In Search Of Wonder
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In Search Of Wonder
''In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction'' is a collection of critical essays by American writer Damon Knight. Most of the material in the original version of the book was originally published between 1952 and 1955 in various science fiction magazines including ''Infinity Science Fiction'', ''Original SF Stories'', and ''Future SF''. The essays were highly influential, and contributed to Knight's stature as the foremost critic of science fiction of his generation. The book also constitutes an informal record of the "Boom Years" of science fiction from 1950-1955. In the opening chapter, Knight states his "credos", two of which are: One essay in the book is "Cosmic Jerrybuilder: A. E. van Vogt", a review of the 1945 magazine serialization of A. E. van Vogt's ''The World of Null-A'', in which Knight "exposed the profound irrationality lying at the heart of much traditional science fiction". In 1956 Knight was awarded a Hugo as "Best Book Reviewer" based largely on ...
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WikiProject Novels
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by '' Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outside organizations relevant to the field at issue. For e ...
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Austin Hall (writer)
Austin Hall (1885 – 1933) was an American short story writer and novelist. He began writing when, while working as a cowboy, he was asked to write a story. He wrote westerns, science fiction and fantasy for pulp magazines. Works (from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database) Novels * ''The Blind Spot'' (1921), with Homer Eon Flint Homer Eon Flint (born as Homer Eon Flindt; 1888 –1924) was an American writer of pulp science fiction novels and short stories. He began working as a scenarist for silent films in 1912 (reportedly at his wife's insistence).Munn, Vella (Mar ... * '' People of the Comet'' (1923) * ''The Spot of Life'' (1932) Serials * ''Into the Infinite'' (1919) Short fiction * "Almost Immortal" (1916) * "The Rebel Soul" (1917) * "The Man Who Saved the Earth" (1919) References Sources * * External links * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, Austin 1880s births 1933 deaths 20th-century American novelists American fantasy writers American ...
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Astounding Science Fiction
''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled ''Astounding Stories of Super-Science'', the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William Clayton, and edited by Harry Bates. Clayton went bankrupt in 1933 and the magazine was sold to Street & Smith. The new editor was F. Orlin Tremaine, who soon made ''Astounding'' the leading magazine in the nascent pulp science fiction field, publishing well-regarded stories such as Jack Williamson's '' Legion of Space'' and John W. Campbell's "Twilight". At the end of 1937, Campbell took over editorial duties under Tremaine's supervision, and the following year Tremaine was let go, giving Campbell more independence. Over the next few years Campbell published many stories that became classics in the field, including Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation'' series, A. E. van Vogt's ''Slan'', and several novels and stories by Robert A. Heinl ...
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F&SF
''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' (usually referred to as ''F&SF'') is a U.S. fantasy fiction magazine, fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House, a subsidiary of Lawrence E. Spivak, Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Publications, Mercury Press. Editors Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas had approached Spivak in the mid-1940s about creating a fantasy companion to Spivak's existing mystery title, ''Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine''. The first issue was titled ''The Magazine of Fantasy'', but the decision was quickly made to include science fiction as well as fantasy, and the title was changed correspondingly with the second issue. ''F&SF'' was quite different in presentation from the existing science fiction magazines of the day, most of which were in pulp magazine, pulp format: it had no interior illustrations, no letter column, and text in a single column format, which in the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley (writer), ...
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Charles Fort
Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 – May 3, 1932) was an American writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. The terms "Fortean" and "Forteana" are sometimes used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort's books sold well and are still in print. His work continues to inspire admirers, who refer to themselves as "Forteans", and has influenced some aspects of science fiction. Fort's collections of scientific anomalies, including ''The Book of the Damned'' (1919), influenced numerous science-fiction writers with their skepticism and as sources of ideas. "Fortean" phenomena are events which seem to challenge the boundaries of accepted scientific knowledge, and the ''Fortean Times'' (founded as ''The News'' in 1973 and renamed in 1976) investigates such phenomena. Biography Fort was born in Albany, New York, in 1874, of Dutch ancestry. His father, a grocer, was an authoritarian, and in his unpublished autobiography ''Many Parts,'' Fort mentions the physica ...
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Common Time
The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note value is equivalent to a beat. In a music score, the time signature appears at the beginning as a time symbol or stacked numerals, such as or (read ''common time'' or ''four-four time'', respectively), immediately following the key signature (or immediately following the clef symbol if the key signature is empty). A mid-score time signature, usually immediately following a barline, indicates a change of meter. There are various types of time signatures, depending on whether the music follows regular (or symmetrical) beat patterns, including simple (e.g., and ), and compound (e.g., and ); or involves shifting beat patterns, including complex (e.g., or ), mixed (e.g., & or & ), additive (e.g., ), fractional (e.g., ), and irrational met ...
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Sam Moskowitz
Sam Moskowitz (June 30, 1920 – April 15, 1997) was an American writer, critic, and historian of science fiction. Biography As a child, Moskowitz greatly enjoyed reading science fiction pulp magazines. As a teenager, he organized a branch of the Science Fiction League. While still in his teens, Moskowitz became chairman of the first World Science Fiction Convention held in New York City in 1939. He barred several members of the rival Futurians club from the convention because they threatened to disrupt it. This event is referred to by historians of fandom as the "Great Exclusion Act". In the mid-1940s, Moskovitz founded the Eastern Science Fiction Association (ESFA), a science-fiction fandom organization based in Newark, New Jersey which held conventions. By the early 1950s, he began working professionally in the science fiction field. He edited ''Science-Fiction Plus'', a short-lived genre magazine owned by Hugo Gernsback, in 1953. He compiled about two dozen anthologies, ...
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Fletcher Pratt
Murray Fletcher Pratt (25 April 1897 – 10 June 1956) was an American writer of history, science fiction, and fantasy. He is best known for his works on naval history and the American Civil War and for fiction written with L. Sprague de Camp. Life and work According to de Camp, Pratt was born near Tonawanda, New York. The son of Robert M. and Alice Horton Pratt, he attended public schools in Buffalo and graduated from high school in 1915 at the Griffith Institute in Springville, New York, where his father operated a trucking delivery service between Springville and Buffalo. Following high school he attended Hobart College in Geneva, New York for one year. In February 1916 the Associated Press reported that he had been arrested for burglary in Geneva after a series of midnight cash drawer robberies that allegedly netted him less than $25. He was reported to have told police that his father did not supply him with enough funds to survive at Hobart. On February 23 the ''Buffa ...
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James Blish
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. His novel ''A Case of Conscience'' won the Hugo Award. He is credited with creating the term "gas giant" to refer to large planetary bodies. Blish was a member of the Futurians. His first published stories appeared in ''Super Science Stories'' and ''Amazing Stories''. Blish wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen name William Atheling Jr. His other pen names included Donald Laverty, John MacDougal, and Arthur Lloyd Merlyn. Life Blish was born on May 23, 1921, at East Orange, New Jersey. While in high school, Blish self-published a fanzine, called ''The Planeteer'', using a hectograph. The fanzine ran for six issues. Blish attended meetings of the Futurian Science Fiction Society in New York City during this period. Futurian members Damon Knight a ...
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Henry Kuttner
Henry Kuttner (April 7, 1915 – February 3, 1958) was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Early life Henry Kuttner was born in Los Angeles, California in 1915. Kuttner (1829–1903) and Amelia Bush (c. 1834–1911), the parents of his father, the bookseller Henry Kuttner (1863–1920), had come from Leszno in Prussia and lived in San Francisco since 1859; the parents of his mother, Annie Levy (1875–1954), were from Great Britain. Henry Kuttner's great-grandfather was the scholar Josua Heschel Kuttner. Kuttner grew up in relative poverty following the death of his father. As a young man he worked in his spare time for the literary agency of his uncle, Laurence D'Orsay (in fact his first cousin by marriage), in Los Angeles before selling his first story, "The Graveyard Rats", to ''Weird Tales'' in early 1936. It was while working for the d'Orsay agency that Kuttner picked Leigh Brackett's early manuscripts off the slush pile; it was under his tutelage th ...
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Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Sturgeon (; born Edward Hamilton Waldo, February 26, 1918 – May 8, 1985) was an American fiction author of primarily fantasy, science fiction and horror, as well as a critic. He wrote approximately 400 reviews and more than 120 short stories, 11 novels and several scripts for ''Star Trek: The Original Series''. Sturgeon's science fiction novel ''More Than Human'' (1953) won the 1954 International Fantasy Award (for SF and fantasy) as the year's best novel, and the Science Fiction Writers of America ranked "Baby Is Three" number five among the " Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time" to 1964. Ranked by votes for all of their pre-1965 novellas, Sturgeon was second among authors, behind Robert Heinlein. An overview of his work by science fiction critic Sam Moskowitz can be found in the collective biography ''Seekers of Tomorrow''. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Sturgeon in 2000, its fifth class of two dead and two living writers. Bio ...
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Isaac Asimov
yi, יצחק אזימאװ , birth_date = , birth_place = Petrovichi, Russian SFSR , spouse = , relatives = , children = 2 , death_date = , death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S. , nationality = Russian (1920–1922)Soviet (1922–1928)American (1928–1992) , occupation = Writer, professor of biochemistry , years_active = 1939–1992 , genre = Science fiction (hard SF, social SF), mystery, popular science , subject = Popular science, science textbooks, essays, history, literary criticism , education = Columbia University ( BA, MA, PhD) , movement = Golden Age of Science Fiction , module = , signature = Isaac Asimov signature.svg Isaac Asimov ( ; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books ...
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