Astronomers Who Write Science Fiction

Abstract

This one page document lists astronomers -- alive and deceased -- who write science fiction. For each astronomer there is a one-line description, either about the kind of fiction he or she writes or a specific book or story collection that interested readers might start with. I welcome suggestions for other professional astronomers to include in this list.

Full text

Astronomers Who Write Science Fiction
by Andrew Fraknoi (Foothill College) August 2016
1. Living
Gregory Benford (U. of California, Irvine; plasma physicist) Try Timescape or his Galactic
Center series
David Brin (PhD in space science) Try The Uplift War series or Existence
Michael Brotherton (U. of Wyoming) Try his novels: Spider Star and Star Dragon
Donald Clayton (Clemson University) wrote The Joshua Factor
David L. Clements (Imperial College, London) writes short stories
David deGraff (Alfred University) writes short stories
Andrew Fraknoi (Foothill College) writes short stories; first in Building Red anthology
Carl Frederick (not in academia, works doing AI software) writes short stories
Kevin Grazier (formerly at JPL; writes screenplays, non-fiction on SF)
William Hartmann (Planetary Science Institute) Novel: Mars Underground
Steve B. Howell (NASA Ames; Kepler mission) See the short story collection he edited
on Kepler planets: A Kepler’s Dozen
Yoji Kondo (NASA Goddard; writes as Eric Kotani) Start with Supernova
Geoffrey Landis (NASA) writes short stories and one novel, Mars Crossing
Alastair Reynolds (was at ESA) Start with: Revelation: Space or Beyond the Aquila Rift
William Rossow (NASA) was coauthor of Lear’s Daughters sequence of novels
Robert Scherrer (Vanderbilt University) writes short stories
Stanley Schmidt (Physics PhD, taught college astronomy, became full time writer and
editor of SF) Recommend Newton and the Quasi-Apple
Michael Shara (Amer. Mus. of Nat. Hist.) writes short stories with Jack McDevitt
Alan Smale (NASA Goddard) writes mostly alternative history, not hard SF
Diane Turnshek (St. Vincent College, etc.) writes short stories
J. Craig Wheeler (University of Texas) wrote The Krone Experiment
2. Deceased
Camille Flammarion (astronomer and mystic) wrote novels and short stories
Fred Hoyle wrote novels and short stories; try The Black Cloud or Oct. 1 is Too Late
Johannes Kepler (sort of) Novel: Somnium
Simon Newcomb wrote one novel, His Wisdom, the Defender
Robert Richardson (wrote as Philip Latham) both novels and short stories
Carl Sagan wrote only one novel, Contact, which was made into a film as well
Charles Sheffield (space science) was prolific; try The Compleat McAndrews or Between the
Strokes of Night
Harry Clement Stubbs (wrote as Hal Clement; BS in astro, Harvard; masters in chem.)

A new anthology Science Fiction by Scientists, edited by M. Brotherton, is coming in late
2016 from Springer Publishing, with stories by several astronomers