Science Fiction Of The 20th Century

Vividly illustrated with images of film posters, magazines, and books-many shown here for the first time—Science Fiction of the 20th Century (Hugo Award® winner, 2000) offers an insider's view of the prophetic writers, illustrators, and editors who made science fiction the most popular form of entertainment in the twentieth century.

Dime novels, pulp magazines, books, films, television-science fiction has chronicled both our hope for the future and our fear of it. Bestselling author Frank M. Robinson tells the story-behind-the-story, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, published in the 1800s, through the fantastic visions of Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and a host of others who made science fiction not only their profession but their life. The atomic bomb, the space programs, cloning, and the Internet come to life on paper and celluloid as talented writers, artists, and filmmakers share their sense of wonder and their adventures of the mind.

A journeyman author and editor, Frank M. Robinson has worked for magazines such as Playboy, Family Weekly, Science Digest, Astounding Science Fiction, Cavalier, and Galaxy. In recent years, he has written The Dark Beyond the Stars; Pulp Culture: The Art of Science Fiction Magazines (with Lawrence Davidson - awarded Pop Culture Book of the Year in 1999 by the Independent Publishers Association); Waiting ; The Great Divide (with John F. Levin); and The Donor. Robinson has also written a number of thriller novels that have been turned into movies. These include The Power, 1968; The Glass Inferno, 1974 (filmed as The Towering Inferno); and The Fifth Missile (a.k.a. The Gold Crew), a 1986 NBC weekly movie. He currently lives in San Francisco, CA, and is busily working on his next project.