Isaac Asimov Presents the Best Science Fiction Firsts
Contains:

Antimatter (1937) : Minus planet / John D. Clark, Ph. D. --
Clone (1952) : Yesterday house / Fritz Leiber --
Collapsed stars (1966) : Neutron star / Larry Niven --
Cosmic disaster (1839) : The conversation of Eiros and Charmion / Edgar Allan Poe --
Earth inherited by other mammals (1938) : The faithful / Lester del Rey --
Generation starship (1940) : The voyage that lasted 600 years / Don Wilcox --
Home computer (1946) : A logic named Joe / Murray Leinster --
Invisibility (1859) : What was it? / Fitz-James O'Brien --
Microcosmic world (1858) : The diamond lens / Fitz-James O'Brien --
Overpopulation (1954) : The test / Richard Matheson --
Solar power from satellites (1941) : reason / Isaac Asimov --
Tank (1903) : The land ironclads / H.G. Wells.
American Science fiction
Isaac Asimov, Charles G. Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg, John D. Clarke, Fritz Leiber, Larry Niven, Edgar Allan Poe, Lester del Rey, Don Wilcox, Murray Leinster, Fitz-James O'Brien, Richard Matheson, H. G. Wells
Asimov was born sometime between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi in Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR (now Russia), the son of a Jewish family of millers.  Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Asimov himself celebrated it on January 2.  His family emigrated to Brooklyn, New York and opened a candy store when he was three years old.  He taught himself to read at the age of five. He began reading the science fiction pulp magazines that his family's store carried. Around the age of eleven, he began to write his own stories, and by age nineteen, he was selling them to the science fiction magazines. He graduated from Columbia University in 1939. He married Gertrude Blugerman in 1942.  During World War II he worked as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station.  After the war, he returned to Columbia University and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1948.  He then joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine until 1958, when he became a full-time writer. His first novel, [Pebble in the Sky](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL46402W), was published in 1950. He and his wife divorced in 1973, and he married Janet O. Jeppson the same year. He was a highly prolific writer, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 9,000 letters and postcards. || Martin Harry Greenberg (March 1, 1941 – June 25, 2011) was an American academic and anthologist in many genres, including mysteries and horror, but especially in speculative fiction. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. He was also a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel. Greenberg was also an expert in terrorism and the Middle East. He was a longtime friend, colleague and business partner of Isaac Asimov. || Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. (December 24, 1910 – September 5, 1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theater and films, playwright and chess expert. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber can be regarded as one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fantasy, having coined the term. 

**Source**: [Fritz Leiber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Leiber) on Wikipedia. || Laurence van Cott Niven — known as Larry Niven — is an American science fiction writer. His best-known work is Ringworld (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. The Science Fiction Writers of America named him the 2015 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics. It also often includes elements of detective fiction and adventure stories. His fantasy includes the series The Magic Goes Away, rational fantasy dealing with magic as a non-renewable resource.

Niven was born in Los Angeles. He briefly attended the California Institute of Technology and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics (with a minor in psychology) from Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas, in 1962. He did a year of graduate work in mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles. On September 6, 1969, he married Marilyn Joyce "Fuzzy Pink" Wisowaty, a science fiction and Regency literature fan. He is an agnostic.

Source: Wikipedia || Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.[1] He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.[2]

Source and more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe || Lester del Rey was born Leonard Knapp in Saratoga, Minnesota, the son of poor sharecroppers of partly Spanish ancestry.  His mother died shortly after his birth, and he managed to complete high school and two years at George Washington University before dropping out for economic reasons.  He started publishing stories in pulp magazines in the late 1930s. He was closely associated Astounding Science Fiction, then the leading science fiction magazine. In 1935, his first wife was killed in a car accident.  By 1947 he had written enough solid short fiction to generate his first book, the anthology And Some Were Human.  In the 1950s, he was a leading science fiction writer.  After marrying his second wife in 1945, he became a full-time writer. In 1947 he met the literary agent Scott Meredith at a convention and he began working for Meredith's agency as a reader and office manager.  He later made his way into editing for pulp magazines and then for book publishers. In 1952 and 1953, he edited Space SF, Fantasy Fiction, Science Fiction Adventures (as Philip St. John), Rocket Stories (as Wade Kampfaert), and Fantasy Fiction (as Cameron Hall).  He was most successful editing for Ballantine Books with his final wife, Judy-Lynn del Rey, and founded a popular science fiction imprint with her at Ballantine, Del Rey Books, in 1977. || Max Overton is a pseudonym of Cleo Eldon “Don” Wilcox, an A merican writer of science fiction and short stories. || Richard Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey, the son of Norwegian immigrant parents.  He was raised in Brooklyn and started writing at age eight.  He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1943.  He served as an infantry soldier in World War II.   He earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1949.  His first short story, "Born of Man and Woman," appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950.  Between 1950 and 1971, he wrote dozens of stories, frequently blending elements of science fiction, horror and fantasy.  In 1951 he moved to California and became a screenwriter, writing episodes for The Twilight Zone, Lawman, and Star Trek, and screenplays for horror movies such as The Devil Rides Out and Steven Spielberg's Duel.  During the 1950s he published a handful of Western stories.  His autobiographical war novel The Beardless Warriors was published in 1960. || Herbert George Wells was an English author, best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary.