H. Bruce Franklin

Howard Bruce Franklin was an American cultural historian and scholar. He received top awards for his lifetime scholarship in fields as diverse as American studies, science fiction, prison literature and marine ecology. He wrote or edited twenty books and three hundred professional articles and participated in making four films. His main areas of academic focus were science fiction, prison literature, environmentalism, the Vietnam War and its aftermath, and American cultural history. He was instrumental in helping to debunk false public speculation that Vietnam was continuing to hold prisoners of war. He helped to establish science fiction writing as a genre worthy of serious academic study. In 2008, the American Studies Association awarded him the Pearson-Bode Prize for Lifetime Achievement in American Studies.