Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
I agree. My *personal* definition of the Old Masters mentioned in this thread title would be authors that worked with or were influenced by John W. Campbell: Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, A.E. Van Vogt, Ray Bradbury, Fred Pohl and so on. Guys from the thirties to the fifties.
I don't think of Doc Smith, Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft or Fritz Leiber as part of the group either, though I read all of them (well, not Doc Smith).
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Hard to think that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories (Fritz Leiber) date all the way back to 1939, even though the books that were mostly a collection of the short stories didn't come out until 1968-1970)
Howard, Lovecraft, Doc Smith and Burroughs were all pulp writers from the 20's and 30's.
It's a lot like talking about Rock and Roll music and tracing back from modern to the British Invasion in the 60's back to Elvis in the 50's then back to country/R&B/folk and onward. You can point to distinct movements and time periods (the pulps of the 20's and 30's, the Campbell writers, the 60's writers, the British adventure novels all the way back to Jules Verne and before) but really it's all interconnected.
The Campbell years were frequently called the golden age of SF, but the list of SF&F Grand Masters is pretty long and diverse.