Intergalactic empires
Cycles - essay by uncredited
Chalice of Death - novella by Robert Silverberg
Orphan of the Void - novelette by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (variant of The Man Who Wasn't Home 1960)
Down to the Worlds of Men - novelette by Alexei Panshin
Governance - essay by uncredited
Ministry of Disturbance - novelette by H. Beam Piper
Blind Alley - short story by Isaac Asimov
A Planet Named Shayol - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
Concerns - essay by uncredited
Diabologic - short story by Eric Frank Russell
Fighting Philosopher - novelette by Everett B. Cole [as by E. B. Cole]
Honorable Enemies - novelette by Poul Anderson
Science fiction, Fiction, science fiction, general
Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, Charles Waugh, Robert Silverberg, Lloyd Biggle Jr, Alexei Panshin, H. Beam Piper, Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, Eric Frank Russell, Everett B. Cole, Poul Anderson
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. || Robert Silverberg is an American author, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Silverberg received a Nebula award in 1986 for his novella Sailing to Byzantium, which takes its name from Yeats' poem; a Hugo in 1990 for Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another; and in 2004 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

([Source][1])


  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Silverberg || Lloyd Biggle was born in Waterloo, Iowa. During World War II he served in a rifle company of the 102nd Infantry Division and was wounded twice, leaving him disabled for life.  After the war, he received an A.B. Degree from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and M.M. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan.  He taught at the University of Michigan and at Eastern Michigan University in the 1950s.  He began writing professionally in 1955, and became a full-time writer with the publication of his novel, All the Colors of Darkness in 1963.  He published two-dozen books, magazine stories, and numerous articles.  He continued writing until his death in 2002. || Henry Beam Piper was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 1904, and died, an apparent suicide, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 1964.  Piper's first published story, "Time and Time Again" (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1947), was adapted for radio and aired on the NBC program Dimension X on 12 July, 1951, and again on the NBC program X Minus One on 11 January, 1956.  His historical essay "Rebel Raider," published in True: The Men's Magazine in 1950, inspired the fictional teleplay Willie and the Yank, a three-part mini-series which aired on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color in January 1967 (and was later released theatrically as Mosby's Marauders).  His first novel was the 1953 mystery Murder in the Gunroom and his science-fiction novel Little Fuzzywas nominated for a Hugo Award in 1963.  Piper made his living working for the Pennsylvania Railroad and was a member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), the New York Authors' Club, and the Hydra Club. 

Piper occasionally attended the annual World Science Fiction Convention, attending the 1957 WorldCon in London with his wife.  He also attended the 1962 WorldCon in Chicago and the 1963 WorldCon in Washington, DC. 

After Piper's death, the intellectual property rights to his fiction were acquired by Ace Books (now an imprint owned by Penguin Random House).  The late author Jerry Pournelle was granted the right by Piper himself (and acknowledged by Ace) to publish stories set in Piper's fictional settings but, despite decades-long rumors of a sequel to Space Viking, apparently decided not to take advantage of this opportunity.  In the early 1980's, Ace commissioned two sequels to Piper's Fuzzy novels, William Tuning's Fuzzy Bones and Ardath Mayhar's Golden Dream: A Fuzzy Odyssey, before Piper's own unpublished sequel, Fuzzies and Other People, was discovered (by Piper's protegé of sorts, Mike Knerr) and published (by Ace) in 1984.  More recently, John Scalzi wrote Fuzzy Nation, an officially-authorized "reboot" of Little Fuzzy. 

Author and Piper biographer John F. Carr, who edited four collections of Piper's short stories also published by Ace in the 1980's, has authored several sequels to Piper's Paratime novel Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen and more recently has written other novels set both in Piper's Paratime and Terro-human Future History settings.  Carr has also edited The Rise of the Terran Federation, an anthology of Piper's early Terro-human Future History yarns and new, Piper-inspired stories of the same era written by others.

Source: http://www.zarthani.net || English science fiction writer || 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