Harlan Ellison has won the Edgar, Hugo, and Nebula awards for his speculative fiction. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Harlan Ellison has won the Edgar, Hugo, and Nebula awards for his speculative fiction. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Harlan Ellison has won the Edgar, Hugo, and Nebula awards for his speculative fiction. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Kurt Vonnegut is a unique voice in the American canon -- a writer whose works are hard to categorize, often straddling the space between literature and science fiction, and filled with cutting satire and dark humor. Like Mark Twain before him, Vonnegut's reputation and impact on American writing and reading will continue to grow steadily and increase in relevance as new insights are made. Vonnegut was born in 1922 in Indianapolis, and studied at the University of Chicago and the University of Tennessee. In the Second World War, he became a German prisoner of war and was present during the bombing of Dresden. This experience provided inspiration for his most successful and influential novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut -- admired as much for his views and his "Vonnegutisms" as for his publications -- wrote extensively in many forms, including novels, short stories, essays, plays, articles, speeches, and correspondence, some of which was published posthumously. Piers Anthony has written dozens of bestselling science fiction and fantasy novels. Perhaps best known for his long-running Magic of Xanth series, many of which are New York Times bestsellers, he has also had great success with the Incarnations of Immortality series and the Cluster series, as well as Bio of a Space Tyrant and others. Anthony lives in Inverness, Florida. Ben Bova, six-time Hugo Award winner, received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005. James Tiptree Jr, the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon (1915 - 1987) is widely considered to be one of the most influential genre writers of the twentieth century, and a pioneer of feminist science-fiction. Born in Chicago, she worked in the United States Army Air Force as an intelligence officer, where she rose to the rank of Major. She began to write science-fiction under the Tiptree pseudonym in 1967. Her short stories and novellas have received numerous prizes, including multiple Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. She was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012. Kate Wilhelm (1928-2018) was the bestselling author of dozens of novels and short-story collections. Among her novels are the popular courtroom thrillers featuring attorney Barbara Holloway. Her other works include the science fiction classic Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. Internationally bestselling author Dean Koontz was only a senior in college when he won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition. He has never stopped writing since. Koontz is the author of seventy-nine New York Times bestsellers, fourteen of which rose to #1, including One Door Away from Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, Sole Survivor, The Husband, Odd Hours, Relentless, What the Night Knows, and 77 Shadow Street. He's been hailed by Rolling Stone as "America's most popular suspense novelist," and his books have been published in thirty-eight languages and have sold over five hundred million copies worldwide. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, he now lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirits of their goldens Trixie and Anna. For more information, visit his website at www.deankoontz.com. In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury, who died on June 5, 2011 at the age of 91, inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screen play for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors. Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, "Live forever!" Bradbury later said, "I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped." Gene Wolfe is one of the most admired and respected living writers of SF and fantasy. He is the author of The Fifth Head of Cerberus, the bestselling The Book of the New Sun tetralogy, as well as among many others including Soldier of the Mist, The Sorcerer's House, Home Fires, The Knight, The Wizard, Peace, and The Book of the Long Sun. He is also a prolific writer of distinguished short fiction, which is collected in many volumes over the last four decades, including The Best of Gene Wolfe. He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award, and multiple Nebula and Locus awards, among other honors. In 2007, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. In 2012, he was awarded the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award. He lives in Barrington, Illinois. Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (1929-2018) was a celebrated author whose body of work includes 23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children's books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebula Awards, seven Hugo Awards, and SFWA's Grand Master, along with the PEN/Malamud and many other award. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.