Ben Bova, Science Fiction Editor and Author, Is Dead at 88

 

"Ben Bova was a hard-science guy — and a passionate space program booster — and his visions of the future encompassed a dizzying array of technological advances (and resulting horrors or delights), including cloning, sex in space, climate change, the nuclear arms race, Martian colonies and the search for extraterrestrials. In newspaper articles, short stories and more than 100 books, he explored these and other knotty human problems.

“Ben Bova is the last of the great pulp writers,” Gerald Jonas wrote in The New York Times in 2004, reviewing “Tales of the Grand Tour,” a collection of Bova short stories about exploring the solar system. “Not for Bova the ambiguities and excesses of cyberpunk rage, nanotech noodling or quantum weirdness,” he continued. “His characters resemble elements in the periodic table, clearly defined by a few well-chosen traits.”

"Reading Bova,” Mr. Jonas concluded, “you are always aware of solid ground beneath your feet — even when the protagonist is an alien life form swimming in Jupiter’s world-girdling, 5,000-kilometer-deep ocean.”

(Mr. Bova often pondered the possibilities of sex in zero gravity. In one article, he proposed, as he put it, “an advertising slogan that an orbital honeymoon hotel could use: If you like water beds, you’re going to love zero gee.”)

But it was his role as editor of Analog magazine that made him beloved in the science fiction world,

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