Richard D. Erlich is a professor in English at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he teaches courses in science fiction, science-fiction film,  Shakespeare, Shakespeare and film, early English literature and writing. He collaborated with Thomas P. Dunn in editing the anthologies TheMechanical God: Machines in Science Fiction (1982) and Clockwork Worlds: Mechanized Environments in SF (1983). He has published many articles on literature and SF.

Donna Ross Hooley is an Assistant Professor of English at Ogeechee Technical College in Statesboro, Ga. She taught high school in Darien, Ga, before receiving her M.A. from Georgia Southern College in 1982. She taught at Georgia Southern University from 1982- 2000, and was GSU’s Wells-Warren Professor of the Year 2000. She is the author of two textbooks and has published several poems, and is a Big Fan of Brian Aldiss.

Joseph Milicia has a Ph.D. from Columbia University and is currently Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Sheboygan – where he teaches a course in SF Film and Television; he also writes on SF forThe New York Review of Science Fiction. The essay here is reproduced from the Gregg Press hardcover edition of Starswarm.