary roots of the genre, and draws heavily upon this column!

In the Golden Age of science fiction, male authors far outnumbered their female counterparts. C.L. Moore was a notable break from the largely male-dominated field, but she wasn’t the only one to put fantastic tales to paper. Another notable author of the day ...

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Isaac Asimov and the Three Laws of Robotics

• The First Law of Robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

 

• The Second Law of Robotics: A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

 

• The Third Law of Robotics: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

 

With those words, science-fiction author Isaac Asimov changed how the world saw robots. Where they had largely been Frankenstein-esque, metal monsters in the ...

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John Campbell Jr., ‘Astounding Magazine’ and the Start of the Golden Age

At the beginnings of the 20th century, science fiction entered the pulp era with a bang: Hugo Gernsback was one of many editors who had created major avenues for authors to publish an enormous volume of science fiction stories, while authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and E.E 'Doc' Smith wrote numerous and long stories that found a major audience, while others, such as C.L. Moore, inspired by the stories that she read in pulp magazines, began to write their own fiction. In 1938, science fiction would run into another personality who would change science fiction again: When ...

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The Many Names of Catherine Lucille Moore

Male authors, editors and readers dominated the early days of science fiction. Over the course of this column, we've talked about notable figures such as Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, E.E. 'Doc' Smith, Hugo Gernsback and others, each of whom was influential to the genre with their works. The patriarchy that appears, however, is not absolute: our very first column focused on Mary Shelley, and by the time that the pulp era began, female authors were beginning to appear in the monthly SF publications that hit newsstands. Amongst these authors was Catherine Lucille Moore, who wrote under the ...

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Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Moons of Mars

In 1912, an outlandish story hit the magazine racks that would change the face of the science fiction genre: Under the Moons of Mars, by Norman Bean, told the fantastic stories of John Carter and his adventures on the planet Mars. It was the start to an impressive career for Edgar Rice Burroughs, one that would see him from rags to riches.

Burroughs was born on September 1^st, 1875 to George and Mary Burroughs in Chicago. Early in his life, public and private schools in Chicago’s West Side exposed him to Arthurian legends and Greek myths, early foundations ...

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The Amazing Adventures of E.E. 'Doc' Smith

Edward Elmer Smith dreamed big: really, really big. His earliest science fiction stories span the width of galaxies, and featured galactic conflicts on the magnitudes never before seen when he began to see his stories in print in the late 1920s. His Skylark and Lensmen novels would later prove to be a major inspiration for what we now know as Space Opera, and helped to bring about such stories as Star Trek to Star Wars, all while influencing numerous authors from beyond Gernsback's pulp era.

Edward Elmer Smith was born on May 2nd, 1890 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Put to ...

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T.H. White's 'Once and Future King'

The story of King Arthur and his knights is arguably one of the greatest fantasy legends, and it’s proven to be a powerful inspiration for numerous authors. Ranging from John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights to T.A. Barron's The Lost Years of Merlin to Mary Stewart's Crystal Cave novels, Arthur and Merlin have appeared in numerous fantasy novels, films and televisions shows over the last century, but none have quite had the impact as Terence Hanbury White’s The Once and Future King

T.H White’s childhood in Bombay ...

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There and Back Again: A Hobbit's Tale

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit."

With those words hastily written on a blank page of a student's exam, J.R.R. Tolkien embarked on what would amount to an epic journey of his own, one that would spark the most influential works of fantasy literature of all time. Tolkien's impulsive sentence would become The Hobbit, a story that was immediately popular in Great Britain, and would lead to an even more popular work, The Lord of the Rings. The writing of The Hobbit was an unexpected, long journey, but it was the start ...

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J.R.R. Tolkien and the Great War

On June 28th, 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand brought the world to the brink. European countries, bound by treaties and political alliances, declared war on one another. The United Kingdom, home to 22-year-old John Ronal Reuel Tolkien, sided with France against Germany. The First World War would launch Tolkien and three of his closest friends into harm’s way, and would have an enormous impact on each of their lives.

Check out Signal Bleed on fantasy's forefather, George MacDonald.  

Born on January 3rd, 1892, in South Africa, the young Tolkien spent part of his childhood in Africa ...

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A Kind of Fairy Tale: George MacDonald

All things have their beginnings, and while I've used this column to explore some of the notable roots of Science Fiction (and last month, Horror), we’ve yet to cover the roots of fantasy literature. In recent years, Fantasy has become a popular umbrella genre, with major blockbuster novels such as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and movie franchises such as The Lord of the Rings (and the forthcoming Hobbit Trilogy) and Chronicles of Narnia that have brought those classic works back into the public’s eye. As we’ve seen with Science Fiction, teasing out the ...

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H.P. Lovecraft and the Other

Living in New England, it's hard to escape the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The northeast corner of the United States is well known for its horror and fantasy authors: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe and the many contemporaries they inspired. Some have speculated that it's the climate and geography of New England and New York; others have noted that our deep colonial roots and folklore puts us at an advantage. Regardless of the reasons, autumn in New England is the perfect backdrop to look at Lovecraft's life and works.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on August ...

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Revisiting Bram Stoker's Horror Masterpiece, 'Dracula'

For our previous column, we looked broadly at the evolution of the Vampire novel, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Christabel to Stephanie Meyer's more recent Twilight series. Yet, despite the number of novels in the subgenre, there's one that consistently stands out above the pack: Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Abraham Stoker was born on November 8th, 1847 in Dublin, Ireland. The first seven years of his life were defined by a crippling illness that left him bedridden. Throughout the experience, he was privately tutored and was read Irish folk stories by his mother, undoubtedly imparting his interest in ...

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A Brief History of the Vampire Novel

Vampires have captured our imagination for centuries. Béla Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula has defined the appearance of the creature in all manner of media, while more recent works in film and literature have updated the undead bloodsuckers to something more modern while retaining the same level of complication and deadliness. Dracula, however, wasn't the first vampire novel, even if it is widely considered to be the most definitive. Here's a look at just a handful of the influential and popular entries in the genre.

Read about Arthur Conan Doyle's early ventures into science fiction with ...

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Exploring Lost Worlds: Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger

Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for his Detective Sherlock Holmes, the character that defined his writing career. However, while Conan Doyle and Holmes has since helped to define the mystery genre to the present day, the former is also known for another character, Professor George Edward Challenger. The star of several early science fiction novels, he exemplified the immediate post-Victorian era in England.

Born in Scotland in 1859, Arthur Conan Doyle demonstrated a keen interest in reading and writing from an early age. Doyle showed an early affinity for the written word, writing by the age of 5, he ...

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Rounding out the Science Romances

Last time, we looked back at Hugo Gernsback and his legacy in the science fiction world. At such a tipping point in the genre’s history, it's a good point to examine the early days of the proto-science fiction world.

Broadly speaking, the genre can be broken down into a number of epochs, each with their own distinct elements and features. For a century, from the publication of Frankenstein (1818), up through to Last and First Men (1930), we have a style of fiction that began to draw upon the findings of science in ways never before imagined at ...

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Hugo Gernsback: To Great Heights and Down Again

There’s a question that comes up often: who started science fiction? In the past couple of months, we’ve talked about a few authors who are certainly foundational. Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are all important figures in the early days of the genre, who have also informed the future of the genre. However, the man most responsible for how we see the modern science fiction genre is author and editor Hugo Gernsback.

Born in 1884 in Luxembourg, as Hugo Gernsbacher, he demonstrated a keen interest in science and electronics early on. By ...

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Adapting Philip K. Dick in ‘Total Recall’ and more

This Friday, Columbia will release Total Recall, a remake of the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger film with the same name, the latest in a long line of movies based on the stories by science fiction author Philip K. Dick.

Born prematurely on Dec. 16, 1928, along with a twin sister, Dick's life was off to a difficult start. Shortly after their birth, the twins were rushed to the hospital, where his sister, Jane, died. Her death would haunt the writer, providing a basis for his unusual blend of speculative fiction.

Read more Philip K. Dick books.

A key theme in ...

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