Charles Sheffield

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.

  1. ^ a b c d e Cite error: The named reference SFE was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  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. ^ Cite error: The named reference CA was invoked but never defined (see the help page).