Charles Sheffield

Charles Sheffield ( born June 25, 1935 in Hull, England; † 2 November 2002 in Silver Spring, Maryland), was a British-American mathematician, physicist and award-winning science fiction author. He was president of the American Astronautical Society and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America ( SFWA ).

  • 2.1 The Proteus trilogy
  • 2.2 The McAndrew Chronicles
  • 2.3 Chan Dalton
  • 2.4 The Heritage Cycle
  • 2.5 The dark universe
  • 2.6 Jupiter
  • 2.7 Fire Attack
  • 2.8 Single Novels
  • 2.9 Story Collections
  • 2:10 As editor
  • 2.11 Property Books

Life and work

Scientist

Sheffield studied at Cambridge University mathematics and physics. The mid-sixties he emigrated to the United States. At the American University in Washington, D.C. he received his doctorate with a topic for theoretical physics.

After that, he served as a lecturer at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, worked as a researcher and consultant for NASA and as a counselor for the Office of Technology Assessment of the Congress and as an expert for the U.S. Congress and the Senate of the United States. He was also an employee and later a board member of Earth Satellite Corporation. In addition, he was a member and president of the American Astronautical Society temporarily, a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the British Interplanetary Society and the International Astronomical Union.

Since 1962, he has published nearly one hundred scientific and popular articles and several non-fiction books, including on issues such as nuclear physics, gravitational field analysis and general relativity.

Science fiction author

Inspired by the reading of the novel Ringworld by Larry Niven Charles Sheffield began in 1977 also self-publish science fiction, beginning with the narrative song What The Sirens Sang in the magazine Galaxy.

Although Charles Sheffield never denied his background as a scientist and therefore the technology-oriented Hard science fiction has been allocated, but the center of his works were more the downfall of civilization, the decline in values ​​and nuclear disasters and the resulting associated human tragedies. In all, he wrote some forty books and over a hundred stories.

Sheffield published in 1978 the novel The new Proteus ( Sight of Proteus ), which until 1995 was followed by three more novels whose plot is set in the same universe. His second novel, A network of thousands of stars ( The Web Between the Worlds ) is from an elevator into space, an idea that in Arthur C. Clarke 's novel elevator to the stars ( The Fountains of Paradise ), the book a few months before Sheffield published, had been treated. Since Sheffield saw exposed to the accusation of plagiarism, he sent a copy of the manuscript to Clarke, however, no objection to the publication arose and described in an open letter to the SFWA, the similarities of both novels as an interesting coincidence.

Charles Sheffield, between 1984 and 1986 President of the SFWA, received for his short novel Georgia on My Mind in 1994 both the Hugo, and the Nebula Award, after he had in 1992, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award received for his novel Brother to Dragons.

He was married to the science fiction author Nancy Kress in 1998 and died at the age of 67 from a brain tumor.

Works

The Proteus trilogy

  • Vol 1: Sight of Proteus. 1978
  • Vol 2: Proteus Unbound. 1988
  • Vol 3: Proteus in the Underworld. 1995
  • Vol 1-2: Combined Proteus. 1994 ( anthology )

The McAndrew Chronicles

Here are anthologies of interconnected short stories. After The Compleat McAndrew Sheffield published yet another short story McAndrew McAndrew and THE LAW, which appeared posthumously in 2004.

  • Vol 1: The McAndrew Chronicles. 1983
  • Vol 2: One Man's Universe: The Continuing Chronicles of Arthur Morton McAndrew. 1993
  • Vol 1-2: The Compleat McAndrew. 2000 ( anthology )

Chan Dalton

  • The Nimrod Hunt. 1986 ( originally conceived as a single novel)
  • Vol 1: The Mind Pool. 1993 ( revised version of The Nimrod Hunt)
  • Vol 2: The Spheres of Heaven. 2001

The Heritage Cycle

  • Vol 1: Summertide. 1990
  • Vol 2: Divergence. 1991
  • Vol 3: Transcendence. 1992
  • Vol 4: Convergence. 1997
  • Vol 5: Resurgence. 2002
  • Vol 1-2: Convergent Series. 1998 ( anthology )
  • Vol 3-4: Transvergence: From Out of the Depths of Time. 1999 ( anthology )

The Dark Universe

  • Vol 1: Cold as Ice. 1992
  • Vol 2: The Ganymede Club. 1995
  • Vol 3: Dark as Day. 2002

Jupiter

  • Vol 1: Higher Education. 1995 ( with Jerry Pournelle )
  • Vol 2: The Billion Dollar Boy. 1997
  • Vol 3: Putting Up Roots. 1997
  • Vol 4: The Cyborg from Earth. 1998

Fire Attack

  • Vol 1: Aftermath. 1998
  • Vol 2: Starfire. 1999

Single novels

  • The Web Between the Worlds. 1979
  • The Selkie. 1982 ( with David Bischoff )
  • My Brother's Keeper. 1982
  • Between the Strokes of Night. 1985
  • Trader 's World. 1988
  • Brother to Dragons. 1992
  • Godspeed. 1993
  • Dancing With Myself. 1993
  • The Judas Cross. 1994 ( with David Bischoff )
  • Tomorrow and Tomorrow. 1997
  • The Amazing Dr. Darwin. 2002

Story Collections

  • Vectors, 1979
  • Hidden Variables, 1981
  • Erasmus MA, 1982
  • Dancing with Myself, 1993
  • The Future Quartet: Earth in the Year 2042, 1994 ( with Ben Bova, Frederik Pohl and Jerry Pournelle )
  • Georgia on My Mind: And Other Places, 1995
  • Convergent Series, 1998
  • The Lady Vanishes: And Other Oddities of Nature, 2002

As editor

  • How to Save the World, 1995

Non-fiction

  • Earthwatch: A Survey of the World from Space, 1981
  • Man on Earth: How Civilization and Technology Changed the Face of the World -A Survey from Space, 1983
  • Space Careers, 1984
  • The World of 2044: Technological Development and the Future of Society, 1994
  • Borderlands of Science, 1999
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