literature
Science fiction's most popular literary writers from Isaac Asimov to Stephen King and Frank Herbert, and the rising stars of today.
Science Fiction Author Frederik Pohl
Pohl’s early career unfolded over the background of the Great Depression and the Second World War, a climate of unimaginable fear and uncertainty. This was the so-called "Golden Age" of science fiction, the years of John W. Campbell's catalytic editorship of Astounding Science Fiction, when pulp publishing was slowly metamorphosing into a defined genre, an era when its practitioners hadn’t yet begun to comment on the gloomy aspects of progress. To Pohl’s generation, science represented the potential for escape from the disaster of economic failure and war. No one was looking for a downside; they only saw the virgin capacities of uncolonized planets, and dreamt of a people united in the betterment of the species through new technology. “In those early days,” Pohl writes in his lovely collection of short stories, The Early Pohl, “we were as innocent as physicists, popes and presidents. We saw only the promise, not the threat.”
By Claire Evans12 years ago in Futurism
Dune
If there's anywhere the old axiom about judging a book by its cover holds true, it's science fiction. Few classic sci-fi authors and their cover artists ever see the same vision for the cover illustration. Typically it is the publisher that makes the final choice. Dune art was different. John Schoenherr connected to Frank Herbert's vision immediately. He was able to tell the same story visually. "Herbert wrote in 1980 that though he had not spoken to Schoenherr prior to the artist creating the paintings, the author was surprised to find that the artwork appeared exactly as he had imagined its fictional subjects, including Dune Sandworms, Baron Harkonnen and the Sardaukar." An extraordinary illustrator is capable of contributing to a piece of literature and even enhancing its message. In the case of an artist like John Schoenherr, he became the franchise's joint architect and left a mark no less indelible than the novel itself.
By Futurism Staff13 years ago in Futurism
