cyfi 21 core manufacturers surveillance interact identity about Biographical information for manufacturers presented by the machine. film projects In the past, students have made short films. Want to know more? Click here. manufacturers J.G. Ballard In 1966 critic Algis Budrys stated that "a story by J. G. Ballard, as you know, calls for people who don't think." This is, perhaps, an unfair judgment, especially considering that the bulk of Ballard's work has been written since that time. But in some ways I think Ballard might agree with the statement--not that his work requires a nonthinking audience, but that it demands a reader to think differently. His stories, like fevered dreams, are set in vaguely familiar, yet disturbingly altered landscapes. His characters do not react to these situations like we think they should. They are "mysteriously obsessed or bewildered . . . in situations filled with enigmatic events to which they respond with an acceptance of some ultimate failure in themselves or humanity or the universe." So we are made uncomfortable--and that's exactly what Ballard wants. . . . more Alfred Bester One of the most difficult things to teach people outside the arts . . . and in the arts as well . . . is that the important ingredient in the artist is not talent, technique, genius or luck--the most important ingredient is himself. So says science fiction writer Alfred Bester, who believed both that writers should reflect on their inwardness, and that this inwardness would lead to the writer's personal character or charm. This reflection enables writers to discover new frontiers of personal thought. Bester's impetus for this particular belief comes from science fiction stories that are products of writers who are not true to themselves or their readers. These "hack writers" as Bester calls them have "no sense of dramatic proportion, no principles of human behavior . . . and a wooden ear for dialogue." . . . more Ray Bradbury Today, science fiction has grown respectable enough that one is tempted to have the label stamped on one's books. Yet, I am not that brave. Snobs still live in the thickets, just beyond the orchard. Raymond Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, which he would later use as a model for the towns envisioned in his novel The Martian Chronicles. He said, "Mars is a mirror, not a crystal. Taking the people from my home town who had been raised in a green land, I parceled them into rockets and sent them off to Mars." During the ages of three and six years old, he developed an interest in the horror genre after seeing plays of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. His fear as an eight-year-old of a ravine near his house was incorporated in his later story "Dandelion Wine.". . more William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II was born on February 5th, 1914, in St. Louis, Missouri, into a family of great prominence. His grandfather, for whom he was named, invented the first commercially successful adding machine and founded the Burroughs company. Although William's father Mortimer sold his share of the company in 1929, sufficient funds were still available to provide Burroughs with adequate educational opportunities, a comfortable home, and in his middle years, a modest allowance to live on. William recognized the safety net the regular arrival of the check provided and observed to biographer Ted Morgan that the value of his father's shares in the 1960s would have been "twenty million reasons not to write." The Burroughs fortune was long gone by the time Burroughs lived in self-imposed exile overseas during the mid 1950s. . . . more Octavia Butler I'm the only black woman writing science fiction today because I'm the only woman writing science fiction today. I don't mean to be facetious, but it's true. Octavia Butler was born on June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California. While she was an infant her father died, leaving only her mother to raise her. Because of this, Butler went to work with her mother, who was a maid, and experienced first-hand the racism of America's 1950s. Butler said, "I used to see [my mother] going to back doors, being talked about while she was standing right there, and basically being treated like a non-person." These experiences during her childhood would provide a basis for future works such as Kindred, a novel about a woman who travels from the future to the 1830s where she learns--painfully--about slavery. I didn't decide to become a science fiction writer. It just happened. . . . more Philip K. Dick Although his mind was not invaded until 1974, Philip Kindred Dick was born in Chicago on December 16, 1928. Although his twin sister, Jane Charlotte Dick (some documents have her middle name also as Kindred), died forty-one days after their birth, she remained a part of his life until the day he died. The children were born about a month premature, and suffered from what some describe as "marasmus," or "failure to thrive," a condition usually found in infants who are neglected, abused, or malnourished. For this reason, Dick had always blamed his sister's death on his mother's negligence, saying that Jane could have been saved had his mother, Dorothy Grant Kindred Dick, notified the hospital of her complications sooner. From the dawn of his awareness of these circumstances, Dick felt a deep hatred, or at least an extreme dislike, of his mother. . . more William Gibson Cyberspace--A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. . . . A graphic representation of data abstracted from the bank of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters, and constellations of data. Like city lights receding. . . . William Gibson saw the possible maladies of our present fascination with technology. As a result, Gibson wrote science fiction to comment on our current state of society, in a futuristic setting, years before the Internet became a reality. Welcome to the life of the "Father of Cyberpunk." more Robert Heinlein I start out with some characters and get them into trouble, and when they get themselves out of trouble, the story's over. Born in Butler, Missouri, Heinlein hadn't always had his eyes set on writing. He had graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1929 and served in the Navy for five years aboard destroyers and aircraft carriers until a bout with pulmonary tuberculosis caused a medical discharge in 1934. Attempting a graduate degree in physics and mathematics at the University of California, Heinlein's health failed again. He traveled to Colorado to recover, working as an engineer, real estate agent, and architect. He even ran for a seat in the California State Assembly before writing his first science fiction story, "Life-Line" in 1939. They didn't want it good. They wanted it Wednesday. . . . more Stanislaw Lem A Polish satirical and philosophical science fiction writer, Stanislaw Lem was born on September 12, 1921, to the family of a wealthy laryngologist in Lwow (now known as Lvov, Ukraine). By his own admission in the autobiographical Wyzoki Zamek (High Castle), he was "a monster" in his childhood, terrorizing those around him, including his parents, Samuel Lem and Sabina (nee Woller), though this merely came from his playfulness and resistance towards authority. A voracious reader, his earliest childhood memories were of science and literature books, an interest that continued throughout his life. Many of his childhood attitudes, literary concerns, and personality have carried through into his current works. . . . more Jonathan Lethem Everything I write is informed by genre traditions, which I love deeply. At the same time, I don't think I've written without straining against genre boundaries, and I've often violated them outright. On February 19, 1964, Jonathan Allen Lethem was born in New York City. He grew up in Brooklyn, as well as in Kansas City. I grew up in a very borderline Brooklyn neighborhood. . . . So I definitely grew up in a world where my parents and their friends were living in the counterculture in the '70s. That very much shaped my perceptions, and I think it is detectable in my work in a lot of different ways. While growing up, Lethem read Bradbury, Asimov, and Dostoyevsky: "I started where everyone starts, or should start, with science fiction, by reading I, Robot and The Martian Chronicles." . . . more Joanna Russ Feminism is precious to me. That's why I hate seeing it become a new lifestyle for middle class, career-minded couples or an improvement in certain men's public manners. I have seen feminism turn all too often into an advancement club for middle-managerial, white, professional women. Joanna Russ, born in 1937, is credited by critics with being the writer who brought lesbian and feminist issues into science fiction. Her career began in 1959 when she published "Nor Custom State," in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. However, her work did not achieve particular notoriety until the 1970s. In general, critics have especially hailed Russ for her tough female protagonists and she is given credit for the rise of action adventure novels that are centered around women rather than men. . . . more   e-mail Dr. Youngquist