Rainer Eisfeld

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(April 4, 1941 – )

Rainer Eisfeld is a German academic and fanhistorian. He was active in international fandom in the late 1950s (so far little has been researched here in German sources about his fanac there). He was a founder member of the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) as an "exchange member" in his role as Foreign Correspondent, Science Fiction Club Europa. He is the subject of chapter 29 of Rob Hansen's 2023 book Beyond Fandom (the expanded version).

Eisfeld attended Loncon in 1957. Walt Willis wrote in Science Fiction Parade #6: 

This 16-year-old boy, speaking in a strange language in a country he was visiting for the first time, spoke so fluently, interestingly and sincerely that in fact he received a louder ovation than any of his predecessors, even Campbell himself.

Similar praise was shared by Forrest J. Ackerman; Wikipedia complements this saying that still in the 1950s (and so his teens), Eisfeld translated two A. E. van Vogt novels, under a shared pseudonym Armin von Eichenberg. Eisfeld's bibliography, as (currently) covered by ISFDB, contains fanzine articles including in German from 1957–9, with an abrupt cutoff, likely as he went to the university: he gained a PhD and from 1974 to 2006 retirement was a professor of political science in Osnabrück, repeatedly visiting Los Angeles.

But if he ever gafiated, he came back in the mid-1980s at the latest, publishing again many articles in anthologies and magazines, afterwords to SF novels etc. Beside many academic titles on political science and a more popular history of Wernher von Braun's involvement with Nazism, he wrote these books of SF interest:

  • Marsfieber. Aufbruch zum roten Planeten. Phantasie und Wirklichkeit (Mars Fever. Departure to the Red Planet. Fantasy and Reality; 2003), with the leading pro Wolfgang Jeschke; described by Hansen as "lavishly illustrated coffee-table book"
  • Die Zukunft in der Tasche. Science Fiction und SF-Fandom in der Bundesrepublik. Die Pionierjahre 1955–1960 (Future in Your Pocket. SF and Fandom in the West Germany. The Pioneer Years 1955–60, 2007)
  • Abschied von Weltraumopern. Science Fiction als Zeitbild und Zeitkritik. Kommentare aus 25 Jahren (Farewell to Space Operas. SF as an Image and Critique of the Times. Comments from 25 Years, 2011, foreword Jeschke again)
  • Zwischen Barsoom und Peenemünde: Von den eingebildeten "Landschaften" des Mars bis zu den zerbröckelnden Mythen der V-2-Konstrukteure (Between Barsoom and Peenemünde: From the Imagined "Landscapes" of Mars to the Crumbled Myths of the V-2 Designers, 2014), another collection of essays, partly on SF, including leftovers from the 1950s history above

Eisfeld or his works above were also written about by the well-known SF critic and publisher Franz Rottensteiner in 2011 and 2014. The Festschrift Visionen & Wirklichkeit. Rainer Eisfeld zum 80. Geburtstag (Visions and Reality. To RE for His 80th Birthday, 2021) contains at least two SF stories and three genre-related essays.

Person 1941—
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