Barry N. Malzberg reflects back over four decades of writing science fiction, giving an insider's view of the field during that time which few can match, both for its authority and for the sharp and witty way he describes the highs and lows of one science fiction writer's career. He also writes vivid profiles of writers and editors, ranging from the titans who transformed the field, such as John W. Campbell, to once popular writers who are now all but forgotten, such as Hugo Award-winner Mark Clifton. "If there is any particular cachet to my perspective," he writes, "it comes because my career is, perhaps more than some, metaphoric." The original, shorter version of the book was widely praised, as by the San Francisco Chronicle: "Contains literary criticism ranging over the whole history of the field. . . . this is a mordant, brilliant book," and by The Washington Post Book World: "Malzberg makes persuasively clear that the best of science fiction should be valued as literature and nothing else." Breakfast in the Ruins is an indispensable book for every science fiction reader.

About the Author

Barry N. Malzberg immediately attracted attention in the science fiction field in 1968 with the publication of his novelette "Final War." One of science fiction's most prolific writers, he has written over seventy-five novels in the field, as well as novels of suspense, crime fiction, and dark humor, both under his own name and under a number of pseudonyms. He has also written over four hundred short stories, in similarly varied fields. As an editor, he was in charge of Amazing Stories and Fantastic and other magazines, and has produced a number of anthologies. A winner of the John W. Campbell Award and the Locus Award, he has been nominated several times for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and was the Shubert Foundation Playwriting Fellow at Syracuse University. He is a classical violinist and has performed in such orchestras as the North Jersey Symphony Orchestra. He lives in Teaneck, NJ, with his wife.