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(1951– ). American writer.
Provided
voiceover commentary for DVD: Jerome Bixby's The Man from Earth (Richard
Schenkman 2007).
Consultant
to producer "H. G. Wells" (documentary) (1995), episode of Biography;
"Stationed in the Stars" (documentary) (2000), episode of Nova;
Prophets of Science Fiction (tv documentary) (Dan Levitt 2006).
For those few people who might be interested:
to date Westfahl has written six books—Cosmic Engineers: A Study of Hard
Science Fiction (1966), Islands in the Sky: The Space Station Theme in
Science Fiction Literature (1996, 2009), The Mechanics of Wonder: The
Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction (1998), Science Fiction,
Children's Literature, and Popular Culture: Coming of Age in Fantasyland (2000),
Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction (2007), and The
Other Side of the Sky: An Annotated Bibliography of Space Stations in Science
Fiction, 1869-1993 (2009)—edited four others—Space and Beyond: The
Frontier Theme in Science Fiction (2000), Science Fiction Quotations:
From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits (2005), the three-volume The
Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and
Wonders (2005), and Frank McConnell's The Science of Fiction and the
Fiction of Science: Collected Essays on SF Storytelling and the Gnostic
Imagination (2009) —and co-edited eleven more more—Immortal Engines:
Life Extension and Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy (1996), Science
Fiction and Market Realities (1996), Foods of the Gods: Eating and the
Eaten in Fantasy and Science Fiction (1996), Nursery Realms: Children in
the Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror (1999), Science
Fiction, Canonization, Marginalization, and the Academy (2002), Unearthly
Visions: Approaches to Science Fiction and Fantasy Art (2002), Worlds
Enough and Time: Explorations of Time in Science Fiction and Fantasy
(2002), No Cure for the Future: Disease and Medicine in Science Fiction and
Fantasy (2002), World Weavers: Globalization, Science Fiction, and the
Cybernetic Revolution (2005), Science Fiction and the Two Cultures:
Essays on Bridging the Gap between the Sciences and the Humanities (2009),
and Science Fiction and the Prediction of the Future (2011). As
outlets for his restless energy if nothing else, additional books are sure to
follow.
In addition, he served as a Consultant Editor
of John Clute and John Grant's award-winning The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
(1997) and contributed entries to that volume and numerous other reference
works, including The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (2003) and The
Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science (2004). His articles and
reviews have appeared in numerous print periodicals— Extrapolation, Florida
Today, Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, Interzone,
Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society, The Journal of the
Fantastic in the Arts, The Los Angeles Times, Million: The
Magazine about Popular Fiction, Monad: Essays on Science Fiction, The
New York Review of Science Fiction, Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary
Genres, The Report: The Fiction Writer's Magazine, Science
Fiction Eye, The Science Fiction Research Association Review, Science
Fiction Studies, and The Western Historical Quarterly—and websites—The
Internet Review of Science Fiction, Locus Online, Nova Online, Salon Futura, SF
Signal, and Strange Horizons. He has also written essays for over two dozen
critical anthologies, and translations of his work have been published in the
Japanese magazine Eureka, the Spanish magazines BEM: Ciencia Ficción
y Fantasia and Stalker: Cine Fantastico, the Brazilian magazine Papêra
Uirandê, and the Czech magazine Ikarie. In his writings, he displays
an appreciative interest in a wide variety of science fiction and fantasy texts
and films, ranging from the very best to the very worst, and an unusual
willingness to criticize writers, filmmakers, and scholars who in some way fall
short of his standards, leading to inaccurate charges that this inoffensive,
mild-mannered man is vituperative and mean-spirited. Tolerated if not embraced
by the science fiction community, he earned the Science Fiction Research
Association's 2003 Pilgrim Award for his lifetime contributions to science
fiction and fantasy scholarship, and his Science Fiction Quotations was
nominated for a 2005 Hugo Award.
Since none of his science fiction activities
provide very much in the way of income, Westfahl has continued to teach at the
University of La Verne, following his recent retirement from the University of
California, Riverside, while working on five forthcoming books and other
projects. Since his daughter Allison and son-in-law Steven now live in New York
City, and his son Jeremy is in graduate school at the University of California,
Irvine, only his wife Lynne must now put up with his long hours of feverish
writing on the computer, and she continues to urge him to stop wasting his time
on all this nonsense and start writing Star Trek novels so he can
finally earn some real money.
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