Names to Know in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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    This page is part of the "Names to Know" project.

    The groundbreaking, the influential, the seminal... but not necessarily the most famous people in science fiction and fantasy literature.

    An extremely incomplete list. Feel free to add more, but remember that this is not Gushing About Writing You Like.

    Science Fiction

    Note that many 20th Century SF authors have had very long careers, and thus might actually count for more than one era below. No few started in the Golden Age, but made their names as part of the New Wave after 1950. Also note that there is considerable overlap between SF authors and Fantasy authors. Don't be surprised to see some of the same names in both sections.

    The Big Three

    Almost universally accorded as the most prominent figures of 20th century science fiction, collectively responsible not only for creating and/or codifying many of the tropes of modern SF, but also beginning the process that ultimately dragged it out of its pulp roots and into literary respectability.

    The Precursors of Modern SF

    Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were, sadly, not prone to palling around like this.
    Someone give Poe some credit for influencing science fiction instead of always making parodies of The Raven, hey?
    —Kate Beaton, commentary to Hark! A Vagrant strip 213

    Writers from Ancient Greece to the 19th century whose work included elements and themes later considered to be typical of SF.

    The Golden Age

    Robert A. Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, and Isaac Asimov were prone to palling around like this during World War II, because they worked together at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1944.

    The Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12.

    —Peter Graham, in the Fanzine Void, 1957

    Science fiction from 1926 (when Hugo Gernsbeck founded Amazing Stories) to the founding of Galaxy magazine in 1950. During the Golden Age the only venues for SF stories were the genre magazines; the big publishers were not convinced that there was a large enough audience to make SF books profitable.

    The New Wave

    Born with the founding of Galaxy magazine and numerous small presses, this is the era in which SF started appearing in mainstream publication and in book form. The success of the small presses proved that there was a market for hardbound SF, and with Doubleday in 1950 more and more of the big publishing houses began adding SF lines. At the same time, large-circulation mainstream magazines like Playboy and Esquire began buying SF. This larger-scale publication quickly exhausted backlogs of stories originally printed in the pulps and the ensuing demand began encouraging new writers; as demand went up, pay went up, and it was in this era that it first became possible for an author to make a living by writing full-time.

    Behind this expansion of the genre was the willingness of new writers to abandon strict scientific plausibility and explore themes generally ignored by the pulps in the Golden Age, such as politics, religion, sexuality, and experimenting with Post Modernism and Surrealism in their works, while placing a greater emphasis on style and a more highbrow form of storytelling. Starting in the 1970s, the "New Wave" era would also include authors who would get their starts writing Tie-in Novels for SF properties born in other media, such as Star Wars and Star Trek.

    Many of these authors continue to be active in the "Contemporary"/Early 21st century period.

    Cyberpunk

    Postcyberpunk

    "Contemporary"/Early 21st Century SF

    Fantasy

    Precursors of Modern Fantasy

    He Who Inspired All

    All but the precursors, that is.

    Early- and Mid-20th Century Fantasists

    Authors the majority of whose work appeared between 1900 to circa 1975.

    Historical Fantasy

    Modern (Late 20th/Early 21st Century) Fantasists

    Authors whose work mostly or entirely postdates 1975 or so.

    (((And everyone who is listed or has works listed on World Fantasy Award))

    Organizations

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