Fun facts about the author of I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
1. He was a huge influence on Stephen King. The king (pun intended) of contemporary American horror fiction has called Matheson ‘the author who influenced me the most as a writer’; Matheson’s vampire novel I Am Legend was, King has said, ‘an inspiration to me’. (We compiled some fascinating facts about King here.) Ray Bradbury, too, paid homage to Matheson, calling him ‘one of the most important writers of the 20th century’.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
H. G. Wells (1866-1946) wrote dozens of books over the course of his literary career, a career which spanned over half a century. But what are the best books by H. G. Wells? As well as writing many classic works of science fiction, Wells also wrote non-fiction as well as many popular realist novels such as Kipps and The History of Mr Polly.
But in this list of his best novels we’ve confined ourselves to the pick of his science fiction, since it’s for his science fiction that Wells is best remembered. As ever with our lists, we’ll start at number 10 and work our way up to what is, in our opinion, the best H. G. Wells novel of all…
Interesting facts about the life and books of J. G. Ballard
1. When they rejected J. G. Ballard’s 1973 novel Crash, one publisher remarked that the author was ‘beyond psychiatric help’. Known for exploring unusual and controversial human impulses and their relationship to modernity and technology, Ballard said that everything he wrote was inspired by his early childhood and teenage experiences in a Japanese internment camp in Shanghai in the early 1940s. His most popular novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), is about these early years which showed him the ‘pathology’ underlying modern life. In 1987 Steven Spielberg successfully filmed Empire of the Sun. David Cronenberg directed Crash in 1996; the novel, and film, focus on people who get a sexual thrill out of car accidents. A film adaptation of his 1975 novel High Rise, starring Tom Hiddleston, is set to be released soon. Ballard also provided the story for the 1970 film When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, although he was credited as ‘J. B. Ballard’. In a sense, Ballard was always close to the cinema: for much of his life he lived in Surrey near Shepperton Studios. (Fittingly, Shepperton was one of the places destroyed in H. G. Wells‘s The War of the Worlds, that classic written by Ballard’s great predecessor in British SF.)
By Spencer Blohm
Chances are, whether you realize it or not, you’ve heard of Ray Bradbury. Not only a prolific writer of science fiction, fantasy, and children’s novels, Bradbury wrote stories that were adapted into comic books, stage plays, television episodes, and movies. One of the most recent adaptations – a recently debuted ABC series The Whispers (based on the Bradbury short story “Zero Hour” and executive produced by Steven Spielberg) – is just the latest in a long line of work that has made the jump from page to screen. Before you decide to catch The Whispers pilot episode (which debuted last week and is easily watchable on ABC Go or DTV) there are other Bradbury adaptations you might want to check out first. Given Bradbury’s long and storied history with Hollywood, it’s no wonder that creative types keep looking to his work for inspiration.
By Dr Alistair Brown, Durham University An amusement arcade is perhaps the last place you would expect to find someone like Martin Amis, one-time enfant terrible of English literature and formerly respectable Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. Notoriously witty, erudite, baffling, and perhaps a little bit unpleasant, it’s hard to imagine … Read more