Franz Rottensteiner
Franz Rottensteiner ( born January 18, 1942 in Waidmannsfeld, Lower Austria ) is an Austrian journalist and critic in the field of science fiction and fantasy.
He studied journalism, English and History at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate in 1969. After nine years in the army he was around 15 years as a librarian and editor at the Austrian Institute for Building Research in Vienna. He also supervised the edition in several fantastic book series. In the book series of the science fiction world in the Insel-Verlag, he published from 1971 to 1975 authors such as Herbert W. Franke, Stanislaw Lem, Philip K. Dick, Kobo Abe, Cordwainer Smith, Brian W. Aldiss and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, often for the first time in German language.
In 1973 he published in New York an anthology of European science fiction under the title View From Another Shore, with the U.S. reader authors such as Stanislaw Lem, Josef Nesvadba, Gerard Klein and Jean -Pierre Andrevon were first introduced; this compilation was published in German as view from the other side.
In Paul Zsolnay Verlag launched in 1975 the book series The fantastic novels to offer authors such as Leo Perutz and Alexander Lernet- Holenia a re-release option; Rottensteiner supervised this series to 1982 and has published 27 volumes, including in addition to the above-mentioned authors reprints of Anatole France, Karel Capek, Paul Busson and Otto F. Beer, as well as first editions of Max Ehrlich, Guy Bungendore or Peter Straub. The eight ten-volume H. G. Wells Edition Zsolnay was also cared for by him; 1979 to 1985 he made available in this edition of six previously untranslated novels of famous Britons.
1980-1998 he worked as consultants Fantastic Library by Suhrkamp Verlag, which brought it to about three hundred and sixty paperbacks. He is the editor of 50 anthologies, authored two picture books, The Science Fiction Book ( 1975) and The Fantasy Book ( 1978) and worked on numerous encyclopedias of science fiction and fantasy. 1973 to 1986 he gave the book series Polaris out the fantastic texts and secondary literature gathered in ten episodes, and 1978-1982 collections with ghost stories from Poland, Austria, England, North America and the South Pacific. From 1989 to 1997 he was with Michael Koseler editor of the loose-leaf edition of works foreman by the utopian and fantastic literature.
An intense, 1969 -onset correspondence with the then largely unknown Stanislaw Lem led to a long friendship; Rottensteiner was subsequently Lem's literary agent (except for Germany ) until 1995, when the Polish author sued his agent ( and lost the case ).
Rottensteiner since 1963, editor of the literary magazine Quarber Mercury, the leading periodical in German-speaking countries for the critical and theoretical discussion of fantastic literature. Occasion of the release of the 100 number, he was awarded the 2004 Kurd - Laßwitz price.