by Eric L. Haschert

Created on: July 19, 2009

Science Fiction used to be and still is one of my favorite Genres. I grew up during the mid to late 80's reading from the Who's Who of Science Fiction. Unfortunately I found the field to become stagnant into the mid 90's but have since found one or two authors that make buying it worth while. Whether the genre is still stagnant today I have no clue. I used to be hooked into all the Fanzines and magazines that wrote about Science Fiction. Nowadays I am mostly reading the classics. What I think you or any other new reader in Science Fiction needs is a Who's Who of Science Fiction. So here we go.

Science Fiction had a Golden Age. A time where it had many prolific writers of the best talent led by one of the best if not the best Editor's of it's day. The Period of the Golden Age is defined as the period that the Pulp Magazines ruled Science Fiction. From the late 30's to the early 50's. One notable editor of the pulps was a man named John Campbell. He ran the Science Fiction Magazine Astounding. His one and only goal was to make Science Fiction a real genre filled with real stories about real people. He wanted Humanity to be shown in science fiction and not just gadgets and scientific theories. He started out with a small crew of authors. Some of which have since become Known as the Grand masters Of Science Fiction

This is a Who's who of Science Fiction. Authors that I have either read every Science Fiction book they published or their best ones that I could get a hold of and that are still in print today. They are:

Poul Anderson; Isaac Asimov; Alfred Bester; James Blish; Ray Bradbury; Arthur C. Clark; L.Sprague de Camp; Lester del Rey; Philip K. Dick; Robert A. Heinlein; Frank Herbert; Fritz Leiber; Walter M. Miller Jr.; Fredrik Pohl; Robert Silverberg; Clifford D. Simak; A.E. Van Vogt and Jack Vance. This is not a complete list and I must confess I lifted most of it from an article in Wikipedia because I couldn't remember all the names on my own. As far as their Grand Master status most of those mentioned above have achieved that rank.

Suffice it to say at one point my private library of Science Fiction and some Fantasy totaled over a 1,000 books. In the end I gave them to a local library because I had no more room for them and despaired of ever finding anyone to share my treasure trove with. I mostly enjoyed reading the stories from the Golden Age and collected those authors listed above. As far as which books were most popular

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