Deus Irae

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) was an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels. He won the Nebula award three times and the Hugo award six times, including two Hugos for novels This Immortal (1965) and the novel Lord of Light (1967).

Zelazny was born in Ohio, the only child of Polish immigrant Joseph Zelazny and Irish-American Josephine Sweet. In high school, Roger Zelazny was the editor of the school newspaper and joined the Creative Writing Club. He was accepted to Columbia University in New York to study English and specialized in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, graduating with an M.A. in 1962.

Between 1962 and 1969 Zelazny worked for the Social Security Administration in Cleveland and then in Baltimore, spending his evenings writing science fiction. He deliberately progressed from short-shorts to novelettes to novellas and finally to novel-length works by 1965. On 1969 he quit to become a full-time writer, and thereafter concentrated on writing novels in order to maintain his income.

Zelazny was married twice, in 1964 in 1966.

Zelazny was considered one of the leading lights of the ”New Wave” movement in science fiction in the 1960s. He incorporated elements from literary novels of the mainstream into his fiction, and experimented with allusion, lyricism, and mythic imagery. His stories often involved characters from myth, depicted in the modern world. Zelazny's fiction was also highly influenced by wisecracking detective fiction. He was also apt to include modern elements, such as cigarettes, in his fantasy worlds.

A frequent theme is gods or people who become gods. Another recurrent theme is the ”absent father” (or father-figure).

Philip Kindred Dick (1928–1982) was an American novelist and short story writer whose published work during his lifetime was almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works, Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences and addressed the nature of drug use, paranoia and schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly.

The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ”In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.” Dick referred to himself as a ”fictionalizing philosopher.”

In addition to thirty-six novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, many of which appeared in science fiction magazines. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, nine of his stories have been adapted into popular films since his death, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly and Minority Report. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.