Charles Sheffield
Born(1935-06-25)25 June 1935
Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, England[1]
Died2 November 2002(2002-11-02) (aged 67)
Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S.[1]
OccupationWriter, scientist
NationalityBritish
Alma materSt John's College, Cambridge
Period1977–2002 (fiction)
1962–? (professional)[1]
GenreScience fiction
Notable awards
  • John W. Campbell Memorial Award
    1992 Brother to Dragons
  • Nebula Award
    1993 Georgia on My Mind
  • Hugo Award
    1994 Georgia on My Mind
Spouse
Children4

Charles Sheffield (25 June 1935 – 2 November 2002),[1] was an English-born mathematician, physicist and science-fiction writer who served as a President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the American Astronautical Society.[2]

His novel The Web Between the Worlds, featuring the construction of a space elevator, was published almost simultaneously with Arthur C. Clarke's novel on the subject, The Fountains of Paradise - a coincidence that amused them both. Excerpts from both Sheffield's The Web Between the Worlds and Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise have appeared recently in a space-elevator anthology, Towering Yarns.[3]

Sheffield served as Chief Scientist of Earth Satellite Corporation, a company that processed remote-sensing satellite data. The association gave rise to many technical papers and two popular non-fiction books, Earthwatch (1981) and Man on Earth (1983), both collections of false-colour and enhanced images of Earth from space.

He won the Nebula and Hugo awards for his 1993 novelette "Georgia on My Mind" and the 1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for his 1992 novel Brother to Dragons.[4]

Sheffield was Toastmaster at BucConeer, the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore.

Before he died, he was writing a column for the Baen Books web-site; his last column concerned the discovery of the brain tumour that led to his death.

Personal life

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Charles Sheffield attended St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a Double First in Mathematics and Physics. During his studies he met and later married his first wife, Sarah Sanderson, whose death in 1977 became the catalyst for his writing career. They had a son, Charles Christopher ("Kit"), and a daughter, Ann Elizabeth. The family soon after moved to the United States, where Sheffield began working in the field of practical physics, a career that would lead him to a consultancy with NASA and the role of chief scientist at the Earth Satellite Corporation in Washington.

In response to the traumatic grief from the death of his wife Sarah to cancer (in 1977), Sheffield began a second career as a science fiction author, winning both the prestigious Nebula and Hugo awards and serving as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (1984–1986). He maintained two successful careers, consulting for various scientific corporations while earning fame for his hard science fiction. During this period he lived in Washington, DC, and met and married Linda Zall, a fellow scientist, and had two daughters, Elizabeth Rose and Victoria Jane.

At the time of his death, he was married to writer Nancy Kress, and lived with his children in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Fiction

Series

Behrooz Wolf

  1. Sight of Proteus, Ace September 1978; revised, NEL January 1989 – book version of the following linked stories:
    • "Sight of Proteus", Amazing May 1978
    • "Legacy", Galaxy June 1977
    • "The Grooves of Change", reprinted in Amazing Feb. 1979
  2. Proteus Unbound, Analog August 1988 / NEL Jan. 1989 / Ballantine Del Rey March 1989
  3. Proteus in the Underworld, Baen May 1995

Volumes 1 and 2 were reprinted in omnibus version Proteus Manifest (SFBC July 1989) and later in a revised omnibus version Proteus Combined (Baen May 1994)

The Heritage Universe

  1. Summertide, Ballantine Del Rey Feb. 1990 – loosely based on
    • "Summertide", Destinies, August 1981
  2. Divergence, Ballantine Del Rey, February 1991
  3. Transcendence, Ballantine Del Rey, April 1992
  4. Convergence, Baen April 1997
  5. Resurgence, Baen November 2002

Volumes 1, 2 and 3 were reprinted in omnibus version The Heritage Universe (SFBC October 1992); Volumes 1 and 2 were reprinted in revised omnibus version Convergent Series (Baen October 1998); Volumes 3 and 4 were reprinted in revised omnibus version Transvergence (Baen November 1999)

Cold as Ice

  1. Cold as Ice, Tor June 1992
  2. The Ganymede Club, Tor December 1995
  3. Dark as Day, Tor March 2002

Chan Dalton

  1. The Mind Pool, Baen, April 1993 – revised and expanded from an earlier version:
  2. The Spheres of Heaven, Baen, February 2001

Jupiter (Young Adult Novels)

  1. Higher Education (with Jerry Pournelle), Analog February 1996 / Tor June 1996 – revised and expanded from
    • "Higher Education", Charles Sheffield & Jerry Pournelle, Future Quartet: Earth in the Year 2042: A Four-Part Invention, Ben Bova, Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle and Charles Sheffield, AvoNova 1994
  2. The Billion Dollar Boy, Tor April 1997
  3. Putting Up Roots, Tor September 1997
  4. The Cyborg from Earth, Tor March 1998

Supernova Alpha

Arthur Morton McAndrew

The Compleat McAndrew was preceded by two earlier versions: The McAndrew Chronicles, (Tor, June 1983) and One Man’s Universe (Tor, December 1993); also, Sheffield later wrote an additional McAndrew story:

Waldo Burmeister and Henry Carver, Space Attorneys

Sheffield wrote about this series:

In the late 1970s when I was just starting to write fiction, my young children (young back then, grown-ups now) ordered me to produce stories about every funny or disgusting thing in the world. They made the list for me. It had on it items of comic low appeal to them—sewage, visits to the dentist, mushrooms, fat aunts, opera singers, flatulence (I think they used a different word), comic Germans and Italians, fad diets, pigs, morticians, and head lice. Not an easy assignment, but I did my best. Over the years I have published ten politically incorrect stories tackling one or more of the listed topics... Together they form what I think of as my "sewage" series. They feature my two favourite lawyers, Henry Carver and Waldo Burmeister, and they are depressingly easy to write.[5]

  1. Space Suits (Fox Acre Press, August 2001); a collection of linked stories:
    • "Marconi, Mattin, Maxwell", Galaxy May 1977; read online
    • "Dinsdale Dissents", Galaxy July 1977
    • "The Deimos Plague", Stellar No. 4, ed. Judy-Lynn del Rey, Ballantine 1978; read online
    • "Perfectly Safe, Nothing to Worry About", Galaxy August 1977
    • "The Decline of Hyperion", Analog mid-Dec. 1992
    • "The Dalmatian of Faust", Galaxy September 1978
    • "A Certain Place in History", Galaxy October 1977
    • "Parasites Lost", Proteus: Voices for the 80s, ed. Richard S. McEnroe, Ace May 1981
    • "Fifteen-Love on the Dead Man’s Chest", Amazing May 1993
    • "With the Knight Male", The Chick is in the Mail, ed. Esther Friesner, Baen October 2000
    • "Space Opera", Analog mid-December 1988

Erasmus Darwin (Grandfather of Charles Darwin)

  1. The Amazing Dr. Darwin, Baen June 2002 – a collection of linked stories:
    • "The Devil of Malkirk", F&SF June 1982; read online
    • "The Heart of Ahura Mazda", AHMM November 1988
    • "The Phantom of Dunwell Cove", Asimov's August 1995
    • "The Lambeth Immortal", AHMM June 1979
    • "The Solborne Vampire", AHMM January 1998
    • "The Treasure of Odirex", Fantastic July 1978
    • Appendix: Erasmus Magister: Fact and Fiction, Erasmus Magister, Ace 1982

The Amazing Dr. Darwin was preceded by an earlier version, Erasmus Magister (Ace, June 1982); also, Sheffield later wrote an additional Erasmus Darwin story:

Other novels

Other collections

Anthologies

Short stories

Nonfiction

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Sheffield, Charles". Revised 2 April 2015. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (sf-encyclopedia.com). Retrieved 2015-07-20. Entry by 'JC', John Clute.
  2. ^ American Astronautical Society "History of AAS: 1974 to Present". Retrieved 4 June 2009. Archived 18 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ Clarke, Arthur; Sheffield, Charles; Crilley, Paul; Resnick, Mike (22 December 2017). Towering Yarns: Space Elevator Short Stories. Volume 1 of Towering Yarns. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 9781981495207. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
  4. ^ "Campbell Award". Revised 30 May 2017. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. Retrieved 2015-07-20.
  5. ^ Afterword to "Fifteen-Love on the Dead Man's Chest" in Georgia on My Mind and Other Places, Tor 1995.

External links

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