Assignment in Tomorrow
Science fiction, American Science fiction
Frederik Pohl, Theodore Sturgeon, Jerome Bixby, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Ray Bradbury, Lester del Rey, Alfred Bester, Kurt Vonnegut, James H. Schmitz, Jack Williamson, Algis Budrys, H. L. Gold, Richard Wilson, Peter Phillips, Fletcher Pratt, Fredric Brown, Philip José Farmer
Frederik Pohl, Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York.  His father held a number of jobs, and his family moved many times in his childhood before settling in Brooklyn when he was about seven.  He attended Brooklyn Tech high school, but dropped out and took a job to help support his family.  As a teen, he founded the New York science fiction writer's group The Futurians.  His first publication, a poem, appeared in Amazing Stories in 1937, when he was 18 years old.  In 1936, he joined the Young Communist League and became President of the Brooklyn branch, but he left it in 1939 after Stalin-Hitler pact.  In 1939, at the age of 21, he was editor of both Super Science Stories and Astonishing Stories, and regularly published his own stories in both of them.  He married his first wife in 1940.  In 1943 both the magazines he was editing folded, and he worked as a literary agent.  During World War II, he served with the Army Air Corps from 1945-1945.  He divorced his first wife during this period and married his second wife in 1945.  In 1948 he married his third wife, Judith Merril, who he divorced in 1953, the same year he married his fourth wife, Carol Metcal Ulf.

In the early 1950s his literary agency business failed and he returned to editing as an assistant editor at Galaxy Science Fiction and later also if Magazine.  In 1966, 1967, and 1968 his magazines won Hugo Awards for Best Professional Magazines.  In the 1970s he acquired and edited novels for the "Frederik Pohl Selections" series of Bantam Books.  He also began to emerge as a novel writer, and went on to win Nebula awards for fiction in 1976 and 1977 and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978.  He married his current wife, science fiction editor and academic Elizabeth Anne Hull, PhD, in 1984.  He continues to write from his home in Palatine, Illinois. || Theodore Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo in Staten Island, New York.  He changed his name in 1929, choosing Sturgeon to match his mother's surname after her second marriage, and "Theodore" to match his nickname, "Teddy."  His mother, Christine Hamilton Dicker Sturgeon, was a well-educated writer, watercolorist, and poet who published journalism, poetry and fiction under the pseudonym Felix Sturgeon.

As an adolescent, Sturgeon wanted to be a circus acrobat, but then had an episode of rheumatic fever.  From 1935 to 1938, he was a sailor in the merchant marine. He sold his first story in 1938, and his first science fiction story, "Ether Breather" was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1939.  A few of his early pulp stories were published under the pseudonym "E. Waldo Hunter."  

He married his first wife, Dorothe Fillingame, in 1940.  That year, they moved to the West Indies, where Sturgeon managed a hotel for about a year.  He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and in 1944 he returned to the U.S. and worked as an advertising copywriter.  He divorced in 1945, and married singer Mary Mair in 1949 until an annulment in 1951.  In 1950, he published his first novel, The Dreaming Jewels.  In 1951, he married Marion McGahan and they had a son in 1952, a daughters in 1954, a daughter in 1956, and a son in 1960.  In 1963, he ghost-wrote the Ellery Queen mystery novel The Player on the Other Side, which received critical praise.  He wrote two screenplays for the television show Star Trek in 1966 and 1967, and one screenplay for the show Land of the Lost in 1975, and two of his stories were adapted for The New Twilight Zone.  At the height of his popularity in the 1950s he was the most anthologized author alive.

His last long-term committed relationship was with writer and educator Jayne Engelhart Tannehill, with whom he remained until the time of his death.  He died in May of 1985 of lung fibrosis, in Eugene, Oregon. || Drexel Jerome Lewis Bixby || Ray Bradbury is one of those rare individuals whose writing has changed the way people think. His more than five hundred published works -- short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, television scripts, and verse -- exemplify the American imagination at its most creative. 

Once read, his words are never forgotten. His best-known and most beloved books, *The Martian Chronicles*, *The Illustrated Man*, *Fahrenheit 451* and *Something Wicked This Way Comes*, are masterworks that readers carry with them over a lifetime. His timeless, constant appeal to audiences young and old has proven him to be one of the truly classic authors of the 20th Century -- and the 21st. 

In recognition of his stature in the world of literature and the impact he has had on so many for so many years, Bradbury was awarded the National Book Foundation's 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, an the National Medal of Arts in 2004. 

([Source][1])


  [1]: http://www.raybradbury.com/about.html || 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. || Alfred Bester was an American science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor and scripter for comic strips and comic books. Though successful in all these fields, he is best remembered for his science fiction, including The Demolished Man, winner of the inaugural Hugo Award in 1953. - Wikipedia || Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was an American novelist who wrote works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction, such as [*Slaughterhouse-Five* (1969)][1], [*Cat's Cradle* (1963)][2], and [*Breakfast of Champions* (1973)][3]. He was known for his humanist beliefs as well as being honorary president of the American Humanist Association. He is widely considered one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century.


  [1]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL98474W/Slaughterhouse-Five
  [2]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL98482W/Cat's_Cradle
  [3]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL98488W/Breakfast_of_Champions || John Stewart Williamson (April 29, 1908 – November 10, 2006), who wrote as Jack Williamson, was an American science fiction writer. || Algis Budrys (Algirdas Jonas Budrys) was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. || Murray Fletcher Pratt (1897–1956) was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy and history. He is best known for his works on naval history and on the American Civil War and for fiction written with L. Sprague de Camp. || Fredric Brown was born in Cincinnati.  He wrote science fiction and mystery fiction.  His first novel, What Mad Universe, a popular parody of pulp science fiction, was published in 1949. || Philip José Farmer was an American author, principally known for his award-winning science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories.

Farmer is best known for his sequences of novel — especially the World of Tiers (1965–93) and Riverworld (1971–83) series. He is noted for the pioneering use of sexual and religious themes in his work, his fascination for — and reworking of — the lore of celebrated pulp heroes, and occasional tongue-in-cheek pseudonymous works written as if by fictional characters.

Philip José Farmer is also well known for remixing classic fictional characters, worlds, and both real and fake authors. This is epitomized with his Wold Newton family group of books that tie all classic fictional characters together as real people and blood relatives resulting from an alien conspiracy; his works such as The Other Log of Phileas Fogg and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life make Farmer the ultimate grandfather of the modern literary mashup. - Wikipedia