Anniversaries

Today, Gateway wishes a very happy birthday to everyone’s favourite Russian helmsman, Pavel Chekov – or, more to the point, the actor who brought him to life on the big screen and small, across five decades: Walter Koenig. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was keen to add a younger face to his bridge crew, allegedly […]

According to the inexhaustible fount of knowledge that is The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the venerable Hugo Awards were first presented sixty-four years ago, today, at at Philcon II (the second Philadelphia Worldcon). The Guest of Honour was Willy Ley and a young fellow by the name of Isaac Asimov was the toastmaster. The inaugural […]

Two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award, five BSFA Awards, a John W. Campbell Memorial Award. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame living inductee. SFWA Grand Master. The IAFA Award for distinguished scholarship. World Fantasy Special Award. The Prix Utopia Award for lifetime achievement. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Officer of the Order of […]

Today, Gateway wishes a very happy to birthday to SF writer, comic book writer and expert on divinatory tarot, Rachel Pollack, born in Brooklyn in 1945. Highly regarded for her influence on the women’s spirituality movement and on women’s SF, Rachel Pollack is probably best-known to SF fans for her novel Unquenchable Fire, which won […]

On this day in 1884, one of the most influential figures in the history of science fiction, Hugo Gernsback,  was born. How influential? Well, he launched the first fully-dedicated SF magazine, Amazing Stories, first coined the phrase ‘scientifiction‘, which later became the term we know and love; he appended ‘PhD’ to the end of a […]

We’s like to wish a Happy Birthday to the very talented Phillip Mann, who turns 75 today! Probably best known for his Land Fit for Heroes sequence, Phillip fell silent in the mid-90s, not publishing any new SF until 2013 when <ahem> Gollancz published his critically acclaimed The Disestablishment of Paradise, which was shortlisted for […]

I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said— ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet […]

What are the odds of two of Britain’s finest voices in modern speculative fiction being born on the same day?** There must have been sometihng in the water . . . Today is the birthday or two writers very close to Gateway’s heart: the one who is, sadly, no longer with us is with us, […]

Lawrence Watt-Evans is the working name of American science fiction and fantasy writer Lawrence Watt Evans. He was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, on this day in 1954. He was the fourth of six children and studied at Bedford High School and Princeton University, although he left the latter without a degree. Watt-Evans began publishing SF […]

Donald Moffitt was born in Boston on this day in 1931. A former public relations executive, industrial filmmaker, and ghostwriter, he wrote fiction on and off for more than twenty years under his own name and an assortment of pen names. His first full-length science fiction novel and the first book of any genre to […]

Some of you might know him from his comics, including Saucer Country and Demon Knights, and arcs on Wolverine and Captain Britain. Others might know him from his books, such as British Summertime, London Falling and Chalk. Many of you will know him from his long-standing association with a certain Time Lord; he’s written quite […]

Can it really be just a year ago that we were wishing a happy birthday to one of Britain’s great post-war novelists – in any genre – the one and only Christopher Priest? Er . . . actually, yes. That’s how these birthday things work, isn’t it?  *ahem* Moving right along . . . You […]

We find ourselves in conflicted times – Manichean days, where battle lines are routinely drawn and in all walks of life, it seems, we must choose: are you with us, or agin us? Are you Left or Right? Capitalist or communist? Leave or Remain? And nowhere is this seen more starkly than in the relationship […]

John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was born on this day in 1903 (or possibly 1902 – it’s a long story), and the world would never look at meteor showers or blonde-haired children in quite the same way again. Prior to the Second World War, he wrote and published under a bewildering array of pen […]

It’s a harsh but true fact that many of the authors we publish on the SF Gateway are no longer with us. That’s the nature of the beast when you publish classic SF that dates back to the pulp era (and, occasionally, before). Often, when we wish an author ‘Happy Birthday’, we’re doing so in […]