Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer, known for his speculative fiction works, which have been variously categorized science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk. He has also written under the pseudonym of Stephen Bury.

Stephenson explores areas such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired Magazine, and has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (funded by Jeff Bezos) developing a manned sub-orbital launch system.

The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. It is a bildungsroman focused on a young girl named Nell, and set in a world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. Some main motifs include: education, social class, ethnicity, and the nature of artificial intelligence. The Diamond Age was first published in 1995 by Bantam Books, as a Bantam Spectra hardcover edition. In 1996, it won both the Hugo and Locus Awards, and was shortlisted for the Nebula and other awards, placing it among the most-honored works of science fiction in recent history.

Alan Dean Foster (born November 18, 1946) is a prolific American author of fantasy and science fiction. He currently resides in Prescott, Arizona, with his wife, and is also known for his novelisations of film scripts. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science and a MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Foster has been so prolific that he is often rumored to have been the ghostwriter on novels with which he had little direct involvement, such as the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which was credited to (and actually written by) Gene Roddenberry. Foster wrote the treatment on which the film was based, perhaps accounting for the misattribution of the novel to him. He also authored 10 volumes of novelizations based upon Star Trek: The Animated Series, several of which involving taking the script for a half-hour episode and expanding it into a full-length novel. He later wrote the novelization of the 2009 film Star Trek, his first Star Trek novel in over 30 years.

It has long been known that Foster co-wrote the original novelization of Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) which had been credited solely to George Lucas. When asked if it was difficult for him to see Lucas get all the credit for Star Wars, Foster said "Not at all. It was George's story. I was merely expanding upon it. Not having my name on the cover didn't bother me in the least. It would be akin to a contractor demanding to have his name on a Frank Lloyd Wright house."

The Mocking Program is a 2002 novel. It is a hard-boiled police procedural set in a highly imaginative megalopolis called the Montezuma Strip, which stretches along the old U.S.-Mexican border. When police inspector Angel Cardenas investigates the case of a male corpse found with most of its internal organs missing, the victim turns out to have had two identities - one as a local executive, the other as a Texas businessman. The plot thickens when the victim's booby-trapped house nearly kills Cardenas and his partner. The author makes use of a vast array of futuristic elements; notably, sapient apes led by gorillas and intelligent rogue computers that commit computer crimes.

While his work was published regularly starting in the mid 1920s, Faulkner was relatively unknown before receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Since then, he has often been cited as one of the most important writers in the history of American literature.

Light in August is an exploration of racial conflict in the society of the Southern United States. Originally Faulkner planned to call the novel Dark House, which also became the working title for Absalom, Absalom! Supposedly, one summer evening while sitting on a porch, his wife remarked on the strange quality that light in the south has during the month of August. Faulkner rushed out of his chair to his manuscript, scratched out the original title, and pencilled in Light in August.

Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough was born March 23, 1947, and lives in the Puget Sound area of Washington. Elizabeth won a Nebula Award in 1989 for her novel The Healer's War, and has written more than a dozen other novels. She has collaborated with Anne McCaffrey, best-known for creating the Dragonriders of Pern, to produce the Petaybee Series and the Acorna Series.

No one could have told Lt. Kitty McCulley that this was what it meant to be a war nurse. That she was going to Vietnam not to heal, but to ready her patients for the real pain. Not to alleviate suffering, but to become an object of contempt and misdirected lust. Not to try to save all victims, but to choose sides against people she thought she was there to help. No one could have told her. And it wouldn't have made any difference anyway.

When one of her patients, a revered Vietnamese holy man, gives Kitty an unusual amulet, her world is changed forever. The amulet gives her the power to navigate through the treacherous human maze of friends and foes--and to touch people in a way that gives meaning to life in the midst of a meaningless war. It is a power she will need to save not only her sanity, but her life. For when Kitty is stranded in the enemy-held jungle with a child and a lone American soldier, she becomes witness to war at its most horrifying ... and its most human.

In the mid-1970s, Pohl acquired and edited novels for Bantam Books, published as "Frederik Pohl Selections"; the most notable were Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren and Joanna Russ's The Female Man. Also in the 1970s, Pohl reemerged as a novel writer in his own right, with books such as Man Plus and the Heechee series. He won back-to-back Nebula awards with Man Plus in 1976 and Gateway, the first Heechee novel, in 1977. Gateway also won the 1978 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Two of his stories have also earned him Hugo awards: "The Meeting" (with Kornbluth) tied in 1973 and "Fermi and Frost" won in 1986. Another notable late novel is Jem (1980), winner of the National Book Award. Pohl continues to write and had a new story, "Generations", published in September 2005. A novel begun by Arthur C. Clarke called "The Last Theorem" was finished by Pohl and published on August 5, 2008.


Gateway is a 1977 science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl. Gateway won the 1978 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1978 Locus Award for Best Novel, the 1977 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1978 John W. Campbell Award. It is the opening novel in the Heechee saga. Several sequels followed, and the novel was adapted into a computer game in 1992.

Gateway is a hollow asteroid, constructed by the Heechee, a long vanished alien race, as a spaceport. It was first discovered by an explorer on Venus, who found a small ship, fiddled with the controls and accidentally triggered its return (with him inside) to its home port, Gateway. Once there, he was unable to figure out how to get back, but before he committed suicide (he would have run out of supplies long before he could be rescued), he was able to signal Gateway's location to other humans.

Alan Dean Foster (born November 18, 1946) is a prolific American author of fantasy and science fiction. He currently resides in Prescott, Arizona, with his wife, and is also known for his novelisations of film scripts. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science and a MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Foster has been so prolific that he is often rumored to have been the ghostwriter on novels with which he had little direct involvement, such as the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which was credited to (and actually written by) Gene Roddenberry. Foster wrote the treatment on which the film was based, perhaps accounting for the misattribution of the novel to him. He also authored 10 volumes of novelizations based upon Star Trek: The Animated Series, several of which involving taking the script for a half-hour episode and expanding it into a full-length novel. He later wrote the novelization of the 2009 film Star Trek, his first Star Trek novel in over 30 years.

It has long been known that Foster co-wrote the original novelization of Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) which had been credited solely to George Lucas. When asked if it was difficult for him to see Lucas get all the credit for Star Wars, Foster said "Not at all. It was George's story. I was merely expanding upon it. Not having my name on the cover didn't bother me in the least. It would be akin to a contractor demanding to have his name on a Frank Lloyd Wright house."

Dirge (2000) is a science fiction novel written by Alan Dean Foster. The full title is sometimes shown as Dirge: Book Two of The Founding of the Commonwealth.

It has been twenty years since the chance meeting of street thug Cheelo Montoya and Thranx poet Desvendapur revealed the insectoid alien colony hidden deep within the Amazon Basin, and not much has changed.

William Olaf Stapledon (May 10, 1886 – September 6, 1950) was a British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction.

Stapledon's writings directly influenced Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Stanislaw Lem, C. S. Lewis and John Maynard Smith and indirectly influenced many others, contributing many ideas to the world of science fiction. The "supermind" composed of many individual consciousnesses forms a recurring theme in his work. Star Maker contains the first known description of what are now called Dyson spheres. Freeman Dyson credits the novel with giving him the idea. Last and First Men features early descriptions of genetic engineering and terraforming. Sirius describes a dog whose intelligence is increased to the level of a human being's.

Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest is a 1935 science fiction novel by the British author Olaf Stapledon. The novel explores the theme of the Übermensch (superman) in the character of John Wainwright, whose supernormal human mentality inevitably leads to conflict with normal human society and to the destruction of the utopian colony founded by John and other superhumans.

The novel resonates with the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and the work of English writer J. D. Beresford, with an allusion to Beresford's superhuman child character of Victor Stott in The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911). As the devoted narrator remarks, John does not feel obligated to observe the restricted morality of Homo sapiens. Stapledon's recurrent vision of cosmic angst -- that the universe may be indifferent to intelligence, no matter how spiritually refined -- also gives the story added depth. Later explorations of the theme of the superhuman and of the incompatibility of the normal with the supernormal occurs in the works of Stanislaw Lem, Frank Herbert, Wilmar Shiras and Vernor Vinge, among others.

Eight of seventeen stories in Counting Up, Counting Down date to before Departure's publication date, which also demonstrates that even as Turtledove has become known for his lengthy series, he has not completely left the field of short fiction behind.

Many of the stories in this collection will be unfamiliar to both casual reader and Turtledove fan, for fourteen of the stories, including the most of the older ones, have never before been republished.  At the same time, two of the stories, "Forty, Counting Down" and "Must and Shall" have been nominated for the Hugo, with "Must and Shall" also having a nomination for the Nebula and and honorable mention for the Sidewise Award.

Counting Up, Counting Down shows Turtledove's versatility, with stories which are science fiction, fantasy and alternate history.  Bookended by the two titular, and connected, stories, the fifteen tales Turtledove has chosen to include range from mythological Greece to the distant space colony of New Zion.  Two of the stories are set in Turtledove's well established world of Videssos, dealing with events in peripheral lands.  While Turtledove is most widely known for his alternate histories, Counting Up, Counting Down proves that he is quite capable of writing straight fantasy ("After the Last Elf Is Dead"), straight science fiction ("Vermin") and humor ("Honeymouth" et al.)

Carolyn Janice Cherry (born September 1, 1942), better known by the pen name C. J. Cherryh, is a United States science fiction and fantasy author. She has written more than 60 books since the mid-1970s, including the Hugo Award winning novels Downbelow Station (1981) and Cyteen (1988), both set in her Alliance-Union universe.

The author has an asteroid, 77185 Cherryh, named after her. Referring to this honor, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory writes of Cherryh: "She has challenged us to be worthy of the stars by imagining how mankind might grow to live among them."

Downbelow Station is a science fiction novel written by C. J. Cherryh and published in 1981 by DAW Books. It won the Hugo Award in 1982, was shortlisted for a Locus Award that same year, and was named by Locus Magazine as one of the top 50 science fiction novels of all time in 1987.

The book is set in Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe during the Company Wars period, specifically late 2352 and early 2353. The book details events centering on a space station in orbit around Pell's World (also known as "Downbelow") in the Tau Ceti star system. The station serves as the transit point for ships moving between the Earth and Union sectors of the galaxy.

The working title of the book was The Company War, but Cherryh's editor at DAW, Donald A. Wollheim, believed that the moniker lacked commercial appeal, so Downbelow Station was selected as the title for publication.

Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer and designer.

In 1902 she built The Mount, her estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, which survives today as the supreme example of her design principles. The house and its gardens have been extensively restored and are open to the public from May through October although, as of the end of March 2008, the house museum is threatened with foreclosure.[4] There, Edith Wharton wrote several of her novels, including The House of Mirth (1905), the first of many chronicles of the true nature of old New York, and entertained the cream of American literary society, including her close friend, the novelist Henry James.

The Age of Innocence (1920) is a novel by Edith Wharton, which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. The story is set in upper class New York City in the 1870s.

The Age of Innocence centers on an upperclass couple's impending marriage, and the introduction of a scandalous woman whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870s' New York society, it never devolves into an outright condemnation of the institution. In fact, Wharton considered this novel an "apology" for her earlier, more brutal and critical novel, The House of Mirth. Not to be overlooked is Wharton's attention to detailing the charms and customs of the upper caste. The novel is lauded for its accurate portrayal of how the 19-century East Coast American upper class lived, and this, combined with the social tragedy, earned Wharton a Pulitzer Prize — the first Pulitzer awarded to a woman. Edith Wharton was 58 years old at publication; she lived in that world, and saw it change dramatically by the end of World War I. The title is an ironic comment on the polished outward manners of New York society, when compared to its inward machinations.