Futurians

The Futurians

With fifty illustrations, many never before published.The Futurian Society was founded in 1938 by thirteen science fiction fans; it never numbered more than twenty, including wives, girl friends and hangers-on; yet out of this small group came seven of the most famous names in science fiction: Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, Judith Merril, Frederik Pohl and Donald A. Wollheim.Brilliant, eccentric and poor, the Futurians invented their own subculture, with its communal dwellings, its folklore, songs and games, even its own mock religion. In later years many of them became influential novelists, editors, anthologists, literary agents and publishers.A Futurian himself, Knight interviewed ten of the surviving Futurians and traced down the widow of one member whose tragic fate was previously unknown. Drawing on correspondence, unpublished manuscripts, and amateur publications (including a collection of Futurian wall newspapers which had wound up in Australia), he has written a fascinating narrative of the early days of the Futurians, the feuds and lawsuits that divided them, and their later careers."The demon imp of science fiction gossip is back stoking his furnace... Oh, Damon, you have done it again."--Harlan Ellison"The Futurians is an absorbing read... I don't think the world is ever ready for its Futurians: rebellious, romantic, and largely reprehensible. Gifted. Real."--Virginia Kidd"The book has the charm and candor of Boswell's Journals, at times rising to a crescendo of pure communication."--Keith Laumer"I sneaked a look at the beginning of The Futurians, was immediately hooked, and did not stop until I had finished the book."--L. Sprague de Camp"It will be a must for anybody interested in the history and the nature of science fiction."--Jack Williamson

Science Fiction

In this new and timely cultural history of science fiction, Roger Luckhurst examines the genre from its origins in the late nineteenth century to its latest manifestations. The book introduces and explicates major works of science fiction literature by placing them in a series of contexts, using the history of science and technology, political and economic history, and cultural theory to develop the means for understanding the unique qualities of the genre. Luckhurst reads science fiction as a literature of modernity. His astute analysis examines how the genre provides a constantly modulating record of how human embodiment is transformed by scientific and technological change and how the very sense of self is imaginatively recomposed in popular fictions that range from utopian possibility to Gothic terror. This highly readable study charts the overlapping yet distinct histories of British and American science fiction, with commentary on the central authors, magazines, movements and texts from 1880 to the present day. It will be an invaluable guide and resource for all students taking courses on science fiction, technoculture and popular literature, but will equally be fascinating for anyone who has ever enjoyed a science fiction book.

The Futurians. The Story of the Science Fiction Family of the 30's that Produced Today's Top SF Writers and Ed