Wastelands (Paperback)

Born in 1947, Stephen King has become a household name all over the world. His mother raised him and his brother after their father deserted the family in 1950. In high school, King began to write short stories, his first published work appearing in 1968. He attended the University of Maine, graduating with a B.S. in 1970. Up until his first novel appeared, King had worked in an industrial laundry, as a janitor, as well as an English teacher. CARRIE, his debut, was met by a largely indifferent public in 1974. It wasn't until two years later, after King's second novel 'SALEM'S LOT and the filmed version of CARRIE, that King became a major player in the horror field. THE SHINING, his 1977 haunted hotel novel, began a litany of bestsellers, including THE STAND, THE DEAD ZONE, PET SEMETARY, DOLORES CLAIBORNE, and many others. King's work is regarded as instrumental in bringing about a resurgence of interest in horror fiction in the 1970s and '80s. An extremely high percentage of King's voluminous literary output has been filmed, with varying degrees of success, but all serving to carry the name of Stephen King far and wide. He has written nonfiction, given lectures, acted in films, and continues to produce huge novels nearly every year, all of which become instant bestsellers. As an bizarre sidenote, during the summer of 1999 while walking along a back road in Maine, King was struck and seriously injured by a minivan whose driver apparently lost control of the vehicle while being distracted by his dog--thus creating exactly the kind of news item that might have inspired several of King's own novels.

George Richard Raymond Martin began writing very early, and says that he sold original monster stories to neighborhood kids for pennies--a price which apparently included dramatic readings of these tales. Martin graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University with a B.S. in journalism. The next year he received a master's degree, also in journalism, and published his first stories, "Songs the Dead Man Sing" and "The Hero". A conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, Martin worked with the Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation as an alternate service. Throughout the 1970s he worked a number of jobs--including teaching journalism and directing chess tournaments--while continuing to write. Martin won his first Hugo in 1975 for "A Song for Lya". His first novel, DYING OF THE LIGHT, received a Hugo nomination in 1978. Ending the 1970s with a bang, he won two more Hugos, both in 1980, one for the story "Sandkings", which also garnered Martin his first Nebula Award. The early 1980s saw the release of two extraordinary novels, FEVRE DREAM and THE ARMAGEDDON RAG. The first of these, a brilliant novel of vampires stalking the Mississippi River towns of the 1800s, remains one of the greatest vampire novels ever written. The second is a searing indictment of America in the 1970s, couched in a strange tale of possession and power in the world of rock & roll. Both novels were nominated for the prestigious World Fantasy Award. Continuing to write award-winning short fiction, Martin began to work in television in the mid-1980s. He was a script editor on the revived TWILIGHT ZONE show, later moving to the enormously popular BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, for which he eventually became the executive producer. In 1987 he introduced an anthology series under the title Wild Cards, which he edited and occasionally contributed stories. This series proved remarkable successful and has expanded to over 30 books. Martin devoted much of the early 1990s to writing one novel, the massive A GAME OF THRONES. This epic fantasy work, the first of a projected series, was met with great acclaim, with many claiming it to be the best high-fantasy novel ever. Its sequel, A CLASH OF KINGS, cemented this theory for many fans, and, with this series, it looks like Martin will remain at the front of the field for a very long time.

Octavia Butler was one of the few African-American writers to find both critical and popular acceptance in the science fiction field, and certainly the first African-American woman to do so. Introduced to fiction at an early age by her mother, Butler said that one of her first attempts at writing came at the age of 12, when she turned off the 1954 film DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS on the television, certain that she could write a better story. She kept writing while at Pasadena City College, ending up at the University of California at Los Angeles. She attended the influential Clarion Writers' Workshop, writing several stories that were published. Her first novel, and the first of what would eventually become the five-volume Patternist series, was published in 1976. The series--consisting of PATTERNMASTER, MIND OF MY MIND, SURVIVOR, the award winning WILD SEED, and CLAY'S ARK--is a complex study, spanning from the late 1600s to well into the future--of a society divided among warring groups variously affected by an alien virus and by powerful psychic gifts bred into them by a body-switching entity. Next came a standalone novel called KINDRED, in which a contemporary African-American woman travels in time to ensure that her ancestors (a slave and a slaveowner) produce her great-great-grandmother. The first volume of Butler's Xenogenesis series, DAWN, appeared in 1987, followed by ADULTHOOD RITES the next year, and IMAGO in 1989. This series presents a devastating view of a post-apocalyptic Earth populated by a few remaining humans, who must interbreed with the alien race who saved them from destruction. PARABLE OF THE SOWER, published in 1993, concerned a teenage visionary struggling to survive as America collapses. Butler's work frequently combined the mystical and spiritual with hard, unflinching looks at dystopic, alternate, and future societies created in the wake of slavery and segregation. She explored the notion of "alien-ness" on both individual and racial levels and the difficult moral choices that one must make simply to survive. In 1995, the MacArthur Foundation awarded Butler a fellowship in recognition of her body of work. Known as a "genius" grant, this award gives recipients a sum of money over a five-year span, along with complete health coverage, in order to allow them to work unencumbered by financial needs. That same year saw the publication of a short-story collection, BLOODCHILD AND OTHER STORIES, which contained the Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning title story, as well as "Speech Sounds," a Hugo Award winner. In 1998, PARABLE OF THE TALENTS, the sequel to PARABLE OF THE SOWER, was published to wide acclaim. Her final novel, FLEDGLING, published in 2005, involved a vampire who was genetically engineered to have dark skin and thus to endure the sun without harm. Octavia Butler died on February 25, 2006, from a head injury suffered as the result of a fall.