Photo © 2000 by Gay Haldeman.
If there’s one guiding principle to my writing, it is that I try to tell stories that I would want to read myself–stories that excite, compel, and entertain. As a fiction writer, my favorite themes have been star travel, alien contact, artificial intelligence, and transcendent realities–and the moral, ethical, and spiritual implications of these possibilities. Though I’m known primarily as a hard science fiction writer, the characters are always the most important part of my stories.
Born in Cleveland in 1949, I lived for most of my growing years in Huron, Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie, where I was a pretty decent high school wrestler and an annoyingly dedicated student. Upon graduating from Brown University (Providence, R.I.) in 1971 with a degree in English, I stayed in New England, where I live today. In 1974 I earned a Master of Marine Affairs degree (translation: ocean resources management) from the University of Rhode Island–a degree I have never really put to use. At various times I have been a scuba diving instructor, a quahog diver, a UPS sorter, a word-processing consultant, a private pilot, and a stay-at-home dad. I now live with my family in the Boston area, where I divide my shrinking time between home duties and writing (both fiction and freelance technical and web-content writing). I am a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association and The Authors Guild.
Awards I have received include the Helicon Awards’ Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award for writing science fiction, the Literary Titan Gold Medal for The Reefs of Time, and the Reader’s Choice Silver Medal, also for The Reefs of Time. My novel Eternity’s End was a finalist for the Nebula Award.
I was also, in 1995, the host of an educational television series, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing, aimed at teaching junior high school students the basics of science-fiction writing. That material later grew into the online course “Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy,” originally published by MathSoft, Inc., and aimed primarily (but not exclusively) at younger aspiring writers. Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy is now online and free to the public at WriteSF.com.
My interests include science, space travel and astronomy, religion, nature, underwater exploration, and flying. I wish I had more time to spend on them!
Some links to interesting interviews.