American science fiction writers

Harlan Jay Ellison (May 27, 1934 – June 28, 2018) was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction and for his outspoken, combative personality. His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Some of his best-known works include the 1967 Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", considered by some to be the single greatest episode of the Star Trek franchise (he subsequently wrote a book about the experience that includes his original teleplay), his A Boy and His Dog cycle (which was made into a film), and his short stories "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman". He was also editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (née Kroeber; KROH-bər lə GWIN; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. She was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le Guin said she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".Le Guin was born in Berkeley, California, to author Theodora Kroeber and anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber. Having earned a master's degree in French, Le Guin began doctoral studies but abandoned these after her marriage in 1953 to historian Charles Le Guin. She began writing full-time in the late 1950s and achieved major critical and commercial success with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), which have been described by Harold Bloom as her masterpieces. For the latter volume, Le Guin won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, becoming the first woman to do so. Several more works set in Earthsea or the Hainish universe followed; others included books set in the fictional country of Orsinia, several works for children, and many anthologies.
Cultural anthropology, Taoism, feminism, and the writings of Carl Jung all had a strong influence on Le Guin's work. Many of her stories used anthropologists or cultural observers as protagonists, and Taoist ideas about balance and equilibrium have been identified in several writings. Le Guin often subverted typical speculative fiction tropes, such as through her use of dark-skinned protagonists in Earthsea, and also used unusual stylistic or structural devices in books such as the experimental work Always Coming Home (1985). Social and political themes, including race, gender, sexuality, and coming of age were prominent in her writing. She explored alternative political structures in many stories, such as in the philosophical short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1973) and the anarchist utopian novel The Dispossessed (1974).
Le Guin's writing was enormously influential in the field of speculative fiction, and has been the subject of intense critical attention. She received numerous accolades, including eight Hugos, six Nebulas, and twenty-four Locus Awards, and in 2003 became the second woman honored as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The U.S. Library of Congress named her a Living Legend in 2000, and in 2014, she won the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Le Guin influenced many other authors, including Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman, and Iain Banks. After her death in 2018, critic John Clute wrote that Le Guin had "presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century", while author Michael Chabon referred to her as the "greatest American writer of her generation".

T. J. Bass, real name Thomas J. Bassler, MD (July 7, 1932 – December 13, 2011) was an American science fiction author and physician, having graduated from the University of Iowa in 1959. Bassler is also known for his controversial claim that nonsmokers who are able to complete a marathon in under four hours can eat whatever they wish and never suffer a fatal heart attack.John Robbins has noted that Jim Fixx approvingly quoted Bassler in his best-selling book, The Complete Book of Running. Fixx died from heart failure at 52 while running.Two of Bass' novels, Half Past Human (1971) and The Godwhale (1974), were nominated for the Nebula Award. In both his books the Hive was a three trillion population of 'nebishes' - humans who had four toes and all aggressiveness bred out of them.

Alan Edward Nourse (; August 11, 1928 – July 19, 1992) was an American science fiction writer and physician. He wrote both juvenile and adult science fiction, as well as nonfiction works about medicine and science. His SF works sometimes focused on medicine and/or psionics.
His most notable pen name was Doctor X. He used this pseudonym when writing for a medical column in a science fiction magazine, allowing him to combine his expertise in medicine with his passion for science fiction.

Lily Brooks-Dalton (born August 18, 1987) is an American writer. She was born and raised in southern Vermont. Her first book, Motorcycles I've Loved: A Memoir, published in 2015 by Riverhead, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her first novel, Good Morning, Midnight, was published the next year by Random House, and it has been translated into half a dozen languages, with a film adaptation as The Midnight Sky in December 2020 starring and directed by George Clooney.Brooks-Dalton earned a BA at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a MFA at Portland State University.

Alexander Moore Phillips (1907–1991) was an American short story writer and novelist. He also worked as a topographical draftsman for a title insurance company. Phillips served in the U. S. Army from April, 1942 spending time in Egypt and Palestine. His short stories appeared in pulp magazines including Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories and Unknown,. His novel, The Mislaid Charm, was published by Prime Press in 1947. He served as president of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society.

Richard Sharpe Shaver (October 8, 1907 – November 5, 1975) was an American writer and artist who achieved notoriety in the years following World War II as the author of controversial stories that were printed in science fiction magazines (primarily Amazing Stories). In Shaver's story, he claimed that he had had personal experience of a sinister ancient civilization that harbored fantastic technology in caverns under the earth. The controversy stemmed from the claim by Shaver, and his editor and publisher Ray Palmer, that Shaver's writings, while presented in the guise of fiction, were fundamentally true. Shaver's stories were promoted by Ray Palmer as "The Shaver Mystery".
During the last decades of his life, Shaver devoted himself to "rock books"—stones that he believed had been created by the advanced ancient races and embedded with legible pictures and texts. He produced paintings allegedly based on the rocks' images and photographed the rock books extensively, as well as writing about them. Posthumously, Shaver has gained a reputation as an artist and his paintings and photos have been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere.

Nancy Farmer (born 1941) is an American writer of children's and young adult books and science fiction. She has written three Newbery Honor Books and won the U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The House of the Scorpion, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 2002.

Lloyd Arthur Eshbach (June 20, 1910 – October 29, 2003) was an American science fiction fan, publisher and writer, secular and religious publisher, and minister.

Robert Stratton "Buck" Coulson (May 12, 1928 – February 19, 1999) was an American science fiction writer, well-known fan, filk songwriter, fanzine editor and bookseller from Indiana.