Pioneers of Wonder: Conversations With the Founders of Science Fiction

Long before Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Gene Roddenberry, and Chris Carter, the names of David Lasser, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Hugo Gernsback, and Sam Moskowitz were well known by the first fans of a new kind of fiction. These pioneers were among the visionary individuals who launched the science fiction genre, which today enjoys such wide appeal. Through exclusive interviews, Eric Leif Davin takes readers back to the late 1920s, when Gernsback, "the father of science fiction," founded the world's first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. Lasser, one of Gernsback's editors, recalls his own amazing book The Conquest of Space-the first work in English to seriously probe the possibility of space flight. Other highlights include a discussion with the widow of Stanley G. Weinbaum ("A Martian Odyssey"), the first author to write about an alien in sympathetic terms; talks with the giants of early sci-fi Frank K. Kelly and Raymond Z. Gallun; Wolf Man creator and science fiction script writer Curt Siodmak; pioneer book publisher and writer Lloyd Arthur Eshbach; plus commentary on popular sci-fi magazines. The lives, experiences, memories, and insights provided in Pioneers of Wonder are a treasure for all fans of this dynamic literary phenomenon.