Bertil Mårtensson


Bertil Mårtensson was a Swedish author of science fiction, crime fiction and fantasy and also an academic philosopher. He was assistant professor at Umeå University, where he was also chair of the department from 1988–93, and at Lund University.

Biography

Since his youth, Mårtensson wrote mainly science fiction short stories and novels, and a lengthy fantasy work in three volumes published in 1979-83 and in a revised edition in 1997.
His work has in style and themes been compared by Swedish critics to those of Clifford D. Simak, Theodore Sturgeon, Arabian Nights and J. R. R. Tolkien. The Scandinavian flavour has also been emphasized. He wrote fiction with the Scandinavian type of troll, as in Ibsen & Grieg's Peer Gynt and In the Hall of the Mountain King, or the trolls of John Bauer.
He began his career as a highly active science fiction fan, co-editing Science Fiction Forum with John-Henri Holmberg and Mats Linder in the 1960s, and later by himself in the 1990s. He also contributed many short stories and articles to Swedish science fiction fanzines, and was Guest of Honor at several national science fiction conventions.
His first novel, Detta är verkligheten, was awarded at the Paneuropean convention in Trieste in 1972, and has been translated into Danish and Czech. He also published a series of science fiction, science fantasy and fantasy novels, and published science fiction stories in English, German, French, Danish, Spanish, and Italian. Mårtensson also wrote four police procedural crime novels in the late 1970s, the second of which was awarded the Sherlock Award for best Swedish crime novel of 1977.
As a philosopher, he published a textbook of formal logic and an introduction to the philosophy of science. His main interests were cognition, concept-formation, and the growth of knowledge. He was Associate Professor emeritus at Lund University.
After his retirement he continued to write and published essays about science fiction and some short stories.

Books