VINTAGE SCIENCE FICTION AUTHORS

Jack Williamson: The Frontier Dreamer Who Gave Science Fiction Its Soul When a young boy rode west in a covered wagon across the dusty plains of New Mexico, no one could have imagined that his restless imagination would one day help shape an entire literary genre. That boy was Jack […]

Edward Page Mitchell – The Forgotten Father of Modern Science Fiction Edward Page Mitchell (1852–1927) is one of the most astonishing “lost” figures in the history of speculative fiction—a writer who anticipated some of the genre’s most defining ideas decades before H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and other authors traditionally […]

Donald E. Westlake (1933–2008) was an American writer best known for his masterful crime fiction, particularly his witty comic capers and his darker, hard-boiled thrillers written under pseudonyms. Over a career that spanned more than half a century, he produced more than 100 novels and short stories, winning multiple Edgar […]

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) was an American author best known as the creator of Conan the Barbarian and as one of the founding figures of the sword-and-sorcery subgenre. A master of pulp storytelling, Howard also wrote extensively in historical adventure, horror, westerns, and boxing tales, producing an astonishingly diverse and […]

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) was an American science fiction author best known for his monumental novel Dune (1965) and its sequels, which revolutionized the genre and remain some of the most influential works in science fiction history. A journalist, photographer, ecological thinker, and political commentator as well as a novelist, Herbert […]

Lynn Venable (1927– ) is an American science fiction author best known for her short story “Time Enough at Last” (1953), which became a classic of mid-20th-century science fiction and was immortalized in popular culture through its adaptation on The Twilight Zone. Though her published output in the genre was […]

Jesse Franklin Bone (1916–2006) was an American science fiction writer whose career as a physician shaped much of his fiction. Best remembered for a handful of sharp, idea-driven short stories published in the 1940s–1960s, Bone combined medical knowledge with speculative imagination, producing tales that blended science, satire, and social commentary. […]

Evelyn E. Smith (1922–2000) was an American author best known for her witty and satirical science fiction stories of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as her later work as a novelist of romance and mystery. Though she never achieved the fame of contemporaries such as Isaac Asimov or Robert […]

Ray Cummings (1887–1957) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer often hailed as one of the founding fathers of pulp-era science fiction. Though not as widely remembered today as Edgar Rice Burroughs or H. G. Wells, Cummings was a key figure in shaping the adventure-driven style of early American […]