Writing science fiction and fantasy
Twenty essays on writing science fiction and fantasy by leading speculative fiction writers. An enjoyable and informative read.

On the Writing of Speculative Fiction - Robert A. Heinlein
Living the Future: You Are What You Eat - Gardner Dozois
Plotting - Isaac Asimov
Dialog - Isaac Asimov
You and Your Characters - James Patrick Kelly
Seeing Your Way to Better Stories - Stanley Schmidt
Turtles All the Way Down - Jane Yolen
Learning to Write Comedy or Why It's Impossible and How to Do It - Connie Willis
Good Writing is Not Enough - Stanley Schmidt
The Creation of Imaginary Worlds: The World Builder's Handbook and Pocket Companion - Poul Anderson
The Creation of Imaginary Beings - Hal Clement
How to Build a Future - John Barnes
Building a Starfaring Age - Norman Spinrad
The Ideas That Wouldn't Die - Stanley Schmidt
The Mechanics of Submission - Sheila Williams
Revisions - Isaac Asimov
Writing for Young People - Isaac Asimov
New Writers - Isaac Asimov
Authors vs. Editors - Stanley Schmidt
Market Resources - Ian Randal Strock
Science fiction, Authorship, Fantasy fiction, fiction authorship, fiction technique
Gardner R. Dozois, Isaac Asimov, James Patrick Kelly, Stanley Schmidt, Poul Anderson, Hal Clement, John Barnes, Norman Spinrad, Connie Willis, Robert A. Heinlein, Sheila Williams, Tina Lee
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. || Stanley Albert Schmidt (born March 7, 1944) is an American science fiction author and editor. Between 1978 and 2012 he served as editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine.
Schmidt was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1966. He then attended Case Western Reserve University, where he completed his PhD in physics in 1969. After receiving his degree, he became a professor at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio, teaching physics, astronomy, and science fiction. Schmidt was editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine from 1978 to his retirement on 29 August 2012. Additionally, he has served as a member of the Board of Advisers for the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame and was Guest of Honor at BucConeer, the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore, Maryland.
He was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor every year from 1980 through 2006 (its final year), and for the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form every year from 2007 (its first year) through 2013. He won the Hugo for the first time in 2013. In 2013 he was awarded a Special Committee Award for his editorial work.
*Wikipedia || Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.

Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.

Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.

Source: Goodreads || Working name used for his sf by US author Harry Clement Stubbs (1922-2003); he used his full name for science articles, and painted as George Richard. || Norman Spinrad is a science fiction icon and the author of more than twenty novels which have been translated into over a dozen languages. His 1969 novel, Bug Jack Barron, was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards and his short fiction collection, The Star-Spangled Future, was a National Book Award finalist. He has also written screenplays for American television series, including the original Star Trek. He lives in New York. || Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called "the dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of the genre. He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was one of the first writers to break into mainstream, general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, in the late 1940s, with unvarnished science fiction. He was among the first authors of bestselling, novel-length science fiction in the modern, mass-market era. For many years, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction. ([Source](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein).)