Suggested Authors

Brian Aldiss is the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of such novels as Non-Stop, Hothouse, Frankenstein Unbound, and the Helliconia trilogy. During the 1960s he was identified with SF's New Wave because of his association with the magazine "New Worlds." He has also written several critical books about science fiction, including Trillion Year Spree, and a number of mainstream novels as well.

J. G. Ballard, the writer who more than anyone else has come to epitomize SF's "New Wave," is the author of High-Rise, Crash, Concrete Island, and many other novels. Empire of the Sun, based on Ballard's childhood experiences during the Second World War, was nominated for Britain's premier fiction award, The Booker Prize, and later filmed by Stephen Spielberg. Born in Shanghai, China, Ballard now lives in Shepperton, England. Scriptorium also has a good Ballard page.

Clive Barker sprang onto the horror scene with his six volumes of short stories entitled Clive Barker's Books of Blood. Since then he has shown that he is equally capable of writing novels and screenplays, as well as directing and producing movies. His artwork has been included in some of his books and has been collected in Clive Barker, Illustrator. His plays have been published in two volumes, and his novels include Cabal, Weaveworld, Imajica, Sacrament, Galilee, and Coldheart Canyon. Here's another Clive Barker site, but the best and most up-to-date barker site is Revelations.

Greg Bear's first novel, Hegira, was published in 1979, and he has gone on from there to win both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Although he is best-known as a hard science fiction writer, he has also written charming and odd stories such as "Petra," about the gargoyles of Notre Dame coming to life, and "Dead Run," about truckers in hell. Bear's novels include Blood Music, Queen of Angels, Moving Mars, Slant, Dinosaur Summer, Darwin's Radio, and Vitals. His short fiction has been collected in The Wind from a Burning Woman and Tangents. He lives in Seattle.

Michael Bishop's novels include Ancient of Days; Philip K. Dick Is Dead, Alas; Count Geiger's Blues; and Brittle Innings. His short fiction has been collected in One Winter in Eden, Blooded on Arachne, Close Encounters with the Deity, Emphatically Not SF, and At the City Limits of Fate.

Terry Bisson is the author of critically-acclaimed novels such as Fire on the Mountain, Wyrldmaker, Talking Man, Voyage to the Red Planet, Pirates of the Universe, and The Pickup Artist but he's best known for his short fiction. His 1991 short story "Bears Discover Fire" won the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Possibly his most famous short story is "They're Made Out of Meat." His work has appeared in "Omni," "Playboy," "Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine," and "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction." Bisson lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

James Blaylock is the author of the World Fantasy Award-winning stories "Paper Dragons" and "Thirteen Phantasms," as well as "Unidentified Objects," which was chosen for the O. Henry Award Prize Stories of 1990. Blaylock has also written many novels, including The Digging Leviathan, The Magic Spectacles, the Philip K. Dick Award-winning Homunculus, The Last Coin, Night Relics, The Paper Grail, and All the Bells on Earth. He lives in Orange, California, and teaches creative writing at Chapman University.

Poppy Z. Brite has lived all over the American South and has worked as a gourmet candy maker, an artist's model, a cook, and an exotic dancer. Her work began to appear in the horror small press while she was still in her teens, and she has rapidly become an important writer of horror fiction with stories in Borderlands, Women of Darkness, and Dead End: City Limits. Her first two novels, Lost Souls and Drawing Blood, were published to great acclaim, and her third, Exquisite Corpse, elicited significant controversy when it was published in 1995. She is also the editor of the anthologies Love in Vein and Love in Vein 2 and author of a biography of Courtney Love. Among her most recent books are the non-genre novel Liquor, Triads (with Christa Faust), novel The Value of X and short story collection The Devil You Know.

William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), scion of the Burroughs business machine fortune, was born in St. Louis and after traveling and living all over the world settled in Lawrence, Kansas, where he lived until his death. Burroughs was as important to late twentieth-century literature as much for his iconic significance as for his writing. He was influential with the Beat writers of the '50s and wote Junky and Queer about his experiences as a heroin addict and his homosexuality during that time, but he didn't come into his own as a writer until the publication of his scatological satire Naked Lunch (filmed by David Cronenberg in 1991). In the sixties he experimented with the "cut-up" technique of writing but later in his career went back to more conventional (and accessible) structures for his work. Much of his writing contains elements of science fiction, and he's had an immeasurable influence on many writers in the genre.

Pat Cadigan is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels Mindplayers, Synners, and Fools, the latter two of which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel in the United Kingdom. Her fourth, Tea from an Empty Cup, about a future Japan, is based on two novellas published on OMNI Online, and her fifth is Dervish is Digital. She has written numerous short stories, and her collection Patterns has been hailed as one of the landmark collections of the 1980s. Cadigan was born in Schenectady, New York, and now lives in London.

Jonathan Carroll is the author of weird, sometimes horrific novels, including Land of Laughs, A Child Across the Sky, Sleeping in Flame, Outside the Dog Museum, After Silence, From the Teeth of Angels, Kissing the Beehive, The Marriage of Sticks, The Wooden Sea, and the forthcoming White Apples. His distinctive and instantly recognizable blend of fantasy, magic realism, and horror, grounded in realistically and sympathetically depicted characters and situations, has earned him the admiration of readers and critics. His short fiction has been collected in the award-winning book The Panic Hand. He lives in Vienna, Austria.

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) was the creator of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. This site has links to sites with texts, including the complete Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Susan Casper, author of a number of short stories, including the inspiring "Under Her Skin" (published on the site) has a wonderfully cheery website. As the Maple Leaf Rag plays, the visitor can meet Susan, her husband, Gardner Dozois, their son and their grandchildren and their cats. Susan writes up her and Gardner's road trips and posts photographs from the sf and fantasy conventions they attend.

Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933), a writer of horror fiction in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was an influence on Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, and James Blish (among others). Probably his most famous work is The King in Yellow.

Avram Davidson (1923-1993) was a native of Yonkers, New York, who published his first piece of science fiction in 1954. His work includes novels such as Rogue Dragon and Clash of Star-Kings as well as the Hugo Award-winning story "Or All the Seas with Oysters." He edited The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from 1962 to 1964, winning a Hugo Award for best magazine in 1963, and produced several of The Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction anthologies. His other works include Masters of the Maze, And on the Eighth Day, and And Don't Forget the One Red Rose. A novella, "The Boss in the Wall," a collaboration with his ex-wife Grania Davis, was posthumously published by Tachyon Press. Some of his short fiction has been collected in the past few years in The Avram Davidson Treasury : A Tribute Collection Edited by Robert Silverberg & Grania Davis, Everybody Has Somebody in Heaven : Essential Jewish Tales of the Spirit Edited by Jack Dann & Grania Davidson Davis, The Other Nineteenth Century : A Story Collection by Avram Davidson Edited by Grania Davis and Henry Wessells.

Samuel Delany is one of the earliest sf writers to explore sexuality in his fiction. The results are such classic works as the novel Dhalgren and the short story "Aye, and Gomorrah." His later works, many taking place in the fictional world of Nevèrÿon, are thought to be written in reaction to the appearance of the AIDS epidemic, and still have plenty of sex in them. His writing has been influenced by his interest in semiotics and critical theory, and is often less accessible than his earlier novels Triton, Nova, and The Einstein Intersection, but no less important for that.

Charles de Lint is a Celtic folk muscian, folklore scholar, and visual artist, as well as a being a full-time writer for the last fifteen years. He writes what he calls "mythic fiction," what he considers "mainstream writing that incorporates elements of myth and folktale, rather than secondary-world fantasy." De Lint is best known for his urban fantasies, many of which take place in the imaginary city of Newford. His novels include Moonheart, Spiritwalk, Memory & Dream, Trader, Someplace to Be Flying, Forests of the Heart, The Road to Lisdoonvarna, and The Onion Girl. His short stories have been collected in Moonlight and Vines and Triskell Tales.

Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) wrote more than 40 novels and a large number of short stories during his strange career. His novel The Man in the High Castle--now considered a classic of alternate history--won a Hugo Award in 1963, and another novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, was made into the film Blade Runner. Tragically, Dick died shortly before the film's release. Since then Dick's writing has received increasing attention both within and outside the SF field; much of his work has been reprinted by Vintage Books. Here's another one.

Terry Dowling is one of the Australia's major writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. I personally prefer his horror stories, many of which I've published and some of which I've reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror

Harlan Ellison is one of the most lauded fantasists in the United States. He has written or edited 62 books of fiction and essays, more than thirteen hundred stories, and is the editor of the landmark Dangerous Visions anthologies. Ellison has won several Hugo and Nebula Awards, as well as the P.E.N. Award for journalism, the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award, and numerous others. His fiction has also appeared in The Best American Short Stories. Ellison resides in Los Angeles, California.

Steve Erickson is an American fantasist who has been writing cross-genre material since his first novel, the weird and wonderful Days Between Stations. Since then he has published several more novels as well as Leap Year: A Political Journey and American Nomad, his quirky coverage of the 1996 Presidential campaign.

Kelley Eskridge is the author of a number of excellent stories (a couple of which I've published in my anthologies), one of which, "Alien Jane," was made into a pretty good episode of Welcome to Paradox for the Sci-Fi Channel in 1998. Her first novel, Solitaire came out in the fall of 2002 and was named a "New York Times" Notable Book, a Borders Books Original Voices Selection and a Borders Books Best of 2002 Selection, as well as being a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and the Endeavour Award .

Gregory Frost is the author of five novels. His first three--Lyrec, Tain, and Remscela--are fantasies; the fourth, A Pure Cold Light, is a work of science fiction set in a dystopic alternate Philadelphia. His most recent Fitcher's Brides is a tale of Bluebeard recast as a dark fable. His short stories have appeared in most of the major genre magazines and in various anthologies including Intersections; Snow White, Blood Red; and Black Swan, White Raven. A collection of short fiction is slated from Golden Gryphon. He lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

Neil Gaiman is a transplanted Briton who now lives in the American Midwest with his wife and children. He is most famous for his work in comics and graphic novels, including collaborations with artist Dave Mckean on Violent Cases, Black Orchid, Mr. Punch, and the award-winning Sandman series (one installment of which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story in 1991). He is coauthor (with Terry Pratchett) of the novel Good Omens and has written a number of novels on his own, including Stardust, Neverwhere, and American Gods. American Gods won the Hugo, Nebula, and Stoker awards. His novella Coraline, another multiple award winner, is for children of all ages. His short fiction has been collected in Smoke and Mirrors.

William Gibson is the man credited with coining the term "cyberspace," and was one of the principal figures of the 1980s cyberpunk movement in science fiction. A writer of both short stories and novels, his works include Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light, and Idoru, and (with Bruce Sterling) The Difference Engine. His short stories have been collected in Burning Chrome. His short story "Johnny Mnemonic," published by Omni in 1981, was filmed in 1995. Gibson lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Another Gibson site (other than the official one in the link above) can be found here.

Lisa Goldstein won the short-lived American Book Award for her first novel The Red Magician. Since then she has published several other novels including Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon, Summer King, Winter Fool, Walking the Labyrint, Dark Cities Underground, and The Alchemist's Door. Her short stories are collected in Travelers in Magic.

Kathleen Ann Goonan lives in Florida and admits to being surrounded by jazz as she was growing up, and this legacy permeates her fiction. She is the author of more than twenty short stories and novellas and five science fiction novels: Queen City Jazz, The Bones of Time, Mississippi Blues, Crescent City Rhapsody, and Light Music.

Edward Gorey (1925-2000) was a creator of macabre art and writing, including such classics as The Gashleycrumb Tinies, The Sinking Spell, and The Doubtful Guest. I've been a Gorey collector since I first found one of his books while I was working in the college library in the early 1970s. If you don't know his work, take a look now! And another site.

Steven Gould has written SF and fantasy stories and novels and in 1997 published a collaborative novel, Greenwar, about eco-terrorism with his wife Laura Mixon. Gould is also the author of Jumper, Wildside, Helm, and Blind Waves.

Nicola Griffith's first novel, Ammonite, won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and a Lambda Literary Award; her second, Slow River, won the Nebula Award. Her third, The Blue Place, is a suspense novel, as his her fourth, Stay. She and Stephen Pagel won a Lambda Literary Award and the World Fantasy Award for their anthology Bending the Landscape: Fantasy. Originally from Yorkshire, England, Griffith now lives in Seattle.

Eileen Gunn is the author of a handful of odd SF/fantasy short stories including "Stable Strategies for Middle Management," about BIG BUGS, "Lichen and Rock," "Computer Friendly," and "Fellow Americans." She now has a very odd, interesting home page that is worth more than a look. And she is the editor of The Infinite Matrix.

Joe Haldeman sold his first story to Galaxy in 1969, and by 1976 had won both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award for The Forever War, one of the landmark SF novels of the '70s. He won another Hugo Award in 1977 for his story "Tricentennial," won the Rhysling Award in 1983 for the best science fiction poem of the year, and won both the Nebula and the Hugo Awards again in 1991 for the novella version of The Hemingway Hoax. His 1997 novel Forever Peace won the John W. Campbell Award and the Hugo Award. His most recent novels have been Forever Free and The Coming. Haldeman lives part of the year in Boston, where he teaches writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the rest of the year in Florida.

Elizabeth Hand is an elegant writer who writes lush, evocative novelettes and novellas that are among the best contemporary writers of the fantastic.

Thomas Harris is an acclaimed writer of suspense who made his reputation with only three novels, two of them being Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs. He took the serial killer novel (introduced by Robert Bloch in Psycho) and transformed it into a fin de siecle cultural phenomenon. His work is visual, visceral, and literate. His long awaited sequel to the Silence of the Lambs was Hannibal.

Glen Hirshberg is terrific writer of ghost stories, having debuted in the anthology Shadows and Silence with "Mr. Dark's Carnival." Since then, his work has been published on SCIFICTION, and in The Dark, Dark Terrors 6, and Trampoline. It is collected in The Two Sams, and has been nominated for several awards.

Harvey Jacobs is the author of one of my favorite weird novels, The Juror, as well as several other novels, including Beautiful Soup (1994) and American Goliath (1997). Jacobs has also published numerous short stories, including some in Omni and several in Terri Windling's and my fairy tale anthologies.

K. W. Jeter is the author of many novels, including his early precursor to the cyberpunk movement, Dr. Adder (1984). Other novels include In the Land of the Dead, Farewell Horizontal, Wolf Flow, Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human, Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night, and Noir. His rare, horrific short stories have been published in Omni and in the anthologies Alien Sex, A Whisper of Blood, and Little Deaths (UK).

Gwyneth Jones is a writer and critic of science fiction and fantasy. She has been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke multiple times, most recently for her novel North Wind. Her novel White Queen was co-winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award (given for science fiction exploring gender roles) in 1991, and her collection of fairy tales, Seven Tales and a Fable, won the World Fantasy Award in 1996. She writes young adult fiction under the name Ann Halam. Her most recent adult novel is Bold as Love. (There's an interesting "backstage" look at the novel here.

James Patrick Kelly is the author of three and a half novels (one in collaboration with John Kessel), including Look Into the Sun and Wildlife, but is better known for his short stories, which have been collected in Think Like a Dinosaur (the title story of which won the Hugo Award). He was born in Mineola, New York, and now lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Christopher Kenworthy is one of the new generation of talented cross-genre writers emerging from the U.K. in the mid-nineties. Before becoming a full-time writer and artist he founded Barrington Press, editing and publishing three anthologies and fellow Briton's Nicholas Royle's first novel. Kenworthy's attractive site contains artwork by himself and his brother and links to some of his stories. He is the author of the novels The Winter Inside and The Quality of Light.

John Kessel is best known for his short fiction, which has been collected in Meeting in Infinity and The Pure Product. He won a Nebula Award in 1983 for his novella "Another Orphan," and his story "Buffalo" won the 1991 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. His first novel was Freedom Beach, written in collaboration with best friend James Patrick Kelly. His first solo novel was Good News from Outer Space, and his second solo novel, Corrupting Dr. Nice, was published in 1997. Kessel was born in Buffalo, New York, and is currently an Associate Professor of English at North Carolina State University.

Stephen King: this is the "official" website of the most popular writer of our generation who is best known for his bestselling novels of supernatural and psychological suspense, including Carrie, The Stand, Pet Sematary, It, Gerald's Game, Rose Madder, and Insomnia. His serial novel The Green Mile was published in six monthly paperback installments beginning March 1996. King's short stories have been published in venues as diverse as Omni, The New Yorker, Cemetery Dance, Shock Rock, Redbook, The Magazine of Fantasy &Science Fiction, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. He has published four collections of short stories: Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, and Everything's Eventual, as well as two collections of novellas: Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight. King lives in Maine and Florida with his wife, the novelist Tabitha King.

Nancy Kress is the author of fantasy novels, SF novels, a thriller, two collections of short stories, and a book on writing fiction, Beginnings, Middles, and Ends. She is perhaps best known for the "Sleepless" trilogy that began with Beggars in Spain. Kress's short fiction has appeared in all the usual places, including Omni, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and Analog. She has won two Nebula Awards, in 1985 for "Out of All Them Bright Stars" and in 1991 for the novella version of "Beggars in Spain," which also won a Hugo Award.

Roberta Lannes is a writer and artist who has been publishing short horror stories since her debut in Dennis Etchison's 1986 anthology Cutting Edge. She has also been published in several anthologies edited by Stephen Jones and several of my anthologies. Her first collection, The Mirror of Night, was published by Silver Salamander Press.

Joe Lansdale is a multi-talented writer of westerns, horror, and the occasional fantasy. He's a wonderful storyteller, and since 1980 has published novels such as Act of Love, The Drive-In, Magic Wagon, Cold in July, Mucho Moja, Rumble Tumble, Freezer Burn, and the short novel The Boar, and others. His short stories are collected in By Bizarre Hands, Bestseller Guaranteed, Electric Gumbo, The Good, the Bad &the Indifferent, and Writer of the Purple Rage. He's also published graphic novels, nonfiction, and edited several anthologies.

Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) was the author of such classic novels as Conjure Wife, The Big Time, and Gather, Darkness!, as well as numerous short stories, including the Hugo and Nebula award-winning "Gonna Roll the Bones." He is credited with coining the descriptive term "sword and sorcery," and created the memorable characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Thomas Ligotti is one of the more unique voices to emerge in the horror field during the 1980s. His work--exclusively short fiction--is dark and baroque and has won him a cult following among lovers of "weird" tales. This site contains news, a biography, bibliography, interviews, synopses of his stories, and resources. Probably the most comprehensive site is The Art of GrimScribe a German site. (Most of it has, thank goodness, English translations.)

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was one of the most influential horror authors of the 20th century. A lifelong resident of Providence, Rhode Island (except for two unhappy years in New York City), the atmosphere of his native New England and his philosophy of "cosmicism" permeate his work. Some of Lovecraft's better-known tales and novels include "The Call of Cthulhu," The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Colour Out of Space, "The Dunwich Horror," At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and "The Shadow Out of Time."

Graham Masterton is probably best known for his novel The Manitou but his short stories, to me, may represent some of his best work. A few of them have been chosen by me over the years for various YBFH volumes.

Bruce McAllister is the author of numerous excellent short stories and of the novels Humanity Prime and Dream Baby. McAllister seems to have cycles of great creativity then a period during which he virtually disappears from the field. He's just about due to burst forth with a new creative period. And in the meantime, read his brilliant Vietnam novel, Dream Baby.

Paul McAuley is one of the new generation of British science fiction. He lives in London, and now writes full time, after working as a researcher in biology in various universities, including Oxford and UCLA, and for six years was a lecturer in botany at St Andrews University. His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and Fairyland won the 1995 Arthur C. Clarke Award for best SF novel published in Britain as well as the 1996 John W. Campbell Award for best novel. He has also won awards for his short fiction. His most recent novels are The Secret of Life and Whole Wide World.

Robert R. McCammon, along with Peter Straub, is considered one of the most literary of horror writers. His novels They Thirst, Swan Song, and Stinger were extremely popular. In the early 90s, he moved to more mainstream subjects, publishing the widely respected novels Boy's Life (which won the 1991 Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Novel) and Gone South. He has been absent from the field for a few years and on his site there's an open letter that explains why. His most recent novel is Speaks the Nightbird.

Maureen McHugh, born in Ohio, spent some years living in Shijiazhuang in the People's Republic of China, an experience that has been one of the major shaping forces on her fiction to date. Upon returning to the United States, she made her first sale in 1989, and has since made a powerful impression on the SF world with a relatively small body of work, becoming a frequent contributor to the major SF magazines and to anthologies. In 1992, she published one of the year's most widely acclaimed and talked-about first novels, China Mountain Zhang, which won the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award. She has also published two other novels, Half the Day Is Night and, most recently, Mission Child.

Vonda N. McIntyre is the multi-award winning science fiction and fantasy author of the novels Dreamsnake, Superluminal, The Exile Waiting and The Moon and the Sun. Her short stories are collected in Fireflood and Other Stories. Her site provides information on her upcoming signings and readings, interviews, reviews, excerpts, and advice for writers.

Laura J. Mixon has collaborated on one sf novel Greenwar, about eco-terrorism, with her husband Steven Gould and written solo novels including Astro Pilots, Glass Houses, Proxies, and Burning the Ice.

Michael Moorcock was born in London, England in 1939. He became involved in science fiction at an early age, and by 1964 had become the guiding hand behind the British science fiction magazine New Worlds. Winner of the World Fantasy Award for Gloriana, and recipient of numerous British Fantasy Awards, Moorcock is probably best known for his Elric series, and his Eternal Champion series, but he is also the author of several far more "literary" novels such as The Brothel in Rosenstrasse and Mother London.

Kim Newman is a freelance writer, film critic, and broadcaster, as well as author of quirky horror novels. His nonfiction books include Nightmare Movies, the Bram Stoker Award-winning Horror: 100 Best Books (edited with Stephen Jones), and The BFI (British Film Institute) Companion to Horror. His novels include The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, Anno-Dracula, and The Bloody Red Baron. His short fiction has been collected in The Original Dr. Shade & Other Stories and Famous Monsters.

Joyce Carol Oates, in addition to being a respected novelist, short-story writer, playwright, poet, and essayist, teaches writing at Princeton University. She won the National Book Award for her novel Them and the 1994 Bram Stoker Award for Life Achievement in Horror Fiction. Her novels are almost too numerous to name, but among her recent ones are We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, The Barrens, and Middle Age: A Romance. Her short fiction ranges from fantasy and horror to literary fiction and has been published in many magazines and anthologies. They've been gathered in several collections, and four of those contain exclusively dark fiction: Night-Side, Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque, The Collector of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesque, and Faithless: Tales of Transgression.

Stewart O'Nan was until his fifth novel, A Prayer for the Dying, virtually unknown in the horror field. This amazing work, inspired by Michael Lesy's nonfiction photography book published in the sixties, Wisconsin Death Trip has been called a philosophical horror novel and it's bringing O'Nan's work to the horror as well as the mainstream audience. His earlier novels include A World Away, The Speed Queen, and Snow Angels. His novels also include Everyday People, Wish You Were Here, and the most recent, The Night Country. He also wrote the harrowing nonfiction title The Circus Fire, chronicling the 1944 disaster in Hartford, Connecticut and is co-writing a book on the Red Sox with fellow-baseball fan Stephen King.

Tim Powers is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author of several novels including The Drawing of the Dark, The Anubis Gates, Dinner at Deviant's Palace, On Stranger Tides, Last Call, Earthquake Weather, and Declare. Other good fan sites include Stranger Tides and The Anubis Gates.

Thomas Pynchon is the reclusive author of the novels The Crying of Lot 49, V, Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland, and Mason & Dixon. Reality is often pretty twisted in his work, and there are some wonderful set pieces--such as the memorable British candy scene in Gravity's Rainbow--that make Pynchon of more than passing interest to SF readers.

Kit Reed is an eclectic writer of science fiction novels and cross-genre short stories. She has also authored several suspense novels under the name Kit Craig. Her stories are collected in The Attack of the Giant Baby, Revenge of the Senior Citizens. Plus, Thief of Lives, and Weird Women, Wired Women.

Anne Rice is the author of "The Vampire Chronicles," the first of which (Interview with the Vampire) was made into a movie directed by Neil Jordan. Her other writing credits include "The Mayfair Witches" trilogy, Cry to Heaven, and The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned. She has also written Exit to Eden and Belinda under the name Anne Rampling, and a trilogy of erotica under the name A. N. Roquelaure.

Jay Russell began publishing splattery horror short stories under the name J. S. Russell but has gained a following through his three novels about a former child actor turned detective, Celestial Dogs, Burning Bright, and Greed & Stuff. Other novels by him are Blood and Brown Harvest. His short story "Lily's Whisper" was chosen for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Tenth Annual Collection.

David J. Schow, the father of "splatterpunk," a subgenre of horror fiction prominent in the late 80s is the author of many wonderful short stories, most collected in the books Seeing Red, Lost Angels, Black Leather Required, and Crypt Orchids. He's also the author of the novels the Kill Rift, The Shaft, and, most recently, Bullets of Rain. He also edited the anthology Silver Scream, is the author of numerous nonfiction pieces and is a screenwriter.

Lewis Shiner is the versatile author of five novels ranging from the solidly sf Frontera; Slam, about ex-cons and skating and the World Fantasy Award-winning novel about the sixties, Glimpses to his newest, Say Goodbye. He is also the author of short stories, nonfiction articles, and reviews. Many of his short story are collected in Love in Vain. His website showcases excerpts from each of his novels and links to some of his short stories.

John Shirley--rock musician, science fiction and horror writer, and screenwriter -- is considered by some to have been a major influence on William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Rudy Rucker. City Come A-Walkin', published in 1980, is probably the first cyberpunk novel, and Shirley helped launch William Gibson on his meteoric rise by persuading him to submit "Johnny Mnemonic" to OMNI Magazine. Most recently, Shirley has published the novels Crawlers and Demons and the collection Darkness Divided.

Robert Silverberg is the author of several hundred short stories, including the Nebula Award-winning "Good News from the Vatican," and over seventy novels, including Nightwings, Dying Inside, Tower of Glass, Thorns, Downward to the Earth, Lord Valentine's Castle, and Hot Sky at Midnight. He has won five Hugo Awards, a Jupiter Award, and five Nebula Awards. A native New Yorker, Silverberg now lives near San Francisco with his wife, the author Karen Haber.

Dan Simmons is equally comfortable writing SF, fantasy, and horror. He has received numerous awards throughout his writing career, including the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Award. His horror novels include Song of Kali, Carrion Comfort, Summer of Night, Children of the Night, and A Winter's Haunting; his science fiction novels include The Hollow Man and the Hyperion tetralogy; he has written a mainstream novel called Phases of Gravity and the crime novels Darwin's Blade, Hardcase and Hard Freeze. His short fiction has been collected in the World Fantasy Award-winning volume Prayers to Broken Stones, Lovedeath, and Worlds Enough " Time. His most recent novel is Ilium. Simmons lives in Colorado.

Michael Marshall Smith is a multi-talented writer of science fiction and horror. His first three novels, Only Forward, Spares, and One of Us are sf (although very dark, at times) and most of his short fiction is horror. His novels The Straw Men and The Lonely Dead (U.S. title is The Upright Man, are published under the name Michael Marshall. His first two stories won the British Fantasy Award and he has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines. The International Horror Guild Award-winning More Tomorrow and Other Stories is the definitive collection of his short stories. n collected in What you Make It. He also writes for film.

S. P. Somtow is a prodigious writer, yet each story is as distinctive, and as entertaining, as the next. His novels include The Darkling Wind, The Wizard's Apprentice, Vampire Junction, and (for children) The Fallen Country; his short fiction has been collected in The Pavilion of Frozen Women. He was a composer and performer before turning to writing and is famous for his music compositions in his native Thailand;he is also a screenwriter and a film director. He was born in Bangkok, Thailand, raised in Europe, educated at Eton and Cambridge, and currently resides in the U.S.

Bruce Sterling was one of the driving forces behind the 1980s cyberpunk movement in science fiction. He is the author of Schismatrix, Islands in the Net, The Artifical Kid, Involution Ocean, The Difference Engine (written in collaboration with William Gibson), Heavy Weather, and Holy Fire. His short fiction has been collected in Crystal Express and Globalhead. He was the editor of Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology. He is also the author of the nonfiction study of First Amendment issues in the world of computer networking, The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier. He lives with his family in Austin, Texas. The Bruce Sterling Online Index is also worth noting.

Peter Straub is an elegant teller of horror stories. His novels include Marriages, Under Venus, Julia, If You Could See Me Now, Ghost Story, Shadowland, Floating Dragon, The Talisman and Black House (with Stephen King), Koko, Mrs. God, Mystery, The Throat, The Hellfire Club, Mr. X, and lostboy lost girl. His shorter fiction has been collected in Houses Without Doors and Magic Terror and he has also published two books of poetry, Open Air and Leeson Park and Belsize Square.

Melanie Tem & Steve Rasnic Tem are both horror writers. Melanie won the Bram Stoker Award for her first novel, Prodigal. She is also the author of several other novels, including Wilding, Desmodus, Black River, Making Love, The Tides, and (with Nancy Holder) Witch Light. Steve writes mostly short fiction and the two of them have occasionally collaborated on short stories. Steve has been short-listed several times for various awards. His short stories hav been collected in The Far Side of the Lake and the Stoker and IHG-winning collection City Fishing. The Tems won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the World Fantasy Award for novella The Man on the Ceiling. It is the only work ever to be honored by all three.

J. R. R. Tolkien is best known for his fantasy writings, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. This page celebrates his works and has links to other Tolkien sites.

Howard Waldrop is, in my opinion, a National Treasure, yet he's virtually unknown outside the SF field. He is a major fantastist of the 20th century who has been writing brilliant stories for years. Among his most famous are "The Ugly Chickens," "Flying Saucer Rock and Roll," "Ike at the Mike," and "Night of the Cooters." His work has been collected in Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past: Neat Stories by Howard Waldrop, Night of the Cooters, and Going Home Again. He is also the author of two novels, The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 (with Jake Saunders) and Them Bones. Howard doesn't have a phone, doesn't have a computer, but now, thanks to some of his friends and fans, he's got his own Web site. It's time you discovered him.

Walter Jon Williams' stories have appeared in several volumes of The Year's Best Science Fiction. His novels include HardWired, Voice of the Whirlwind, Days of Atonement, Aristoi, Metropolitan, City on Fire, and The Rift. His short fiction is collected in Facets. Williams was born in Minnesota and now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Ted Whittemore was the talented author of only five novels when he died in 1995. But his work lives on and the website Jerusalem Dreaming, run by Anne Sydenham, gives the man and his work the appreciation that is their due. Whittemore was in the CIA, probably in the middle east and this experience provides much of background for his Jerusalem Quartet. My own personal favorite is his first novel, Quin's Shanghai Circus. All five books were recently reissued by Old Earth Books.

Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) was considered one of the American leaders of science fiction's New Wave, and is known both for his emphasis on the psychology of his characters and his use of the mythology of various cultures in many of his best known works. His novels include Lord of Light, This Immortal, Creatures of Light and Darkness, and the very popular Amber series. He was the recipient of six Hugo awards and two Nebulas. The Unicorn Grove is a very artistic site about Amber.









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