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RIP: Charles Sheffield 99

Posted by chrisd from the now-an-influential-dead-writer dept.
uberdood writes "Dr. Charles Sheffield, noted for such SF works as the Heritage Universe series, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Higher Education, The Ganymede Club, Brothers to Dragons, Cold As Ice, and The Mind Pool, has died of brain cancer at the age of 67. Sheffield will be remembered for colorful characters such as McAndrew - and the wealth of short stories that helped make SF pulp rags so enjoyable. More information can be found via the Washington Post article. One of my favorite authors, dammit."
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RIP: Charles Sheffield More

RIP: Charles Sheffield

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  • Lived it (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 1155 ( 538047 )
    At least he was able to live his life to the fullest.. or as full as any human can
    • I'm really going to miss him. Just discovered his works at the public library a couple of months ago, too. Just finished "Billion dollar boy" (remake of Captains Courageous) and am set to start on "The Web between the worlds."

      If you haven't read any of his stuff, I recommend starting with something like "Higher Education."

      God bless him, he was a cool author. [snif; restrained mourning and respectful thoughts for the dearly departed.]
      .

  • We should strive to be like Sheffield (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SexyKellyOsbourne ( 606860 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @05:25PM (#4595432) Journal
    Charles Sheffield was a man who did everything we all wanted to do.

    He took the usual path of life, went and got a job, got married, and had children. But when he turned 40 and was in Iran doing business for a huge multinational corporation, something in him snapped -- and after reading a Sci-Fi novel, he decided to become a writer himself.

    He left his high-paying job, and later his wife left him because he couldn't pay the bills. After miserable failure, he still persisted, and eventually got published and became a famous and respected Sci-Fi writer.

    He's gone now, but at least he didn't go through the last years of his life a zombie like everyone else: an overworked corporate zombie with a wife for show, someone who, on the inside, is truly happy but is too afraid to challenge it.

  • Didn't Live It (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04, 2002 @05:26PM (#4595437)
    Let's be honest - he was only 67. He didn't get to live his life to the fullest. His life was taken from him by a brain tumor. If you follow his news on his web site or any of various places he published his thoughts, he still had a lot of writing ahead of him.

    I met him years ago and he seemed far younger than his actual age. He was a brilliant man and an author who deserved far more recognition than he received. Sheffield was, perhaps, THE finest writer of SCIENCE fiction during his time. He carried a regular job as Chief Scientist at the Earth Sciences Corporation and was more prolific than most full time writers. In a field that barely pays a fair rate for adult novels, he also wrote short stories and novels for young adults. His name should have been ranked with Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke.

    Perhaps now that he's gone the SF community will realize what they've lost - or perhaps they'll just go back to reading Star Wars and Star Trek books.

    Kermit
  • I appreciate that this man has made significant contributions to Science Fiction, however, I really don't want to use headline space for every person who dies who is of interest to the Slashdot crew. Actresses, potentially transgendered computer sciences (remember that one?), etc.

    And generally, a great deal of disrespect is generated with stories, such as these. A spinning grave icon, indeed. But this isn't news for nerds.
    • Yeah dood, I agree! We need to make more room for ruley case mod stories, man. Kewl fake neon lighted, geek-sterilizing, EM-spewing, Lexan-windowed, trailer trash design sense, transparent hard drive mpeg porn servers. Dood, that is where it is AT! /. only posts one or two of those a week, man.

      We don't need stories about people who, you know, actually did something worthwhile with their careers in the tech sector. Screw that.

  • His books live (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04, 2002 @05:34PM (#4595466)
    For those of you who haven't read his books, you have a treat coming. Many of them are available in open etext formats at http://www.webscription.net as part of Baen Books' wonderful webscriptions. His latest novel "Resurgence" just showed up in full there two weeks ago, and I have my usual library-donation hardcopy sitting on my desk as I type this.

    • I can't get any of those books for free, they are all books that you must order. And frankly, I don't books more than once, unless the book is awsoem, like Dune (Frank Herbert). Will his books be that good? Where can I d/l them free? Always so sad when another SF writer dies, and he sounds really great

  • Brother to Dragons (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cryms0n ( 52620 )
    Brother to Dragons was a great book, the first and only fiction I've been able to read over and over.

    Damn.

  • Och, Damn. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Felix The Cat ( 9459 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @05:54PM (#4595521)
    As a long-time fan of his McAndrew stories (I'm in the middle of "The Compleat McAndrew" right now), this really saddens me. With these stories, Dr. Sheffield showed that he really knew how to take an esoteric scientific subject (like Kerr-Newman black holes) and explain it in layman terms (through McAndrew trying to explain it to Captain Roker). I haven't read any of his other works, but if they're as good as the McAndrew stuff, I'm probably missing out on some good stuff.
  • I'm not very widely read when it comes to SF, and I can honestly say I'd never heard of Charles Sheffield before I saw this article. Now that I know about him, though, I'll be sure to look him up at the bookstore.

    As long as we're talking about SF authors, I can recommend two authors you may not have read: Alfred Bester and Greg Egan. Bester's two most well-known novels are The Demolished Man [amazon.com] and The Stars My Destination [amazon.com], which really are great classics from the 50s. Egan is a current writer; his books involve a lot of nanotech and quantum physics (some of it even comprehensible), like Permutation City [amazon.com] and Diaspora [amazon.com], although I would really recommend Diaspora as his best book so far.
    • Sheffield is much better known, I think, in the short SF field. Check out Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine [asimovs.com] if you're interested in trying short SciFi. Short Sci Fi is a great way to discover excellent authors and then read some of their longer novels.

      Anyway, there are a lot more great SF authors out there than Bester and Egan - Dan Simmons, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Michael Swanwick, Allen Steele (though I suggest sticking to Steele's short stories, his novels are just political dogma disguised as SF), George R. R. Martin (Martin was well known in the Sci Fi field long before his current fantasy popularity) - plus the obvious Big Names - Orson Scott Card, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, I could go on forever. If only there were more time to read...
  • Just want to say that Tomorrow and Tomorrow was a damn fine book. Shame that such a skilled and imaginative SF writer had to leave us.
  • I just heard the news on slashdot -- noted SF author Dr. Charles Sheffield, died of brain cancer. No other details were available (unless you clicked on the washington post link!).

    Even if you didn't enjoy his books such as "Tomorrow and Tomorrow", "Higher Education", and "The Ganymede Club" (not to be confused with "The Gay Men Club"!), you probably enjoyed watching his son, Gary Sheffield, help the Florida Marlins win the world series. Truly a geek icon.

  • NOOOO! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I just discovered Dr. Sheffield's marvelous writing two weeks ago. I have been getting back to massive consumption of SF, after a 10 year break while I raised my son who is now 20. One can't read a book a night when a single parent. So lately, I have been looking for fresh new hard sf. The first book I read was not fiction. It was "The Borderlands of Science". I followed that with several of his Jupiter Novels. I very much enjoyed his writing. To bad Science has not advanced far enough to provide better solutions to cancer.
  • I've only read a little of his work. A SFBC compilation called "The Proteus Manifest". It contains Sight of Proteus and Proteus Unbound.
    I actually got it as a filler during one of the times I've joined the Club in the past 25 years.
    I've read and enjoyed it several times but never took the time to read any of his other work. I suppose I will now.
    R.I.P.

  • City on Mars named after him - Kinda cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Embedded Geek ( 532893 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @07:01PM (#4595924) Homepage
    When I read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars) I noticed that one of the main cities was named Sheffield. After I saw him mentioned in Robinson's acknowledgements, I always figured that the city was named for him, but was never sure (obviously, Bradbury and other locations were named that way). I never got around to looking into it, but a quick check I ran today shows that is the case [xs4all.nl].

    Kind of a neat way to honor an author you admire, doncha think?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Thanks. I knew he was high on the acknowledgements/thank yous/whatever, but I don't have my copies of red/green/blue at work. I was kinda winging it from memory.

        Truth is, I was kinda scared when I saw the message about your reply at my message center ("But I know Robinson must've acknowledged him somewhere!"). Human nature to assume the worst, I guess. :)

        Odd, that I never thought to call those books "beautiful," and yet they absolutely are. You hit the nail right on the head. It's a shame that there aren't more works that deserve that label.

  • Can someone suggest a reading list? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Embedded Geek ( 532893 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @07:09PM (#4596002) Homepage
    I admit it: Sheffield is one of those authors that I never got around to reading (God knows there's so many). Well, now he's gone and I'm gonna make a point to pick up at least one of his books and give him a try. A quick search got me a list of his works [fantasticfiction.co.uk]. As with most prolific authors, though, it's difficult for me to figure out where to start.

    So, here's my question: Does anyone who has read him have a suggestion on which book would be a good one as a first read? Not necesarrily his best (as that might include his series) but a single novel or collection that would give me a feel for his work and let me know if I would like to dig further into his collected works.

    Thanks

    • I would suggest "Georgia on My Mind: And Other Places" (1995) for a taster of his shorter works. It is worth it for "Georgia on My Mind" alone. It well deserved both the Hugo and Nebula. Following that, I would read "Between the Strokes of Night", (1985), which is one of his better early stand-alone novels. As for his series work, I really enjoyed the "Proteus" stories being a molecular biology geek. It was an interesting take on the concept of self-modification by running 'programs'/code that rewrote your gene expression. The "Heritage" books are more Space Opera, but fun. The "Jupiter" novels are more old-school in the tradition of Asimov and Clark. It really depends on the sort of SF you are looking for.
    • I'm going to echo the other respondant and recommend Georgia On My Mind and Other Places. It is chock full of excellent stories, showing both the breadth of his work and the depth of his ideas.
    • I've only read a few of his books, but Godspeed [amazon.com] was a good one. The premise is that humans learned to control the Einstein-Rosen Bridge (I think that's the right name) where you essentially bend space, push through, and come out on the other side of the universe. Faster-than-light travel. (Like in the movie Event Horizon, only without the retarded evil dimension nonsense.) So because of this we've populated the universe with little human colonies that were all part of this hive network. Then one day the supply ships stopped coming. All the ships they sent out through the ERB never came back, so they had to start fending for themselves. This story follows a group of people from one planet as they attempt to find the rest of human civilization again. pretty cool.

      I also read Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which started out really cool but probably should have been a short story. Basically this classical musician's wife dies of a rare sickness and so he has her cryogenically frozen so that she can be fixed and reborn. But he wants to be there when she wakes up, so he has to come up with a bunch of money in order to freeze himself too as well as keep them both on ice for the duration... He also realizes that no one is just going to decide to wake him and his wife up because they're nice people. They're going to need a reason to wake him up. (Which I thought was a very astute observation.) So he spends the next few years making uninteresting (to him) movie soundtracks and so on that sell well for money then once he has enough he goes around and interviews everyone he thinks will become 'the 21st century Mozart/Shakespeare/etc.'

      Anyway, he spends the rest of the book racing through time trying to wake his wife. My opinion through most of it was that it was very well done and a fantastically interesting vision of the future, but in the end the main character was overwhelmingly obsessed with his lovly late wife. :/ But that aside, it was really cool.

    • I'd suggest the Web Between the Worlds. It's about space elevators, and came out around the same time as Clarke's Fountains of Paradise (same topic). So close in time did they come out, in fact, that my copy has an afterword by Clarke commiserating with Sheffield on the unfortunate timing, and assuring us readers that no ripoffery took place.

      A caveat, though: don't read his co-written books. They're terrible. So's the collection Erasmus Magister. Rather than bitching about these, I prefer to congratulate him. He's a hard science writer, and the fantasy/horror he wrote may have been bad, but he at least made the attempt at broadening his horizons. He could've just kept to the hard science and no-one would complain, but in going for books like the Judas Cross (terrible, terrible book) he showed us that he was willing to experiment.
  • I read several of Sheffield's novels in middle school; although I loved his books, I thought that he was just some obscure author that nobody else knew about. Flash forward many years...imagine my surprise when I happened to stumble upon this headline on Slashdot.. I had no idea that he was such a prolific and amazing individual. Rest in peace, Mr. Sheffield.

  • SF Author Necrology (Somewhat OT) (Score:3, Informative)

    by Embedded Geek ( 532893 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @07:17PM (#4596084) Homepage
    Sheffield is just the latest of a large number of SF authors pass on in the past two years. It just a consequence of demographics, but still a little sad.

    In any case, Locus Magazine has acknowledged the fact and dedicated a link [slashdot.org] to it. If you have a favorite who has passed away recently, you might want to look there and then click on their obituaries. You just might discover something you didn't know about your favorite author.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday November 04, 2002 @07:33PM (#4596200)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Time to bitch around (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thasmudyan ( 460603 ) <thasmudyan@openfu. c o m> on Monday November 04, 2002 @07:49PM (#4596303)
    Charles Sheffield is dead. He died (most probably, brain tumors almost always are) a horrible death. He had lived through some very hard times (especially given that his first wife died of cancer) and nevertheless managed to be a successful author and a very respectable scientist - surpassing me and 99% of the /. readers when it comes to such things as experience, intelligence, creativity, academic skills and success in life. One of the saddest things probably is that he still had much potential and that is now lost forever. (Well the saddest thing is that some people have to die so horribly so soon and with all our technology we still can't do anything about it.)

    So what the f*ck is going on here? In this thread I see ACs trolling and flaming all over the place. Allright, maybe you haven't read his works but so what? What's wrong with you people, if anything else doesn't matter to you then there is still the matter that someone is actually dead! Where is the respect for that? Whether you have read his stories or not, whether you liked them or not, this is a sad loss. (And yes, I know that other people die, too, and that's also a loss.)
    • This is the primary reason why Slashdot should NOT do obituaries. These types of stories don't spur much in the way of discussion or add much other than a post-it note: "This guy died and I liked him. If you're curious, you might check out some of his works."

      You'll have 20 or so redundant "Wow. He did great stuff. I'll miss him." messages. And then you'll have just as many complete trolls, "He didn't really die! He cross-gendered into a woman and his family is just morning the public passing of his old persona!" or "I'm still here! The reports of my death are greatly exagerated!"

      The fact that this particular person is shown disrespect is nothing new. Attempt to search back (with the lack of a obit category) on similar stories previously posted. You'll see a trollfest far greater than you have here.

      Sad, but a true statement of the way things are here.
  • I came across his writing in Analog, as usual. Higher Learning is the first one that made me remember his name.

    He didn't have any books in the current batch of books in the Baen Free Library, but there are a few Borderlands of Science columns at Baen.com [baen.com]
  • and the wealth of short stories that helped make SF pulp rags so enjoyable.

    I wouldn't exactly call Analog a "plup rag".

  • My very best to Nancy Kress, his widow (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I was most pleased to hear of your marriage some years after I met Charles at the ConAdian World SF Convention in Winnipeg in 1994. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who described second (or in this case third) marriages as "the triumph of hope over experience", and I wish you and your stepchildren well. I only met him once and spoke with him for about ten minutes, but I enjoyed everything he wrote and published, including his on-line autobiography. Our thoughts are with you.
  • This is a real shock.

    I've been a sf fan over 35 years now- since I was 10, and since the late '70s Charles Sheffield's work has been a constant favorite. I first became aware of his stories reading Analog- he had several of his early novels serialized [Proteus Unbound, Between the Strokes of Night], and quite a few shorter length works [the individual Trader's World & McAndrew stories] in it during early years of his career

    Having read almost all of his sf titles, I unequivocally state that Sheffield offered a rare blend of unique extrapolations of current science & technology with interesting & well-paced plots.

    I was lucky enough to meet & talk with him at a number of east cost sf cons over the last few years, at which he was a regular panelist and reader. Impressive, to say the least. If you like any kind of science-y sf, then I recommend you read any Sheffield you can get your mitts on!

    My sympathies to his family, friends and fans.

    silent lurker

  • My heart plunged as I read the Slashdot headline. Sheffield was one of the greats. I always looked forward to reading a new short story or novel of his.

    Not since Heinlein has there been an author who so successfully pulled off the "SF for teenagers" sub-genre. Sure the plots were re-hashes, or, more charitably, tributes, but darn it they were good clean fun. Well plotted, characters you cared about, and great settings - you can't ask for more than that.

    So long Doc. I'll miss you.
  • I am very good friends with his daughter Ann. She was with him quite a lot these past few months.

    My thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

    -F-
  • Brian Kernighan has an automobile which he helped design.
    Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor
    any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.
    Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the
    center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will
    usually know what's wrong."

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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