"Dan O'Bannon" isn't a household name, but the filmmaker had a big hand in the screenplays for two pretty amazing sci-fi movies:

AICN has the sad news that O'Bannon just passed away (The Guardian says it happened yesterday). O'Bannon's dry, cantankerous, smart interview segments are my favorite parts of the excellent Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set, in which he (sometimes happily, sometimes grumpily, but always passionately) remembers what it was like to crank out the script for the first Alien. Those interviews are definitely worth checking out, if you haven't already, and you can read his original screenplay for Alien here.