1.
Orion Publishing Group
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Orion Publishing Group Ltd. is a UK-based book publisher. It is owned by Hachette Livre, the groups imprints include, Allen & Unwin Cassell Military Paperbacks Cassells National Library J. M. Books distributed through Littlehampton book services, list of largest UK book publishers UK childrens book publishers Orionbooks. co. uk
2.
Genre
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Genre is any form or type of communication in any mode with socially-agreed upon conventions developed over time. Genres form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented, often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, some genres may be rigid with strictly adhered to guidelines while others may be very flexible. Genre began as a classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry, prose, and performance each had a specific and calculated style that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, in later periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre became a tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a state, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about. Genre suffers from the ills of any classification system. Genre is to be reassessed and scrutinized and to works on their unique merit. While the genre of storytelling has been relegated as lesser form of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of the conventions, proponents argue that the genius of an effective genre piece is in the variation, recombination, and evolution of the codes. The term genre is used in the history and criticism of visual art. These are distinguished from staffage, incidental figures in what is primarily a landscape or architectural painting, Genre painting may also be used as a wider term covering genre painting proper, and other specialized types of paintings such as still-life, landscapes, marine paintings and animal paintings. The concept of the hierarchy of genres was a one in artistic theory. It was strongest in France, where it was associated with the Académie française which held a role in academic art. Genres may be determined by technique, tone, content. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as adult, young adult. They also must not be confused with format, such as novel or picture book
3.
The Door into Summer
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The Door into Summer is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It was published in hardcover in 1957, the novel is fast-paced hard science fiction, with a key fantastic element and a romantic element. In three separate Locus magazine readers polls from 1975 to 1998, it was judged the 36th, 29th, and its title was triggered by a remark which Heinleins wife Virginia made when their cat refused to leave the house, Hes looking for a door into summer. Heinlein wrote the novel in 13 days, the novel opens in 1970 with Daniel Boone Davis, an engineer and inventor, well into a long drinking binge. He has lost his company, Hired Girl, Inc. to his partner Miles Gentry and she had been Dans fiancée, deceiving him into giving her enough voting stock to allow her and Miles to seize control. Dans only friend in the world is his cat, Pete, wishing to stay independent, Dan opposes the takeover, but is outvoted and then fired as Chief Engineer. Left with a financial settlement, and his remaining Hired Girl stock, he elects to take cold sleep. The examining doctor at the cold sleep facility immediately sees that Dan has been drinking and he warns him to show up sober or not at all 24 hours later for the actual procedure. After becoming sober, Dan decides instead to mount a counter-attack, first he mails his Hired Girl stock certificate to the one person he trusts, Miles stepdaughter Frederica Ricky Virginia Gentry. Dan confronts Miles and finds Belle in Miles home, Belle injects him with an illegal zombie drug, reducing him to somnolent compliance. Belle and Miles discover Dans plans to go into sleep and have him committed. Dan wakes up in the year 2000 with no money to his name, what little money Belle let him keep went with the collapse of Mannix in 1987. He has lost Pete the cat, who fled Miles house after Dan was drugged and he persuades Geary Manufacturing, which now owns Hired Girl, to take him on as a figurehead. He discovers that Miles died in 1972, while Belle has become a shrill, all she recalls is that Ricky went to live with her grandmother about the time Dan went into cold sleep. Her scheme with Miles collapsed, as Flexible Frank disappeared the night she shanghaied Dan. Dan finds Flexible Frank in use everywhere, filling many menial jobs once filled by people and it is called Eager Beaver, made by a company called Aladdin Auto-engineering, but Dan can see that someone has taken his prototype and developed it. He is even more baffled to find that the patent is credited to a D. B and his friend Chuck at Geary lets slip that he once saw time travel working, in a lab in Colorado. At that point Dan finds that Ricky has been awakened from sleep and left Los Angeles for Brawley
4.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is an educational and trade publisher in the United States. Headquartered in Bostons Back Bay, it publishes textbooks, instructional materials, assessments, reference works. The company was known as Houghton Mifflin Company but changed its name following the 2007 acquisition of Harcourt Publishing. Prior to March 2010, it was a subsidiary of Education Media and Publishing Group Limited, in 1832, William Ticknor and James Thomas Fields had gathered an impressive list of writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. The duo formed a relationship with Riverside Press, a Boston printing company owned by Henry Oscar Houghton. Shortly after, Houghton also founded a company with partner George Mifflin. The company still had debt from when it merged from Houghton, Osgood and Company, in 1884, James D. Hurd, the son of Melancthon Hurd became a partner. Three people in 1888 became partners as well, James Murray Kay, Thurlow Weed Barnes, shortly thereafter the company established an Educational Department, and from 1891 to 1908 sales of educational materials increased by 500 percent. Soon after 1916, Houghton Mifflin became involved in publishing standardized tests and testing materials, the company was the fourth-largest educational publisher in the United States in 1921. In 1961, Houghton Mifflin famously passed on Julia Childs Mastering the Art of French Cooking, giving it up to Alfred A. Knopf who later published it in 1962. It went on to become a success and is considered by many to be the bible of French cooking. Houghton Mifflins strategic error was depicted in the 2009 film Julie & Julia, in 1967, Houghton Mifflin became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol HTN. Under president Nader F. Darehshori Houghton Mifflin acquired in 1994 for $138 million McDougal Littell, a publisher of secondary school materials. Heath and Company, a publisher of educational resources. In 1996, the company created their Great Source Education Group to combine the supplemental material product lines of their School Division and these two companies. In 1998, HMH announced a sub-brand called LOGAL Software, which was to release a new line of interactive science software called Science Gateways, as of 2017, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is offering the Logal Science brand as a licensing opportunity on its website. Mergers and acquisitions activities have had effects on this company. In 2001, Houghton Mifflin was acquired by French media giant Vivendi Universal for $2.2 billion including assumed debt, on December 22,2006, it was announced that Riverdeep PLC had completed its acquisition of Houghton Mifflin
5.
Hachette (publisher)
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Hachette, French pronunciation, , is a French publisher. It was founded in 1826 by Louis Hachette as Brédif, a bookshop and it became L. Hachette et Compagnie on 1 January 1846, Librairie Hachette in 1919, and Hachette SA in 1977. It was acquired by the Lagardère Group in 1981, in 1992 the publishing assets of Hachette SA were grouped into a subsidiary called Hachette Livre, the flagship imprint of Lagardère Publishing. Hachette has its headquarters in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, in 1996 it merged with the Hatier group. In 2004, Hachette acquired dictionary publisher Éditions Larousse, in 2006, it expanded into the United States when it purchased Time Warners book-publishing division, which was then renamed Hachette Book Group USA. In June 2013, Hachette announced that it would acquire Hyperion Books from Disney and it is one of the largest English-language publishers, known as the Big Five. In May 2014, Amazon. com stopped taking pre-order sales of Hachette books, citing a breakdown in negotiations over commission and ebook pricing. According to Hachette, Amazon had also stopped discounting its books, Hachette has its headquarters in the Beaugrenelle district in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. Hachettes head office previously occupied a building at the intersection of Saint-Germain and it later moved to its current location. Hachette planned to lease 9,900 square metres of space at a building in Malakoff, Hauts de Seine around 2011, in June 2014, the companys U. S. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, however, in August 2014, the deal was called off because Hachette and the other parties involved decided the deal was too complicated
6.
George Orwell
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Eric Arthur Blair, better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of injustice, opposition to totalitarianism. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism and he is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945, Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari, Bengal Presidency, in British India. His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman, although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not, Eric Blair described his family as lower-upper-middle class. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service and his mother, Ida Mabel Blair, grew up in Moulmein, Burma, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters, Marjorie, five years older, and Avril, five years younger, when Eric was one year old, his mother took him and his sister to England. His birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari has been declared a monument of historical importance. In 1904, Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, and apart from a brief visit in mid-1907, they did not see the husband and father Richard Blair until 1912. His mothers diary from 1905 describes a lively round of social activity, before the First World War, the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter Jacintha. When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field, on being asked why, he said, You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up. Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, and dreamed of becoming famous writers and he said that he might write a book in the style of H. G. Wellss A Modern Utopia. During this period, he enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacinthas brother and sister. At the age of five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames and it was a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns, who had been exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a school education, but his family could not afford the fees. Ida Blairs brother Charles Limouzin recommended St Cyprians School, Eastbourne, Limouzin, who was a proficient golfer, knew of the school and its headmaster through the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win a scholarship, in September 1911 Eric arrived at St Cyprians. He boarded at the school for the five years, returning home only for school holidays
7.
The Road to Wigan Pier
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The Road to Wigan Pier is a book by the British writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. The second half is an essay on his middle-class upbringing. When this was refused Gollancz wrote an introduction to the book, Victor could not bear to reject it, even though his suggestion that the repugnant second half should be omitted from the Club edition was turned down. On this occasion Victor, albeit nervously, did overrule Communist Party objections in favour of his publishing instinct and his compromise was to publish the book with full of good criticism, unfair criticism, and half-truths. Orwell submitted the typescript of Keep the Aspidistra Flying to Gollancz on 15 January 1936, at some point in the next few days Gollancz asked him to consider a new project – writing a book about unemployment and social conditions in economically depressed northern England. In the period from 31 January to 30 March 1936, Orwell lived in Wigan, Barnsley, Gollancz was not only a successful publisher but also a dedicated social reformer. As a successful publisher however, he knew that to reach an audience he needed something more than a collection of facts, statistics, graphs. He reported that Gollancz had offered Orwell £500 to underwrite the trip, recent biographers, however, do not repeat this account. On 1 April 1936, Orwell rented a cottage in the village of Wallington, Hertfordshire. Biographer Michael Shelden points out that the rental for the cottage was less than £2 a month, Orwell, as well as living off the land, supplemented his income by running the cottage as the village store. Yet, writing to Jack Common in April 1936 about setting up shop, Orwell sounds hard put to find £20 in order to stock his shelves, rather than a man who had received £500 a couple of months earlier. When it came to marrying, Orwell wrote to Gorer, I should never be justified in marrying. D. J. Orwell set out on the journey on the last day of January 1936, having given up his job at Booklovers Corner and his flat in Kentish Town, he would not live in London again until 1940. He kept a diary from 31 January to 25 March, which records the unretouched material that he would develop into the first part of The Road to Wigan Pier. For three weeks in February 1936 he was in Wigan, the longest single stop he would make, March was allotted to Yorkshire – Sheffield, Leeds and he had completed a rough first draft of the book by October and sent off the final version to Moore in December. Gollancz published the work under the Left Book Club, which gave Orwell a far higher circulation than his previous works, however, Gollancz feared the second half would offend Left Book Club readers and inserted a mollifying preface to the book while Orwell was in Spain. The original edition included 32 illustrations that were photographs of Welsh coal miners, Orwell did not choose the images and their inclusion may not have been his idea. The book is divided two sections
8.
Homage to Catalonia
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Homage to Catalonia is George Orwells personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in the United Kingdom in 1938, the book was not published in the United States until February 1952, when it appeared with an influential preface by Lionel Trilling. The only translation published in Orwells lifetime was into Italian, in December 1948, a French translation by Yvonne Davet—with whom Orwell corresponded, commenting on her translation and providing explanatory notes—in 1938–39, was not published until five years after Orwells death. In June 1937, the leftist political party with whose militia he served was declared an illegal organisation, and Orwell was consequently forced to either flee or face imprisonment. Having arrived in Barcelona on 26 December 1936, Orwell told John McNair, the Independent Labour Partys representative there and he also told McNair that he would like to write about the situation and endeavour to stir working class opinion in Britain and France. McNair took him to the POUM barracks, where Orwell immediately enlisted, by his own admission, it was somewhat by chance that Orwell joined the POUM, rather than the far larger Soviet supported Communist-run International Brigades. Pollitt seems to have taken a dislike to him. And soon concluded that his visitor was politically unreliable, Orwell then telephoned the headquarters of the ILP, and its officials agreed to help him. The party was willing to accredit him as a correspondent for the New Leader, the ILPs weekly paper with which he was familiar, the ILP issued him a letter of introduction to their representative in Barcelona. The party was affiliated with the independent socialist group, the POUM, Orwell served on the Aragon front for 115 days. It was not until the end of April 1937 that he was granted leave and was able to see his wife Eileen in Barcelona again, Eileen wrote on 1 May that she found him, a little lousy, dark brown, and looking really very well. The Spanish government was seeking to direct control on Barcelona. The government decided to occupy the building and to disarm the workers, the anarcho-syndicalist CNT staff resisted. The struggle was called off by the CNT leaders after four days, large government forces were arriving from Valencia. On 17 May 1937, Largo Caballero resigned, the NKVD-controlled secret police pursued its persecution of persons who opposed the Moscow line. On 16 June, when the POUM was declared illegal, the Communists turned its headquarters in Barcelona into a prison for Trotskyists, leaders were handed over to NKVD operatives and taken to a secret prison in Madrid. Andreu Nin taken to Alcalá de Henares, where he was interrogated from 18 to 21 June and he was then moved to a summer house outside the city which belonged to the wife of Hidalgo de Cisneros and tortured to death. Diego Abad de Santillan remarked, Whether Juan Negrín won with his communist cohorts, or Franco won with his Italians and Germans, at the front, Orwell was shot through the throat by a sniper on 20 May 1937 and nearly killed
9.
Winter War
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The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939–1940. It began with the Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, the League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from the League on 14 December 1939. Finland refused and the USSR invaded the country, the Soviets possessed more than three times as many soldiers as the Finns, thirty times as many aircraft, and a hundred times as many tanks. The Red Army, however, had been crippled by Soviet leader Joseph Stalins Great Purge of 1937. With more than 30,000 of its officers executed or imprisoned, including most of those of the highest ranks, because of these factors, and high morale in the Finnish forces, Finland repelled Soviet attacks for several months, much longer than the Soviets expected. However, after reorganization and adoption of different tactics, the renewed Soviet offensive overcame Finnish defenses at the borders, hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland ceded territory representing 11% of its area and 13% of its economy to the Soviet Union. Soviet losses were heavy, and the international reputation suffered. While the Soviet Union did not conquer all Finland, Soviet gains exceeded their pre-war demands and they gained substantial territory along Lake Ladoga, providing a buffer for Leningrad, and territory in northern Finland. Finland retained its sovereignty and enhanced its international reputation, the end of the war cancelled the Franco-British plan to send troops to Finland through northern Scandinavia. One of the goals of the projected Franco-British operation had been to take control of northern Swedens iron ore. For this reason it was also a factor in the launching of Operation Weserübung, Nazi Germanys invasion of Denmark. The poor performance of the Red Army encouraged Hitler to think that an attack on the Soviet Union would be successful, until the beginning of the 19th century, Finland constituted the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden. In 1809, to protect their capital, Saint Petersburg. While abortive because of Russias internal strife, these attempts ruined Russias relations with the Finns, the new Bolshevik Russian government was weak, and with the threat of civil war looming Soviet Russia recognized the new Finnish government just three weeks after the declaration of independence. Sovereignty was fully achieved in May 1918 after a civil war. Finland joined the League of Nations in 1920, from which it sought security guarantees, nevertheless, the government of Sweden carefully avoided committing itself to Finnish foreign policy. Another Finnish military policy was the top secret military cooperation between Finland and Estonia, the 1920s and early 1930s were a politically unstable time in Finland
10.
Hilde Meisel
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Hilde Meisel was a German socialist and journalist who published articles against the Nazi regime in Germany. While in exile in England, she wrote under the pseudonym Hilda Monte, calling for German resistance to Nazism in magazines, books and in radio broadcasts. She acted as a courier and repeatedly undertook secret operations in Germany, Austria, France and Portugal, although as a democrat and Jew. Other code names she used in exile were Hilde Olday, Selma Trier, Helen Harriman, Eva Schneider, H. Monte, Hilda Monte, Meisel was born to Rosa and Ernst Meisel, the younger of two daughters in a middle-class, German Jewish family in Vienna. With hostilities breaking out that resulted in the start of World War I and they had previously lived there and her older sister had been born there in 1912. Meisels father exported and imported goods for a living. According to the Berlin address book, her parents lived in Berlin from 1915 until 1936, Meisel suffered with a physical problem until puberty, necessitating frequent trips with her mother to Switzerland. Margot became friendly with the leader of the group, Max Fürst and Hans Litten, his childhood friend, margot later became Fürsts wife and Littens secretary. After Littens arrest by the Gestapo, as his secretary, she was able to contact with him for a time. Meisel attended the Berlin Lyceum from 1924 to 1929 and she then went to England, where her uncle, the conductor and composer Edmund Meisel, was then living and working in London. The ISK established its own press, Der Funke in 1932 and Meisel contributed a number of articles, writing about the problems in France, England. In 1932, Meisel also began studying art in London, in 1933, the Nazis seized power and Meisel began getting active with the German Resistance. In 1934, she interrupted her art studies and began taking courses in national economy at the London School of Economics and she also began publishing numerous articles on economics. Meisel became active with the ISK established friendships with political contacts in different countries, writing under the pseudonym Hilda Monte, she brought like-minded comrades in Germany information. She also acted as a courier and smuggled literature into Germany, Meisel also wrote for Sozialistische Warte, an exile publication of the ISK, writing primarily about problems with the economy. As the situation with Litten deteriorated when he went to Dachau concentration camp in October 1937 and she corresponded with other supporters and arranged to publish an article in the Manchester Guardian on January 26,1938, In Dachau Camp. The Tragic Case of Hans Litten and these efforts were without success, Litten committed suicide just days later on February 5,1938. To avoid being deported, Meisel entered into a marriage of convenience with the English caricaturist and cartoonist John Olday in 1938, writing as Hilda Monte, Meisel and Fritz Eberhard published How to conquer Hitler – A Plan of Economic and Moral Warfare of the Nazi Home Front
11.
Down and Out in Paris and London
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Down and Out in Paris and London is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell, published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities, the first part is an account of living in near-destitution in Paris and the experience of casual labour in restaurant kitchens. After giving up his post as a policeman in Burma to become a writer, Orwell moved to rooms in Portobello Road, London at the end of 1927 when he was 24. In spring of 1928 he moved to Paris and lived at 6 Rue du Pot de Fer in the Latin Quarter, American writers like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald had lived in the same area. Following the Russian Revolution there was a large Russian emigre community in Paris, Orwells aunt Nellie Limouzin also lived in Paris and gave him social and, when necessary, financial support. He led a social life, worked on his novels and had several articles published in avant-garde journals. Orwell fell seriously ill in March 1929 and shortly afterwards had money stolen from the lodging house, the thief was probably not the young Italian described in Down and Out. Whoever reduced Orwell to destitution did him a good turn, his ten weeks in Paris sowed the seed of his first published book. Whether through necessity or just to collect material, and probably both, he undertook work as a dishwasher in restaurants. In August 1929 he sent a copy of The Spike to the Adelphi magazine in London, Orwell left Paris in December 1929 and returned to England, going straight home to his parents house in Southwold. Later he acted as a tutor to a handicapped child there and also undertook further tramping expeditions, culminating in a stint working in the Kent hop fields in August. After this adventure, he ended up in the Tooley Street kip, Orwells first version of Down and Out was called A Scullions Diary. Completed in October 1930, it used only his Paris material and he offered it to Jonathan Cape in the summer of 1931. Cape rejected it in the autumn and it was in the home of Mabel Fierz that Orwell then discarded the typescript. She had, with her husband, a London businessman named Francis, Fierz at this point took it to a literary agent, Leonard Moore, who recognised it as a natural for the new house of Gollancz. Victor Gollancz was prepared to publish the work, subject to the removal of bad language and some identifiable names, the title improvised by Gollancz, Confessions of a Down and Outer bothered Orwell. Would The Confessions of a Dishwasher do as well, I would rather answer to dishwasher than down & out. At the last minute, Gollancz shortened the title to Down and Out in Paris, the author, after possibilities including X, P. S
12.
A. J. Ayer
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He was educated at Eton College and Oxford University, after which he studied the philosophy of logical positivism at the University of Vienna. From 1933 to 1940 he lectured on philosophy at Christ Church, during the Second World War Ayer was a Special Operations Executive and MI6 agent. He was Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London from 1946 until 1959 and he was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1951 to 1952 and knighted in 1970. Ayer was born in St Johns Wood, in north west London and his mother, Reine Citroën, was from the Dutch-Jewish family who founded the Citroën car company in France. His father, Jules Ayer, was a Swiss Calvinist financier who worked for the Rothschild family and it was at Eton that Ayer first became known for his characteristic bravado and precocity. Although primarily interested in furthering his intellectual pursuits, he was keen on sports, particularly rugby. In the final examinations at Eton, Ayer came second in his year, in his final year, as a member of Etons senior council, he unsuccessfully campaigned for the abolition of corporal punishment at the school. He won a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford. After graduation from Oxford University Ayer spent a year in Vienna, returned to England and published his first book, Language, Truth and Logic in 1936. The first exposition in English of Logical Positivism as newly developed by the Vienna Circle, in the Second World War he served as an officer in the Welsh Guards, chiefly in intelligence. He thereafter taught philosophy at London University from 1946 until 1959 and he was an extrovert and social mixer who liked dancing and attending the clubs in London and New York. He was also obsessed with sport, he had played rugby for Eton, and was a noted cricketer, for an academic, Ayer was an unusually well-connected figure in his time, with close links to high society and the establishment. Presiding over Oxford high-tables, he is described as charming. Ayer was married four times to three women and his first marriage was from 1932–1941 to Renée, who subsequently married philosopher Stuart Hampshire, Ayers friend and colleague. In 1960 he married Alberta Constance Wells, with whom he had one son, Ayers marriage to Wells was dissolved in 1983 and that same year he married Vanessa Salmon, former wife of politician Nigel Lawson. She died in 1985 and in 1989 he remarried Dee Wells, Ayer also had a daughter with Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham Westbrook. From 1959 to his retirement in 1978, Sir Alfred held the Wykeham Chair, Ayer died on 27 June 1989. From 1980 to 1989, Ayer lived at 51 York Street, Marylebone, in Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer presents the verification principle as the only valid basis for philosophy
13.
Language, Truth and Logic
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Language, Truth, and Logic is a 1936 work of philosophy by Alfred Jules Ayer. It brought some of the ideas of the Vienna Circle and the logical empiricists to the attention of the English-speaking world. In the book, Ayer defines, explains, and argues for the principle of logical positivism. Ayer explains how the principle of verifiability may be applied to the problems of philosophy. E, the title of the book was taken from Friedrich Waismanns Logik, Sprache, Philosophie. According to Ayer, analytic statements are tautologies, a tautology is a statement that is necessarily true, true by definition, and true under any conditions. A tautology is a repetition of the meaning of a statement, according to Ayer, the statements of logic and mathematics are tautologies. Tautologies are true by definition, and thus their validity does not depend on empirical testing, synthetic statements, or empirical propositions, assert or deny something about the real world. The validity of synthetic statements is not established merely by the definition of the words or symbols they contain, according to Ayer, if a statement expresses an empirical proposition, then the validity of the proposition is established by its empirical verifiability. Propositions are statements that have conditions under which they can be verified, by the verification principle, meaningful statements have conditions under which their validity can be affirmed or denied. Statements that are not meaningful cannot be expressed as propositions, every verifiable proposition is meaningful, although it may be either true or false. Every proposition asserts or denies something, and thus is either true or false, Ayer distinguishes between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ verification, noting that there is a limit to how conclusively a proposition can be verified. ‘Strong’ verification is not possible for any proposition, because the validity of any proposition always depends upon further experience. ‘Weak’ verification, on the hand, is possible for any empirical proposition. Ayer also distinguishes between practical and theoretical verifiability, propositions for which we do not have a practical means of verification may still be meaningful if we can verify them in principle. Literal meaning must also be distinguished from factual meaning, literal meaning is an attribute of statements that are either analytic or empirically verifiable. Factual meaning is an attribute of statements that are meaningful without being analytic, thus, statements that have factual meaning say something about the real world. Ayer agrees with Hume that there are two classes of propositions, those that concern relations of ideas, and those that concern matters of fact. Propositions about relations of ideas include the a priori propositions of logic, propositions about matters of fact, on the other hand, make assertions about the empirical world
14.
A. J. Cronin
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Archibald Joseph Cronin, MBChB, MD, DPH, MRCP was a Scottish novelist and physician. His best-known novel was The Citadel, about a doctor in a Welsh mining village who quickly moves up the ladder in London. Cronin had observed this scene closely as a Medical Inspector of Mines and this book promoted controversial new ideas about medical ethics which largely inspired the launch of the National Health Service. Another popular mining novel, set in the North East of England, was The Stars Look Down, both these novels were adapted for film, as were Hatters Castle, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years. His novella Country Doctor was adapted for a long-running BBC radio and TV series Dr Finlays Casebook and his paternal grandparents emigrated from County Armagh, Ireland and were glass and china merchants in Alexandria. Owen Cronin, his grandfather, had his surname changed from Cronague in 1870 and his maternal grandfather, Archibald Montgomerie, was a hatter who owned a shop in Dumbarton. After their marriage, Cronins parents moved to Helensburgh, where he attended Grant Street School, when he was seven years old, his father, an insurance agent and commercial traveler, died from tuberculosis. From an early age, he was a golfer, a sport he enjoyed throughout his life. The family later moved to Yorkhill, Glasgow, where he attended St Aloysius College in the Garnethill area of the city and he played football for the First XI there, an experience he included in one of his last novels, The Minstrel Boy. A family decision that he should study for either the church or medicine was settled by Cronin himself and he won a Carnegie scholarship to study medicine at the University of Glasgow in 1914. He was absent during the 1916–1917 session for naval service, in 1919 he graduated with highest honours, with the degree of MBChB. Later that year he made a trip to India as ships surgeon on a liner, Cronin went on to earn additional degrees, including a Diploma in Public Health and his MRCP. In 1925, he was awarded an M. D. from the University of Glasgow for his dissertation, during World War I, Cronin served as a Surgeon Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve before graduating from medical school. After the war, he trained at various hospitals including Bellahouston and Lightburn Hospitals in Glasgow and he undertook general practice work in a small village on the Clyde, Garelochhead, as well as in Tredegar, a mining town in South Wales. He was involved in the disaster at Ystfad Colliery in Pengelly, where miners were drowned. He subsequently moved to London, where he practised in Harley Street before opening his own thriving medical practice in Notting Hill, Cronin was also the medical officer for Whiteleys at this time and was becoming increasingly interested in ophthalmology. In 1930, after being diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer. At Dalchenna Farm by Loch Fyne, he was able to indulge his lifelong desire to write a novel, having previously written nothing but prescriptions
15.
The Citadel (novel)
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The Citadel is a novel by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1937, which was groundbreaking with its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics. It has been credited with laying the foundation in Great Britain for the introduction of the NHS a decade later, in the United States, it won the National Book Award for 1937 novels, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association. For his fifth book, Dr. Cronin drew on his experiences practising medicine in the mining communities of the South Wales Valleys. Specifically, he had researched and reported on the correlation between coal dust inhalation and lung disease in the town of Tredegar and he had also worked as a doctor for the Tredegar Medical Aid Society at the Cottage Hospital, which served as the model for the National Health Service. Cronin once stated in an interview, I have written in The Citadel all I feel about the profession, its injustices, its hide-bound unscientific stubbornness. The horrors and inequities detailed in the story I have personally witnessed and this is not an attack against individuals, but against a system. In October 1924, Andrew Manson, an idealistic, newly qualified doctor and he quickly realises that Page is invalid and that he has to do all the work for a meagre wage. Resigning, he obtains a post as assistant in a medical aid scheme in Aberalaw. On the strength of this job, he marries Christine Barlow, Christine helps her husband with his silicosis research. Eager to improve the lives of his patients, mainly coal miners and he studies for, and is granted, the MRCP, and when his research is published, an MD. The research gains him a post with the Mines Fatigue Board in London, a patient dies because of a surgeons ineptitude, and the incident causes Manson to abandon his practice and return to his former ways. He and his wife repair their relationship, but then she is run over by a bus. Stillmans treatment, that of pneumothorax involved collapsing an affected lung with nitrogen, despite his lawyers gloomy prognosis, Manson forcefully justifies his actions during the hearing and is not struck off the medical register. There are also three film adaptations of the novel in Indian languages, Tere Mere Sapne in Hindi, Jiban Saikate in Bengali and Madhura Swapnam in Telugu
16.
Daphne du Maurier
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Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, DBE was an English author and playwright. Although she is classed as a romantic novelist, her stories feature a conventional happy ending. These bestselling works were not at first taken seriously by the critics, many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories The Birds and Dont Look Now. Du Maurier spent much of her life in Cornwall where most of her works are set, as her fame increased through her novels and the films based upon them, she became more reclusive. Her father was the actor Gerald du Maurier, and her grandfather was the artist, Daphne du Maurier was born in London, the middle child of three daughters of the prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather was the author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier and her elder sister Angela also became a writer, and her younger sister Jeanne was a painter. Her family connections helped her in establishing her career. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931, Du Maurier was also the cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who served as J. M. Barries inspiration for the characters in the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldnt Grow Up. As a young child, she met many of the brightest stars of the theatre, on meeting Tallulah Bankhead, she was quoted as saying that the actress was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. The novel Rebecca became one of du Mauriers most successful works. It was a hit on its publication, went on to sell nearly 3 million copies between 1938 and 1965, has never gone out of print, and has been adapted for both stage and screen several times. In the U. S. she won the National Book Award for favourite novel of 1938, in the UK, it was listed at number 14 of the nations best loved novel on the BBCs 2003 survey The Big Read. Other significant works include The Scapegoat, The House on the Strand, the last is set in the middle of the first and second English Civil War, written from the Royalist perspective of her adopted Cornwall. Several of her novels have also been adapted for the screen, including Jamaica Inn, Frenchmans Creek, Hungry Hill. The Hitchcock film The Birds is based on a treatment of one of her short stories, of the films, du Maurier often complained that the only ones she liked were Alfred Hitchcocks Rebecca and Nicolas Roegs Dont Look Now. Hitchcocks treatment of Jamaica Inn was disavowed by both director and author, due to a complete re-write of the ending to accommodate the ego of its star, Du Maurier also felt that Olivia de Havilland was wrongly cast as the anti-heroine of My Cousin Rachel. Frenchmans Creek fared rather better in a lavish Technicolor version released in 1944, Du Maurier later regretted her choice of Alec Guinness as the lead in the film of The Scapegoat, which she partly financed. Du Maurier was often categorised as a romantic novelist, a term she deplored, given her novels rarely have a happy ending, in this light, she has more in common with the sensation novels of Wilkie Collins and others, which she admired
17.
Rebecca (novel)
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Rebecca is a novel by English author Dame Daphne du Maurier. A best-seller, Rebecca sold 2,829,313 copies between its publication in 1938 and 1965, and the book has never gone out of print. The novel is remembered especially for the character Mrs. Danvers, the fictional estate Manderley, after a fortnight of courtship, she agrees to marry him and, after the wedding and honeymoon, accompanies him to his mansion in Cornwall, the beautiful West Country estate Manderley. Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, was profoundly devoted to the first Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca, who died in a boating accident about a year before Maxim. She continually attempts to undermine the new Mrs. de Winter psychologically, subtly suggesting to her that she will never attain the beauty, urbanity, and charm her predecessor possessed. Whenever the new Mrs. de Winter attempts to make changes at Manderley, each time Mrs. Danvers does this, she implies that the new Mrs. de Winter lacks the experience, and knowledge, necessary for running an important estate. Cowed by Mrs. Danvers imposing manner, the new mistress simply caves in and she is soon convinced that Maxim regrets his impetuous decision to marry her, and is still deeply in love with the seemingly perfect Rebecca. The climax occurs at Manderleys annual costume ball, the narrator has a drummer announce her entrance using the name of the lady in the portrait, Caroline de Winter. When the narrator shows Maxim the dress, he gets angry at her. Shortly after the ball, Mrs. Danvers reveals her contempt for our heroine, believing she is trying to replace Rebecca, Mrs. Danvers tries to get Mrs. de Winter to commit suicide by encouraging her to jump out of the window. However, she is thwarted at the last moment by the disturbance occasioned by a nearby shipwreck, a diver investigating the condition of the wrecked ships hull also discovers the remains of Rebeccas boat, with her body still on board. This discovery causes Maxim to confess the truth to Mrs. de Winter and he tells her how his marriage to Rebecca was nothing but a sham, how from the very first days husband and wife loathed each other. Rebecca, Maxim reveals, was a cruel, and selfish, woman who manipulated everyone around her into believing her to be the perfect wife and she repeatedly taunted Maxim with sordid tales of her numerous love affairs. The night of her death, she told Maxim that she was pregnant with another mans child, in a rage, he shot her, then disposed of her body, by placing it in her boat, and sinking it at sea. The second Mrs. de Winter thinks little of Maxims murder confession, but instead is relieved to hear that Maxim loves her, Rebeccas boat is raised, and it is discovered that it was deliberately sunk. An inquest brings a verdict of suicide and it is revealed that Rebecca had had an appointment with a Doctor Baker in the outskirts of London shortly before her death, presumably to confirm her pregnancy. When the doctor is found, he reveals that Rebecca had been suffering from cancer, furthermore, due to the malformation of her uterus, she could never have been pregnant. Maxim assumes that Rebecca, knowing that she was going to die, Mrs. Danvers had said at the inquiry that Rebecca feared nothing except dying a lingering death
18.
Kingsley Amis
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Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, according to his biographer, Zachary Leader, Amis was the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century. He is the father of British novelist Martin Amis, in 2008, The Times ranked Kingsley Amis thirteenth on their list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Kingsley Amis was born in Clapham, south London, the son of William Robert Amis and he was raised in Norbury – in his later estimation not really a place, its an expression on a map really I should say I came from Norbury station. He was educated at the City of London School on a scholarship, after his first year, and in April 1941 was admitted to St. Johns College, Oxford, also on a scholarship, where he read English. It was there that he met Philip Larkin, with whom he formed the most important friendship of his life, while at Oxford, in June 1941, Amis joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. After only a year, in July 1942, he was called up for national service, after serving in the Royal Corps of Signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. Although he worked hard and earned in 1947 a first in English, in 1946 he met Hilary Bardwell, they married in 1948 after she became pregnant with their first child, Philip. Amis initially arranged for her to have an abortion, but changed his mind. He became a lecturer in English at the University of Wales, Two other children followed, Martin in August 1949 and Sally in January 1954. Days after Sallys birth, Amiss first novel Lucky Jim was published to acclaim, critics saw it as having caught the flavour of Britain in the 1950s. The novel won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction and Amis was associated with the writers labelled the Angry Young Men. Lucky Jim was one of the first British campus novels, setting a precedent for later generations of such as Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge, Tom Sharpe. As a poet, Amis was associated with The Movement, on returning to Britain, he fell into a rut, and he began looking for another post, after thirteen years at Swansea, Amis became a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He regretted the move within a year, finding Cambridge an academic and social disappointment and resigned in 1963, intent on moving to Majorca, in 1963, Hilary discovered Amiss love affair with novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. Hilary and Amis separated in August, and he went to live with Howard and he divorced Hilary in 1965 and married Howard the same year. In 1968 he moved with Howard to Lemmons, a house in Barnet and she and Amis divorced in 1983. In his last years, Amis shared a house with his first wife Hilary and her husband, Alastair Boyd
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Lucky Jim
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Lucky Jim is a novel by Kingsley Amis, published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It is Amis first novel and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction, set sometime around 1950, Lucky Jim follows the exploits of the eponymous James Dixon, a reluctant medieval history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university. The tone is often truculent and plain-spoken, but its diction and style are wide-ranging, the novel pioneers the characteristic subject matter of the time, a young man making his way in a post-war world that combines new and moribund attitudes. The preliminary pages quote an old song, Oh, lucky Jim and it is supposed that Amis arrived at Jim Dixons surname from 12 Dixon Drive, Leicester, the address of Philip Larkin from 1948 to 1950, while he was a librarian at the university. Lucky Jim is dedicated to Larkin, who helped inspire the main character, time magazine included the novel in its TIME100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. Christopher Hitchens described it as the funniest book of the half of the 20th century. The year in which the novel is set is not explicit, Jim Dixon is a medieval history lecturer at a redbrick university in the English Midlands. The comedy of the novel is Dixons rebellion against the cant and pretension he meets in academic life and the uncontrolled escalation of this from private fantasy to public display. It seems a disastrous trajectory, but Jim is lucky, and the ends with him in possession of a measure of affluence, the London life he craves. Dixon is a northern, grammar school-educated, lower class young man. The action takes place towards the end of the academic year, because Dixon made an unsure start in the department, he is concerned about losing his position at the end of his probationary first year. In his attempt to be awarded tenure, he tries to maintain a relationship with his head of department, Professor Welch. He must also, to establish his credentials, ensure the publication of his first scholarly article, Dixon struggles with an on-again off-again girlfriend, Margaret Peel. Margaret is recovering from a suicide attempt, in the wake of an unsuccessful relationship with a boyfriend. Margaret employs emotional blackmail to appeal to Dixons sense of duty and pity to keep him in an ambiguous, at the weekend, Dixon meets Christine Callaghan, a young Londoner and the latest girlfriend of Professor Welchs son, Bertrand, an amateur painter whose affectedness particularly infuriates Dixon. After a bad start, Dixon realises he is attracted to Christine, Dixons obvious attempts to court Christine upset Bertrand, who is using his relationship with her to reach her well-connected Scottish uncle, who is seeking an assistant in London. Dixon rescues Christine from the annual dance when Bertrand treats her badly. The pair kiss and make a tea date, but during the date, Christine admits she feels guilty about seeing Dixon behind Bertrands back, the two decide not to see each other, and Margarets ex-boyfriend telephones Dixon and asks to see him to discuss Margaret
20.
Colin Wilson
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Colin Henry Wilson was an English writer, philosopher and novelist. He also wrote widely on true crime, mysticism and the paranormal, Wilson called his philosophy new existentialism or phenomenological existentialism, and maintained his life work was that of a philosopher, and purpose to create a new and optimistic existentialism. Wilson was born on 26 June 1931 in Leicester, England and his father worked in a shoe factory. At the age of eleven he attended Gateway Secondary Technical School, by the age of 14 he had compiled a multi-volume work of essays covering many aspects of science entitled A Manual of General Science. But by the time he left school at sixteen, his interests were already switching to literature and his discovery of George Bernard Shaws work, particularly Man and Superman, was an important landmark. He started to write stories, plays, and essays in earnest – a long sequel to Man and Superman made him consider himself to be Shaws natural successor. After two unfulfilling jobs – one as an assistant at his old school – he drifted into the Civil Service. In the Autumn of 1949, he was drafted into the Royal Air Force but soon found himself clashing with authority, upon leaving he took up a succession of menial jobs, spent some time wandering around Europe, and finally returned to Leicester in 1951. There he married his first wife, Betty Troop, and moved to London, but the marriage rapidly disintegrated as he drifted in and out of several jobs. During this traumatic period, Wilson was continually working and reworking the novel that was published as Ritual in the Dark. He also met three young writers who became close friends – Bill Hopkins, Stuart Holroyd and Laura Del Rivo, another trip to Europe followed, and he spent some time in Paris attempting to sell magazine subscriptions. Returning to Leicester again, he met Joy Stewart – later to become his second wife, on Christmas Day,1954, alone in his room, he sat down on his bed and began to write in his journal. It was not a position I relished, yet an inner compulsion had forced me into this position of isolation. I began writing about it in my journal, trying to pin it down, and then, quite suddenly, I saw that I had the makings of a book. I turned to the back of my journal and wrote at the head of the page, gollancz published the then 24-year-old Wilsons The Outsider in 1956. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent van Gogh –, the book became a best-seller and helped popularise existentialism in Britain. It has never been out of print and has been published more than thirty languages. Through the works of various artists, Wilson explored the psyche of the Outsider, his effect on society and societys on him
21.
The Outsider (Colin Wilson)
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The Outsider is a non-fiction book by Colin Wilson first published in 1956. Through the works and lives of various artists – including H. G. Wells, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Harley Granville-Barker, Hermann Hesse, T. E. On Christmas Day,1954, alone in his room, Wilson sat down on his bed and it was not a position I relished. Yet an inner compulsion had forced me into this position of isolation. I began writing about it in my journal, trying to pin it down, and then, quite suddenly, I saw that I had the makings of a book. I turned to the back of my journal and wrote at the head of the page, Notes for a book The Outsider in Literature. And so The Outsider was conceived - a book that has, to date, been translated into thirty languages. Wilson wrote much of it in the Reading Room of the British Museum, and during this period was, for a time, living in a sleeping bag on Hampstead Heath. He continued to work on it at a pace and, One day I typed out the introduction, and a few pages from the middle. He replied within 2 days, saying he would be interested to see the book when completed, Gollancz was the head of publishers Victor Gollancz Ltd. The book is structured in such a way as to mirror the Outsiders experience and these are figures like Dostoevskys Underground-Man who seem to be lost to despair and non-transcendence with no way out. Characters are then brought to the fore, sartres Nausea is herein the key text – and the moment when the hero listens to a song in a cafe which momentarily lifts his spirits is the outlook on life to be normalized. Wilson then engages in some detailed studies of artists who failed in this task and tries to understand their weakness – which is either intellectual. The final chapter is Wilsons attempt at a synthesis in which he justifies his belief that western philosophy is afflicted with a needless pessimistic fallacy. The book is published with enthusiastic comments from the likes of Edith Sitwell. This reception – of his first book at the age of 24 – was a high watermark for Wilson
22.
E. P. Thompson
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Edward Palmer Thompson, usually cited as E. P. Thompson, was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He also published biographies of William Morris and William Blake and was a prolific journalist and essayist. He also published the novel The Sykaos Papers and a collection of poetry, Thompson was one of the principal intellectuals of the Communist Party in Great Britain. Thompson played a key role in the first New Left in Britain in the late 1950s, E. P. Thompson was born in Oxford to Methodist missionary parents, His father, Edward John Thompson was a poet and admirer of the Nobel Prize–winning poet Tagore. His older brother was William Frank Thompson, a British officer in World War II, Thompson attended two independent schools, The Dragon School in Oxford and Kingswood School in Bath. Like many he left school in 1941 to fight in World War II and he served in a tank unit in the Italian campaign, including at the last battle of Cassino. After his military service, he studied at Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge, in 1946, E. P. Thompson formed the Communist Party Historians Group with Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Rodney Hilton, Dona Torr and others. In 1952 they launched the influential journal Past and Present, Thompsons first major work of scholarship was his biography of William Morris, written while he was a member of the Communist Party. It was also an attempt to take Morris back from the critics who for more than 50 years had emphasised his art, however, the somewhat rewritten second edition was much better received. Six months later, he and most of his comrades left the party in disgust at the Soviet invasion of Hungary, but Thompson remained what he called a socialist humanist. The fashion ever since has been to describe the Thompson et al, New Left as the first New Left and the Anderson et al. group, which by 1968 had embraced Tariq Ali and various Trotskyists, as the second. Thompson subsequently allied himself with the annual Socialist Register publication, with Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall, he was one of the editors of the 1967 May Day Manifesto, one of the key left-wing challenges to the 1964–70 Labour government of Harold Wilson. Thompsons most influential work was and remains The Making of the English Working Class, the massive book, over 800 pages, was a watershed in the foundation of the field of social history. He took what others had regarded as scraps from the archive and interrogated them for what they told us about the beliefs, here, then, was a book that rambled over aspects of human experience that had never before had their historian. From the first of its 900-odd pages, I knew, and my friends at the University of Sussex knew and we talked about it in the bar and on the bus and in the refectory queue. Imagine that, young male students more interested in a book than in gooseberry tart, in his preface to this book, E. P. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying and their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking
23.
Fantasy
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Fantasy is a fiction genre set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Most fantasy uses magic or other elements as a main plot element, theme. Magic and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds, in popular culture, the fantasy genre is predominantly of the medievalist form. In its broadest sense, however, fantasy works by many writers, artists, filmmakers. Fantasy is studied in a number of disciplines including English and other studies, cultural studies, comparative literature, history. The identifying trait of fantasy is the reliance on imagination to create narrative elements that do not have to rely on history or nature to be coherent. This differs from realistic fiction in that whereas realistic fiction has to attend to the history and natural laws of reality, an author applies his or her imagination to come up with characters, plots, and settings that are impossible in reality. Fantasy has often compared with science fiction and horror because they are the major categories of speculative fiction. Fantasy is distinguished from science fiction by the plausibility of the narrative elements, a science fiction narrative is unlikely, though seeming possible through logical scientific and/or technological extrapolation, whereas fantasy narratives do not need to be scientifically possible. The imagined elements of fantasy do not need an explanation to be narratively functional. Authors have to rely on the suspension of disbelief, an acceptance of the unbelievable or impossible for the sake of enjoyment. Despite both genres heavy reliance on the supernatural, fantasy and horror are distinguishable, horror primarily evokes fear through the protagonists weaknesses or inability to deal with the antagonists. Beginning perhaps with the earliest written documents, mythic and other elements that would come to define fantasy. MacDonald was an influence on both J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The other major fantasy author of this era was William Morris, lord Dunsany established the genres popularity in both the novel and the short story form. Many popular mainstream authors also began to write fantasy at this time, including H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Indeed, juvenile fantasy was considered more acceptable than fantasy intended for adults, nathaniel Hawthorne wrote fantasy in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, intended for children, though works for adults only verged on fantasy. Political and social trends can affect a societys reception towards fantasy, in the early 20th century, the New Culture Movements enthusiasm for Westernization and science in China compelled them to condemn the fantastical shenmo genre of traditional Chinese literature
24.
Joe Abercrombie
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Joe Abercrombie is a British fantasy writer and film editor. He is the author of a trilogy called The First Law, in 2014 he published Half a King, the first book in his new Shattered Sea series, which won the 2015 Locus Award for best Young Adult book. Abercrombie was born in Lancaster, England and he was educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School and Manchester University, where he studied psychology. Abercrombie had a job making tea at a production company before taking up a career as a freelance film editor. As a freelance editor, Abercrombie found himself with more free time than he previously had. With this time, he decided to reconsider a story plot he had dreamed up in his University days that had once been scrapped, the idea had started out six years prior as a result of Abercrombies dream of single-handedly redefining the fantasy genre. He began writing The Blade Itself in 2002, completing it in 2004 and it took a year of rejection by publishing agencies before Gillian Redfearn of Gollancz accepted the book for a five-figure deal in 2005. It was published by Gollancz in 2006 and was followed in the two years by two other books in the trilogy, by the titles of Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings. In 2008, Joe Abercrombie was a finalist for the John W, in 2009, Abercrombie released the novel Best Served Cold. It is set in the world as The First Law Trilogy but is a stand-alone novel. He followed with The Heroes and Red Country, both set in the world of the First Law Trilogy. Abercrombie lives in Bath, Somerset with his wife and three children, in 2011, Abercrombie signed a deal with Gollancz for 4 more books set in the First Law world. In 2013, HarperCollins fantasy and childrens imprints announced that they had acquired the rights to three books by Abercrombie, aimed at younger readers, the three standalone but interconnected novels form a classic coming-of-age tale, with the first volume, Half a King, published in summer 2014. Yesterday, Near A Village Called Barden – appeared as an extra in the Waterstones hardcover version of The Heroes and focuses on Bremer dan Gorst on campaign prior to The Heroes. - appeared as an extra in the Waterstones hardcover version of Red Country, skipping Town - appeared in the Legends, Stories in Honour of David Gemmell anthology and features the couple pairing of Shev and Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp. Some Desperado - appeared in the Dangerous Women anthology and features Shy South on the run during her days before Red Country. Nominated for a 2014 Locus Award, tough Times All Over - appeared in the Rogues anthology and follows courier Carcolf and the circuitous route one of her packages takes through the city of Sipani
25.
J. G. Ballard
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James Graham J. G. Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. In the late 1960s, Ballard produced a variety of short stories. Described by The Guardian as the best British novel about the Second World War, in the following decades until his death in 2009, Ballards work shifted toward the form of the traditional crime novel. Several of his works have been adapted into films, including David Cronenbergs controversial 1996 adaptation of Crash. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry describes Ballards work as being occupied with eros, thanatos, mass media and his mother was Edna, née Johnstone. Ballard was born and raised in the Shanghai International Settlement, an area under foreign control where people lived an American style of life and he was sent to the Cathedral School, the Anglican Holy Trinity Church near the Bund, Shanghai. After the Japanese attack on Hong Kong, the Japanese occupied the International Settlement in Shanghai, in early 1943, they began to intern Allied civilians, and Ballard was sent to the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center with his parents and younger sister. He spent over two years, the remainder of World War II, in the internment camp and his family lived in a small area in G block, a two-story residence for 40 families. He attended school in the camp, the teachers being camp inmates from a number of professions. These experiences formed the basis of Empire of the Sun, although Ballard exercised considerable artistic licence in writing the book and it has been supposed that Ballards exposure to the atrocities of war at an impressionable age explains the apocalyptic and violent nature of much of his fiction. Martin Amis wrote that Empire of the Sun gives shape to what shaped him, however, Ballards own account of the experience was more nuanced, I dont think you can go through the experience of war without ones perceptions of the world being forever changed. But also, I have—I wont say happy—not unpleasant memories of the camp, I remember a lot of the casual brutality and beatings-up that went on—but at the same time we children were playing a hundred and one games all the time. In late 1945, after the end of the war, his mother returned to Britain with Ballard and they lived in the outskirts of Plymouth, and he attended The Leys School in Cambridge. He won an essay prize whilst at the school but did not contribute to the school magazine, after a couple of years his mother and sister returned to China, rejoining Ballards father, leaving Ballard to live with his grandparents when not boarding at school. In 1949 he went on to study medicine at Kings College, Cambridge, at university, Ballard was writing avant-garde fiction heavily influenced by psychoanalysis and surrealist painters. At this time, he wanted to become a writer as well as pursue a medical career, however, he was asked to leave at the end of the year. Ballard then worked as a copywriter for an agency and as an encyclopaedia salesman. He kept writing short fiction but found it impossible to get published, in spring 1954 Ballard joined the Royal Air Force and was sent to the Royal Canadian Air Force flight-training base in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada
26.
Stephen Baxter (author)
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Stephen Baxter is a British hard science fiction author. He has degrees in mathematics and engineering, strongly influenced by SF pioneer H. G. Wells, Baxter has been a distinguished Vice-President of the international H. G. Wells Society since 2006. His fiction falls into three categories of original work plus a fourth category, extending other authors writing, each has a different basis, style. Baxters Future History mode is based on research into hard science and these stories begin in the present day and end when the Milky Way galaxy collides with Andromeda five billion years in the future. The central narrative is that of Humanity rising and evolving to become the second most powerful race in the universe, next to the god-like Xeelee. The Manifold Trilogy is another example of Baxters future history mode, in 2013, Baxter released his short story collection entitled Universes which featured stories set in Flood/Ark, Jones & Bennet and Anti-Ice universes. Baxter signed a contract for two new books, titled Proxima and Ultima, both of which are names of planets, and they were released in 2013 and 2014, a second category in Baxters work is based on readings in evolutionary biology and human/animal behaviour. Elements of this appear in his histories, but here it is the focus. The major work in this category is Evolution, which imagines the evolution of humanity in the Earths past, a third category of Baxters fiction is alternate history, based on research into history. These stories are more human, with characters portrayed with greater depth, the novel Anti-Ice is an earlier example of Baxters blending of alternate history with science fiction. In 2009, Baxter became a judge for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, another category, outside of the main body of Baxters independent work, is sequels and installments of science-fiction classics. His first novel to achieve wide recognition was The Time Ships, the Time Odyssey series, a trilogy co-authored with Arthur C. Clarke, is connected to Clarkes four Space Odyssey novels, another novel is based on a synopsis written by Clarke, The Light of Other Days. Baxter has also published a Doctor Who novel, The Wheel of Ice, in 2010, Baxter began working on a new series with Terry Pratchett. This collaboration has produced five books, The Long Earth, The Long War, The Long Mars, The Long Utopia, Baxter has also written non-fiction essays and columns for such publications as Critical Wave and the British SF Associations Matrix. Baxters story Last Contact was nominated for the 2008 Hugo Award for best short story, Baxter taught maths, physics, and information technology before becoming a full-time author in 1995. He is also an engineer and fellow of the British Interplanetary Society. Stephen Baxters official website Stephen Baxter at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
27.
Greg Bear
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Gregory Dale Greg Bear is an American writer best known for science fiction. His work has covered themes of conflict, artificial universes, consciousness and cultural practices. His most recent work is the Forerunner Trilogy, written in the Halo universe, Greg Bear has written 44 books in total. Greg Bear was also one of the five co-founders of the San Diego Comic-Con, Bear was born in San Diego, California. He attended San Diego State University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree, at the University, he was a teaching assistant to Elizabeth Chater in her course on science fiction writing, and in later years her friend. Bear is often classified as a science fiction author, based on the scientific details in his work. Early in his career, he published work as an artist, including illustrations for an early version of the Star Trek Concordance and covers for Galaxy. He sold his first story, Destroyers, to Famous Science Fiction in 1967, Bear often addresses major questions in contemporary science and culture with fictional solutions. In Queen of Angels, Bear examines crime, guilt, and he frames these questions around an examination of consciousness and awareness, including the emergent self-awareness of highly advanced computers in communication with humans. In Darwins Radio and Darwins Children, he addresses the problem of over-population with a mutation in the human genome making, basically, the question of cultural acceptance of something new and unavoidable is also brought up. One of Bears favorite themes is reality as a function of observers, in Blood Music, reality becomes unstable as the number of observers—trillions of intelligent single-cell organisms—spirals higher and higher. Anvil of Stars and Moving Mars postulate a physics based on information exchange between particles, capable of being altered at the bit level, in Moving Mars, this knowledge is used to remove Mars from the solar system and transfer it to an orbit around a distant star. Blood Music was first published as a story and then expanded to a novel. It has also credited as the first account of nanotechnology in science fiction. In later works, beginning with Queen of Angels and continuing with its sequel, Slant and this historical sequence continues with Heads—which may contain the first description of a so-called quantum logic computer—and with Moving Mars. This sequence also charts the development of self-awareness in AIs. Its continuing character Jill was inspired in part by Robert A. Heinleins self-aware computer Mycroft HOLMES in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Bear, Gregory Benford, and David Brin wrote a trilogy of prequel novels to Isaac Asimovs influential Foundation trilogy. Bear is credited for the middle book, while most of Bears work is science fiction, he has written in other fiction genres
28.
Jonathan Carroll
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Jonathan Samuel Carroll is an American fiction writer primarily known for novels that may be labelled magic realism, slipstream or contemporary fantasy. He has lived in Austria since the 1970s, Carroll was born in New York City to Sidney Carroll, a film writer whose credits included The Hustler, and June Carroll, an actress and lyricist who appeared in numerous Broadway shows and two films. He is the brother of composer Steve Reich and nephew of Broadway producer Leonard Sillman. His parents were Jewish, but Carroll was raised in the Christian Science religion and he relocated to Vienna, Austria a few years later and began teaching literature at the American International School, and has made his home in Austria ever since. His first novel, The Land of Laughs, is indicative of his general style, everything seems fine until a dog in Galen begins talking to Abbey. Subsequent novels would expand on themes, but often contain unreliable narrators in a world where magic is viewed as natural. Carrolls short story, Friends Best Man, won the World Fantasy Award and his novel, Outside the Dog Museum won the British Fantasy Award and his collection of short stories won the Bram Stoker Award. The short story Uh-Oh City won the French Grand Prix de lImaginaire and his short story Home on the Rain was chosen as one of the best stories of the year by the Pushcart Prize committee
29.
Mark Chadbourn
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Mark Chadbourn is an English fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, and horror author with more than a dozen novels published around the world. Born in the English Midlands from a line of coal miners. He gained a degree in Economic History and went on to become a journalist, working for some of Britains leading newspapers and magazines including The Times, The Independent, and Marie Claire. His writing career began in 1990 when his first published short story Six Dead Boys in a Very Dark World won Fear magazines Best New Author award and it attracted the attention of agents and publishers. His novel Jack of Ravens was published in the UK on 20 July 2006 and it is the first in a new sequence called Kingdom of the Serpent. The second book, The Burning Man, was published in April 2008, the final book in the trilogy, Destroyer of Worlds, has been published in July 2009. The earlier books include two series, The Age of Misrule and The Dark Age and he also writes historical novels under the pseudonym James Wilde. In addition to his novels he also is a scriptwriter for the BBC drama Doctors
30.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He is perhaps most famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001, A Space Odyssey, Clarke was a science writer, who was both an avid populariser of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability. On these subjects he wrote over a dozen books and many essays, in 1961 he was awarded the Kalinga Prize, an award which is given by UNESCO for popularizing science. These along with his fiction writings eventually earned him the moniker Prophet of the Space Age. His other science fiction writings earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, for many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov were known as the Big Three of science fiction. Clarke was a proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society, in 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system, an idea which won him the Franklin Institutes Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1963, and other honours. Later he was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946–47, Clarke emigrated from England to Sri Lanka in 1956, largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving. That year he discovered the ruins of the ancient Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee. Clarke augmented his fame later on in the 1980s, from being the host of television shows such as Arthur C. He lived in Sri Lanka until his death and he was knighted in 1998 and was awarded Sri Lankas highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005. Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England, and grew up in nearby Bishops Lydeard, as a boy, he grew up on a farm enjoying stargazing, fossil collecting, and reading American science fiction pulp magazines. He received his education at Huish Grammar school in Taunton. Early influences included dinosaur cigarette cards, which led to an enthusiasm for fossils starting about 1925, in his teens, he joined the Junior Astronomical Association and contributed to Urania, the societys journal, which was edited in Glasgow by Marion Eadie. At Clarkes request, she added an Astronautics Section, which featured a series of articles by him on spacecraft and he moved to London in 1936 and joined the Board of Education as a pensions auditor. Clarke spent most of his wartime service working on ground-controlled approach radar, as documented in the semi-autobiographical Glide Path, although GCA did not see much practical use during the war, it proved vital to the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949 after several years of development. Clarke initially served in the ranks, and was an instructor on radar at No.2 Radio School. He was commissioned as an officer on 27 May 1943
31.
Robert Cormier
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Robert Edmund Cormier was an American author, columnist and reporter, known for his deeply pessimistic, downbeat literature. His most popular works include I Am the Cheese, After the First Death, We All Fall Down and The Chocolate War, the Chocolate War was challenged in multiple libraries. His books often are concerned with such as abuse, mental illness, violence, revenge, betrayal. In most of his novels, the protagonists do not win, robert Cormier was born in 1925 to Lucien Joseph and Irma M. Cormier, in Leominster, Massachusetts, in the French-Canadian section of the town called French Hill. He was the second of eight children and his family moved frequently to afford rent, but never left his hometown. Even when he was older and owned a summer home. In a few of his books, Cormiers hometown of Leominster became the town of Monument. The nearby city of Fitchburg became Wickburg, Cormier attended St. Cecilias Parochial School, a private Catholic school. He began writing when he was in the first grade and was praised at school for his poetry and he first realized his aspiration to become a writer in 7th grade, when he was encouraged by a nun to write a poem. He attended Leominster High School, graduating as the president of his class, Cormier began his professional writing career scripting radio commercials. He eventually became an award-winning journalist, even though he became widely known, he never stopped writing for his local newspaper, the Fitchburg Sentinel. Cormier became a writer after the success of his first adult novel for teenagers, Now and at the Hour, others followed, such as The Chocolate War. He was concerned with the problems facing people in modern society. He soon established a reputation as a brilliant and uncompromising writer and his awards include the Margaret A. Cormier won the annual award in 1991 citing The Chocolate War, I Am the Cheese, and After the First Death. The Chocolate War has been challenged in libraries and schools for its language and its depictions of sexual activity, secret societies. Between 1990 and 2000 it was the fourth most-frequently challenged book in the US and that is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the books rise from obscurity. By that time Cormier had won the 1991 Edwards Award citing I Am the Cheese as one of three 1974 to 1979 books taken to heart by young adults over a period of years. The American Library Association determined that Cormiers brilliantly crafted and troubling novels have achieved the status of classics in young adult literature, Cormier died in 2000 due to lung cancer
32.
Thomas M. Disch
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Thomas Michael Disch was an American science fiction author and poet. Campbell Memorial Award, a Rhysling Award, and two Seiun Awards, among others, in the 1960s, his work began appearing in science-fiction magazines. His critically acclaimed science fiction novels, The Genocides, Camp Concentration,334, among his other nonfiction work, he wrote theatre and opera criticism for The New York Times, The Nation, and other periodicals. He also published volumes of poetry as Tom Disch. Disch committed suicide by gunshot on July 42008 in his apartment in Manhattan and his last book, The Word of God, which was written shortly before Naylor died, had just been published a few days before Dischs death. Disch was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on February 2,1940, because of a polio epidemic in 1946, his mother Helen home-schooled him for a year. As a result, he skipped from kindergarten to second grade, Dischs first formal education was at Catholic schools, which is evidenced in some of his works which contain scathing criticisms of the Catholic Church. The family moved in 1953 to St. Paul in Minnesota, in the Saint Paul public schools, Disch discovered his long-term loves of science fiction, drama, and poetry. He describes poetry as his stepping-stone to the literary world, a teacher at St. Paul Central, Jeannette Cochran, assigned 100 lines of poetry to be memorized, Disch wound up memorizing ten times as much. His early fascination continued to influence his work with poetic form, after graduating from high school in 1957, he worked a summer job as a trainee steel draftsman, just one of the many jobs on his path to becoming a writer. Saving enough to move to New York City at the age of 17, he found a Manhattan apartment and began to cast his energies in many directions. He worked as an extra at the Metropolitan Opera House in productions of Spartacus for the Bolshoi Ballet, Swan Lake for the Royal Ballet and he found work at a bookstore, then at a newspaper. At the age of 18, a penniless, friendless, gay teenager, he attempted suicide by gas oven, later that year, he enlisted in the army. Dischs incompatibility with the forces quickly resulted in a nearly three-month commitment to a mental hospital. After his discharge, Disch returned to New York and continued to pursue the arts in his own indirect way and he worked, again, in bookstores, and as a copywriter. Some of these paid off later, working as a cloak room attendant in New York theater culture allowed him to both pursue his lifelong love of drama and led to work as a magazine theater critic. Eventually, he got job with an insurance company and went to school. A brief flirtation with architecture led him to apply to Cooper Union, where he was told he got the highest score ever on their entrance exam, but dropped out after a few weeks
33.
Stephen R. Donaldson
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Stephen Reeder Donaldson is an American fantasy, science fiction and mystery novelist, most famous for The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, his ten-novel fantasy series. He earned his bachelors degree from The College of Wooster and a Masters degree from Kent State University and he currently resides in New Mexico. In the United Kingdom he is usually called Stephen Donaldson, Donaldson spent part of his youth in India, where he attended what is now the Kodaikanal International School. He was attending Kent State University as a student at the time of the Kent State shootings on May 4,1970. Though he was not on campus at the time of the shootings, his apartment was one and a half blocks away, Donaldson does not like to discuss the incident, as he finds the memories disturbing. Donaldson is a fan of opera, and has said that he love that direct expression of emotion in beautiful sound. In 1994, he gained a black belt in Shotokan karate, Donaldson is part of the generation of fantasy authors which came to prominence in the 1970s and early 1980s. Like that of many of his peers, his writing is influenced by the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. However, Donaldsons stories show a range of other influences, including Mervyn Peake, C. S. Lewis, Robert E. Howard. Donaldson is also a fan of Roger Zelaznys Amber novels. Also, in the Gradual Interview section of his website, Donaldson mentions his extensive study of Joseph Conrad, Henry James and William Faulkner to further develop his narrative style. Donaldsons most celebrated series is The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which centers on a cynical leper, shunned by society, who is destined to become the heroic savior of an alternative Earth. Covenant struggles against the tyrannical Lord Foul, who intends to break the physical universe in order to escape his bondage and wreak revenge upon his arch enemy, the Chronicles were originally published as two trilogies of novels between 1977 and 1983. According to his current publisher, Putnams, those two series sold more than 10 million copies, a third series, The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, began publication in 2004 with the novel The Runes of the Earth. With the second book of series, Fatal Revenant, Donaldson again attained bestseller status when the book reached number 12 on the New York Times Bestseller List in October 2007. The first concerns an ensign in the United Mining Companies Police, Morn Hyland, each of the epics takes place against the backdrop of a threat to human survival itself from an alien species called the Amnion who use genetic mutation as a way to assimilate and overcome. Trade in raw materials is carried out with the Amnion in exchange for technology, some illegals trade in Amnion territorial space, referred to as forbidden space, out of bounds to the UMCP by treaty. Donaldson wrote the series in part to be a reworking of Wagners Ring Cycle, the Gap of the title refers to the faster-than-light drives used by the space vessels in order to cross great distances, an instantaneous occurrence similar to the notion of folding space
34.
William Gibson
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William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Gibson notably coined the term cyberspace in his short story Burning Chrome and these early works have been credited with renovating science fiction literature after it had fallen largely into insignificance in the 1970s. In the 1990s, Gibson composed the Bridge trilogy of novels, which explored the sociological developments of urban environments, postindustrial society. These works saw his name reach mainstream bestseller lists for the first time and his more recent novel, The Peripheral, returned to a more overt engagement with technology and recognizable science fiction concerns. In 1999, The Guardian described Gibson as probably the most important novelist of the past two decades, while the Sydney Morning Herald called him the prophet of cyberpunk. His work has been cited as an influence across a variety of disciplines spanning academia, design, film, literature, music, cyberculture and his family moved frequently during Gibsons youth owing to his fathers position as manager of a large construction company. In Norfolk, Virginia, Gibson attended Pines Elementary School, where the lack of encouragement for him to read was a cause of dismay for his parents. While Gibson was still a child, a little over a year into his stay at Pines Elementary. His mother, unable to tell William the bad news, had someone else inform him of the death, tom Maddox has commented that Gibson grew up in an America as disturbing and surreal as anything J. G. Ballard ever dreamed. A few days after the death, Gibsons mother returned them from their home in Norfolk to Wytheville, at the age of 12, Gibson wanted nothing more than to be a science fiction writer. He spent a few years at basketball-obsessed George Wythe High School. Becoming frustrated with his academic performance, Gibsons mother threatened to send him to a boarding school, to her surprise. He resented the structure of the boarding school but was in retrospect grateful for its forcing him to engage socially. On the SAT exams, he scored 148 out of 150 in the section but 5 out of 150 in mathematics. In 1967, he elected to move to Canada in order to avoid the Vietnam war draft, at his draft hearing, he honestly informed interviewers that his intention in life was to sample every mind-altering substance in existence. Gibson has observed that he did not literally evade the draft, as they never bothered drafting me, after the hearing he went home and purchased a bus ticket to Toronto, and left a week or two later. He elaborated on the topic in a 2008 interview, After weeks of nominal homelessness, Gibson was hired as the manager of Torontos first head shop, a retailer of drug paraphernalia. He found the citys community of American draft dodgers unbearable owing to the prevalence of clinical depression, suicide
35.
Jon Grimwood
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Jon Courtenay Grimwood is a British science fiction and fantasy author. He writes also as Jonathan Grimwood and Jack Grimwood, Grimwood was born in 1953 in Valletta, Malta, grew up in Malta, Britain, Southeast Asia and Norway in the 1960s and 1970s. He studied at Kingston University, then worked in publishing and as a writer for magazines and newspapers including The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Times. He now lives in Paris and Winchester and is married to the journalist and novelist Sam Baker, with a son, Jamie, much of his early work within SF&F can be described as post-cyberpunk. He was short-listed for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2002 for Pashazade and his fourth book is loosely based on Stanley Weymans Victorian novel Under the Red Robe. End of the World Blues was also short-listed for the 2007 Arthur C. Clarke Award, the following were nominated in the SF novel category in the Locus Awards – Felaheen, The Third Arabesk, Stamping Butterflies, 9Tail Fox, End of the World Blues. Grimwoods SF&F work tends to be of a quasi-alternate history genre, by contrast, there is little in Stamping Butterflies, 9tail Fox or End of the World Blues to suggest that the books are not set in our reality. The second novel in the Assassini series, The Outcast Blade was published in 2012, the novels take as a template sequences and tropes from Shakespeares plays Othello, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. The novels have sold into a number of languages. His first literary novel, The Last Banquet, as Jonathan Grimwood, was published in 2013 by Canongate Booksin the UK, Europa Editions in the US, and Éditions Terra Nova in France, among others. The French France 5 critic Gérard Collard called Le Dernier Banquet le livre de l’année. ’ In January 2015 it was shortlisted for Le Prix Montesquieu, as Jack Grimwood, he is writing thrillers for Penguin Books. The first, Moskva, Spring 2016, is set in 1980s Soviet Moscow, the second, Nightfall Berlin is due Spring 2017. Grimwood was guest of honour at Novacon in 2003, at Kontext in 2008, at Eastercon LX in 2009, and at Bristolcon in 2014. He was a judge for the 2010 Arthur C Clarke Award presented to China Miéville for The City & the City and he also judged The James White Award given at Eastercon 2012. Grimwoods style for the Science Fiction novels has two main features, in Stamping Butterflies, as well as some of the characters having a mental link, one character has conversations with an alien AI known as the Library. Secondly, he frequently alternates the main narrative with either a story or a series of discontinuous flashbacks. He uses this to explain events in the past in such a way that their connection to the plot only becomes evident later in the book, the hero didnt know, the local police didnt know and nor did I. It was only half way though the draft it became obvious
36.
Joe Hill (writer)
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Joseph Hillstrom King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American author and comic book writer. He has published four novels—Heart-Shaped Box, Horns, NOS4A2 and The Fireman—and a collection of stories titled 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the author of the book series Locke & Key. He is the son of authors Stephen and Tabitha King, Hill was born in 1972 to authors Tabitha and Stephen King. He was born in Hermon, Maine and grew up in Bangor and his younger brother Owen is also a writer. At age 9, Hill appeared in the 1982 film Creepshow, directed by George A. Romero, after achieving a degree of independent success, Hill publicly confirmed his identity in 2007 after an article the previous year in Variety broke his cover. Hill is a past recipient of the Ray Bradbury Fellowship, in October 2007, Hills mainstream US and UK publishers reprinted 20th Century Ghosts, without the extras published in the 2005 slipcased versions, but including one new story. Hills first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, was published by William Morrow/HarperCollins on February 13,2007, the novel reached number eight on the New York Times bestseller list on April 1,2007. On September 23,2007, at the thirty-first Fantasycon, the British Fantasy Society awarded Hill the first ever Sydney J. Bounds Best Newcomer Award, Hills first professional sale was in 1997. Hill is also the author of Locke & Key, a book series published by IDW Publishing. The first issue, released on February 20,2008, sold out of its publication run in one day. A collection of the series in limited form from Subterranean Press sold out within 24 hours of being announced, Hills second novel, Horns, was published on February 16,2010. A film based on the novel was released in 2014, NOS4A2, his third novel, was published on April 30,2013. The novel peaked at five on the New York Times Best Seller list. Hills fourth novel called The Fireman was released on May 17,2016, as well,52 lettered hard covers and 150 numbered soft covered chapbooks were signed by Hill. Fanboyz, a script, was written for Spider-Man Unlimited 8. The story was illustrated by Seth Fisher, thumbprint, first published in Postscripts #10 in 2007, was reprinted as a chapbook in summer 2008 to accompany the anthology Subterranean, Tales of Dark Fantasy published by Subterranean Press
37.
Robert Holdstock
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Robert Paul Holdstock was an English novelist and author best known for his works of Celtic, Nordic, Gothic and Pictish fantasy literature, predominantly in the fantasy subgenre of mythic fiction. Holdstock broke into print in 1968 and his science fiction and fantasy works explore philosophical, psychological, anthropological, spiritual, and woodland themes. He received three BSFA awards and won the World Fantasy Award in the category of Best Novel of 1985, Robert Holdstock, the oldest of five children, was born in Hythe, Kent. His father, Robert Frank Holdstock, was an officer and his mother. At the age of seven Robert started attending Gillingham Grammar School in the Medway Towns, as a young adult he had jobs including banana boatman, construction worker and slate miner. He also earned a Bachelor of Science from University College of North Wales, Bangor and he continued his education, earning a Master of Science in Medical Zoology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 1971. He conducted research at the Medical Research Council in London from 1971 to 1974 and he became a full-time writer during 1976 and lived out the rest of his life in North London. He died in hospital at the age of 61, following his collapse with an E. coli infection on 18 November 2009, Robert Holdstocks first published story, Paupers Plot, appeared in the magazine New Worlds in 1968. His first novel was a fiction work, Eye Among the Blind. During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s Holdstock wrote many fantasy and science fiction novels along with a number of short stories, Robert Holdstocks pseudonyms included Robert Faulcon, Chris Carlsen, Richard Kirk, Robert Black, Ken Blake, and Steven Eisler. These included some adaptions of television scripts for TV-tie in novelisations, during this same period he wrote Space Wars, Worlds and Weapons, a series of essays about the various tropes of science fiction, interspersed with colour reproductions of space art. In 1980 Holdstock co-wrote Tour of the Universe with Malcolm Edwards, the rights were subsequently sold for a space shuttle simulation ride at the CN Tower, also called the Tour of the Universe. Holdstock wrote a novella, The Dark Wheel, which was included with the computer game Elite in 1984. Holdstock also wrote The Emerald Forest, based on the film of the same title directed by John Boorman, Holdstocks breakthrough novel Mythago Wood was published in 1984. It began the Ryhope Wood series, which continued until the appearance of Avilion in 2009, between 2001 and 2007 Holdstock produced a trilogy of fantasy novels, the Merlin Codex, consisting of Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings. Holdstock wrote, edited or contributed to a number of works, including Alien Landscapes, Tour of the Universe, Horror,100 Best Novels. In 2013 a joint volume of poetry with Garry Kilworth was published by PS Publishing, Poems, Peoms, david Pringle described Eye Among the Blind, Holdstocks first science fiction novel, as a dogged, detailed, somewhat slow-moving planetary mystery. Le Guin called the same novel As strong a treatment of a theme of science fiction – alienness, and the relation of the human
