Rest in Peace, Ben. Thanks for the memories..................
Posted on 12/01/2020 7:23:51 AM PST by Borges
Scientist, Hugo Award winner, and prolific science fiction author and editor Ben Bova passed away on Sunday, November 29, 2020 at the age of 88, Tor.com is able to confirm. The author of more than one hundred books, Bova also edited some of the genre’s best-known publications and served as the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Word of Bova’s passing first came from Kathryn Brusco, who revealed that Bova had passed due to complications from COVID-19 and a stroke.
Born in 1932, Bova brought experience to the science fiction genre that few authors could match: he worked as a technical editor for the U.S.’s Project Vanguard, the first effort on the part of the country to launch a satellite into space in 1958. Bova went on to work as a science writer for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, which built the heat shields for the Apollo 11 module, putting man on the Moon and ensuring that science fiction would continue to increasingly define the future.
It was around that time that Bova began writing and publishing science fiction. He published his first novel, The Star Conquerors, in 1959, and followed up with dozens of others in the following years, as well as numerous short stories that appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Analog Science Fact and Fiction, Galaxy Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and others.
In 1971, he took over the helm of Analog following the death of its long-running editor, John W. Campbell Jr. — a huge task, given Campbell’s influence on the genre to that point. According to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Bova doubled down on the publication’s tendencies towards technological realism and Hard SF, “but considerably broadened its horizons.” While there, he published notable stories such as Joe Haldeman’s Hero (which became The Forever War), and earned the Hugo Award for Best Editor for numerous consecutive years before stepping down in 1977. From there, he became the first editor of Omni Magazine until 1982, and consulted on television shows such as The Starlost and Land of the Lost.
Bova’s best-known works involved plausible sciences about humanity’s expansion into the universe, looking at how we might adapt to live in space with novels such as 1992’s Mars, about the first human expedition to the red planet. He followed that novel up with additional installments, forming the Grand Tour series, which explored all of the solar system’s major bodies. The latest installment, Uranus, was published in July, and was scheduled to be the first of a trilogy. The second installment, Neptune, is scheduled for release next year. The ESF notes that “the straightforwardness of Bova’s agenda for humanity may mark him as a figure from an earlier era; but the arguments he laces into sometimes overloaded storylines are arguments it is important, perhaps absolutely vital, to make.”
Rest in Peace, Ben. Thanks for the memories..................
Omni was excellent under his editorship. I read it in the late 70s as a kid, and no, it was not age-appropriate for me to be reading it then.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
All the authors I liked the best have gone. I miss old school science fiction.
Omni magazine bump.
They don’t make them like that anymore.
Godspeed, Mr. Bova.
The sheer volume of his work is incredible. RIP.
He died from a stroke, so add him to the Covid count.
Started reading his stuff when I was about 8 years old. RIP to a great visionary.
Really enjoyed his stories in Analog growing up, as well as his Orion series.
88, and had a stroke, but “complications from COVID-19” is definitely what killed him. </sarcasm>
“All the authors I liked the best have gone. I miss old school science fiction.”
I re-read them. Reading Andre Norton now.
Thank you God for letting us have this man for as long as you did. He’s earned a seat at your table.
Guess which will get the blame.
A lot of greats have left us.
“Red tape has killed more people than bullets...” ― Ben Bova, Millennium
The first Omni e-magazine was published on CompuServe in 1986 and the magazine switched to a purely online presence in 1996.[2][3] It ceased publication abruptly in late 1997, following the death of co-founder Kathy Keeton; activity on the magazine’s website ended the following April.[4][5]” ...”
“The magazine was initially edited by Frank Kendig, who left several months after the magazine’s launch. Ben Bova, who was hired as Fiction Editor, was promoted to Editor, leaving the magazine in 1981.”
One of my favorite science plausible/science fiction writers.
Well crud, I think that only one of the old timers left is Larry Niven.
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