Ben Bova

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Ben Bova

Ben Bova in 1974
Born November 8, 1932 (1932-11-08) (age 75)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Occupation Novelist, short story author, essayist, journalist
Genres Science fiction
Official website

Benjamin William Bova (born November 8, 1932) is an American science fiction author and editor.

Contents

[edit] Personal life

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Ben Bova was born on November 8, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1953, while attending Temple University, he married Rosa Cucinotta, they had a son and a daughter. He would later divorce Rosa in 1974. In that same year he married Barbara Berson Rose.[1]

Bova is an avid fencer and organized Avco Everett's fencing club. Bova is also an environmentalist of the Ansel Adams variety and met Adams by chance. Bova wants to conserve the Earth but rejects Luddism.

[edit] Professional Career

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Bova was a technical writer for Project Vanguard and later for Avco Everett in the 1960s when they did research in lasers and fluid dynamics. It was there that he met Arthur R. Kantrowitz later of the Foresight Institute.

In 1971 he became editor of Analog Science Fiction after John W. Campbell's death; after leaving Analog, he went on to edit Omni Magazine during 1978-1982.

In 1974 he wrote the screenplay for an episode of the children's science fiction television series Land of the Lost entitled "The Search".

He was the science advisor for the failed television series The Starlost, leaving in disgust after the airing of the first episode; his novel The Starcrossed was loosely based on his experiences and featured a thinly veiled characterization of his friend and colleague Harlan Ellison. He dedicated the novel to "Cordwainer Bird", the pen name Harlan Ellison uses when he does not want to be associated with a television or film project.

Ben Bova is the President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past President of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA)

Bova went back to school in the '80s, earning an MA in communications in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1996.

Bova has drawn on these meetings and experiences to create fact and fiction writings rich with references to spaceflight, lasers, artificial hearts, nanotechnology, environmentalism, fencing and martial arts, photography and artists.

Bova is the author of over a hundred books, non-fiction as well as science fiction. In 2000, he was the Author Guest of Honor at the worldcon, Chicon 2000.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Collections

  • Forward in Time (1973)
  • Maxwell's Demons (1979)
  • E (1984)
  • The Astral Mirror (1985)
  • Prometheans (1986)
  • Battle Station (1987)
  • Future Crime (1990)
  • Challenges (1994)
  • The Future Quartet - Earth in the Year 2042 (1995)
  • Twice Seven (1998)

[edit] Exiles

  • Exiled from Earth (1971)
  • Flight of Exiles (1972)
  • End of Exile (1975)

[edit] Grand Tour

Ben Bova addressed the issue of chronology in this series on his website: "Such a chronology is difficult to compose, because many of the novels overlap one another in time. Mars and Moonrise, for example, overlap considerably. Given that caveat, here is an approximate time sequence for the Grand Tour novels. Remember, however, that any of these novels can be read completely independently of the others. There is no need to read the novels in any particular order."[2]

  • Powersat (2005)
  • Empire Builders (1993)
  • Mars (1992)
  • Moonrise (1996) (The Moonbase Saga, v. I)
  • Moonwar (1998) (The Moonbase Saga, v. II)
  • Return to Mars (1999)
  • The Precipice (2001) (The Asteroid Wars, v. 1)
  • Jupiter (2001)
  • The Rock Rats (2002) (The Asteroid Wars, v. 2)
  • The Aftermath (2007) (The Asteroid Wars, v. 4)
  • Saturn (2002)
  • Titan (2006), John W. Campbell Memorial Award
  • The Silent War (2004) (The Asteroid Wars, v. 3)
  • Mercury (2005)
  • Venus (2000)
  • Tales of the Grand Tour (2004) (short story collection. This work contains stories that span much of the timeline of the Grand Tour)
  • Mars Life (Out August 2008)
  • Sam Gunn
    • Sam Gunn, Unlimited (1993) (short story collection)
    • Sam Gunn Forever (1998) (short story collection)
    • Sam Gunn Omnibus (2007)

[edit] Non-series novels

  • The Weathermakers (1967)
  • Out of the Sun (1968)
  • Escape! (1969)
  • THX 1138 (with George Lucas) (1971) based on the film THX 1138
  • As on a Darkling Plain (1972)
  • The Winds of Altair (1983)
  • Privateers (1985) (Contains a character from the Grand Tour series, but the history is different, such as the Soviet Union still existing.)
  • When the Sky Burned (1972)
  • Gremlins, Go Home! (with Gordon Dickson) (1974)
  • The Starcrossed (1975)
  • City of Darkness (1976)
  • Millennium (1976)
  • The Multiple Man (1967)
  • Colony (1978)
  • Kinsman (1979)
  • Test of Fire (1982)
  • The Kinsman Saga (1987) Combines Millennium (1976) and Kinsman (1979). Contains introduction and narrative by Bova explaining the reworking of these two novels.
  • Peacekeepers (1988)
  • Cyberbooks (1989)
  • The Trikon Deception (with Bill Pogue) (1992)
  • Triumph (1993) Alternate history work set at the end of World War II in which Winston Churchill plots the assassination of Joseph Stalin, and in which Franklin D. Roosevelt lives past 1945. ISBN 0-312-85359-9
  • Death Dream (1994)
  • Brothers (1996)
  • The Green Trap (2006)

[edit] Orion

  • Orion (1984)
  • Vengeance of Orion (1988)
  • Orion in the Dying Time (1990)
  • Orion and the Conqueror (1994)
  • Orion Among the Stars (1995)

[edit] To Save the Sun

  • To Save the Sun (with AJ Austin) (1992)
  • To Fear the Light (with AJ Austin) (1994)

[edit] Voyagers

  • Voyagers (1981)
  • The Alien Within (1986)
  • Star Brothers (1990)

[edit] Watchmen

  • The Star Conquerors (1959)
  • Star Watchman (1964)
  • The Dueling Machine (1963)

[edit] Non-fiction

  • Man Changes the Weather (1973)
  • Starflight and Other Improbabilities Westminster Press, 1973 ISBN 0-664-32520-3 (1973)
  • Notes to a Science Fiction Writer (Houghton Mifflin paperback 1981)
  • The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells Writers Digest Books, 1994 ISBN 0-89879-600-8 (a guide to writing fiction of any genre)
  • Immortality (1998)
  • Are We Alone in the Cosmos? (1999)
  • Faint Echoes, Distant Stars: The Science and Politics of Finding Life Beyond Earth (2004)
  • The Story of Light (2001)

[edit] Anthologies edited

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ (1995-12-01) in Jay P. Pederson: St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, 4 edition, St. James Press. ISBN 978-1558621794. 
  2. ^ GRAND TOUR CHRONOLOGY. Retrieved on 2008-05-14.
Persondata
NAME Bova, Ben
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bova, Benjamin William
SHORT DESCRIPTION American novelist, short story author, essayist, and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1932(1932-11-08)
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH