John Steinbeck with "Tortilla Flat" (1935), a novel set in post-war Monterey, California, that won the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. It portrays the adventures of a group of classless and usually homeless young men in Monterey after World War I, just before U.S. prohibition. They are portrayed in ironic comparison to mythic knights on a quest and reject nearly all the standard mores of American society in enjoyment of a dissolute life devoted to wine, lust, camaraderie and petty theft. In presenting the 1962 Nobel Prize to Steinbeck, the Swedish Academy cited "spicy and comic tales about a gang of "paisanos",
John Boyd (author) John Boyd (author) John Boyd was the primary pen-name of Boyd Bradfield Upchurch (October 3, 1919 – June 8, 2013), an American science fiction author. His best known work is his first science fiction novel, "The Last Starship from Earth", published in 1968. Boyd wrote eleven science fiction novels, five other novels, and one biography. The majority of his novels were published by US publisher Weybright & Talley, with later ones appearing from SF publishers. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He died on June 8, 2013. Boyd has written on science fiction, giving a definition of the genre as