Arthur C. Clarke

Herbert George "H.G." Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games. Together with... Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback, Wells has been referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction". Wells's earliest specialized training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context. He was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often sympathizing with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of "Journalist." Many of his novels, particularly those of his middle period , had nothing to do with science fiction. They described lower-middle class life , and this work sometimes led Wells to be touted as a worthy successor to Charles Dickens.
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Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days . Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before air... travel and practical submarines were invented, and before practical means of space travel had been devised. He is the second most translated author in the world . Some of his books have also been made into live-action and animated films and television shows. Verne is often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction", a title sometimes shared with Hugo Gernsback and H. G. Wells. Jules Verne was born in Nantes, in France, to Pierre Verne, an attorney, and his wife, Sophie Allote de la Fuÿe. Jules spent his early years at home with his parents in the bustling harbor city of Nantes. The family spent summers in a country house just outside the city, in Brains on the banks of the Loire River. Here Jules and his brother Paul would often rent a boat for one franc a day.
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Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany was an Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work, mostly in fantasy, published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well... as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, was chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland, and travelled and hunted extensively. He died in Dublin after an attack of appendicitis. Edward Plunkett was the first son of John William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany and his wife, Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Ernle-Erle-Drax, née Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Burton . From an historically wealthy and famous family, Dunsany was related to many other well-known Irish figures. He was a kinsman of the Catholic Saint Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Archbishop of Armagh.
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Stanley Grauman Weinbaum was an American science fiction author. His career in science fiction was short but influential. His first story, "A Martian Odyssey", was published to great acclaim in July 1934, but he would be dead from lung cancer within eighteen months. Weinbaum was born in... Louisville, Kentucky and attended school in Milwaukee. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Madison, first as a chemical engineering major but later switching to English as his major, but contrary to common belief he did not graduate. On a bet, Weinbaum took an exam for a friend, and was later discovered; he left the university in 1923. He is best known for the groundbreaking science fiction short story, "A Martian Odyssey", which presented a sympathetic but decidedly non-human alien, Tweel. Even more remarkably, this was his first science fiction story . Isaac Asimov has described "A Martian Odyssey" as "a perfect Campbellian science fiction story, before John W. Campbell.
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