Robert Sheckley (1928-2005) Robert Sheckley was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated author born and educated in New York. He received an undergraduate degree from New York University in 1951 after a varied career that included time spent as a landscape gardener, a milkman and a stint in the US Army. He published his first story, "Final Examination" for Imagination in May 1952 and quickly gained prominence as a writer, publishing stories for Imagination, Galaxy and other science fiction magazines.
His first four books - three collections and a previously serialised novel - were published in the 1950s and his career continued to be successful throughout the following decades. Sheckley served as fiction editor for Omni magazine from January 1980 through September 1981 and was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001. He passed away at the age of 77 before being able to attend the World SF Convention in Glasgow, where he'd been scheduled Guest of Honour.
Harry Harrison (1925-2012) Harry Harrison was born Henry Maxwell Dempsey in Connecticut, in 1925.
He was the author of a number of much-loved series including the Stainless Steel Rat and Bill the Galactic Hero sequences and the Deathworld Trilogy. He was known as a passionate advocate of Esperanto, the most popular of the constructed international languages, which appears in many of his novels. He published novels for over half a century and was perhaps best known for his seminal novel of overpopulation, Make Room! Make Room!, which was adapted into the cult film Soylent Green.
