Charles Sheffield was a physicist who started writing science fiction when he was in his forties. His stories have Asimov's easy style, but the plots are updated considerably. Whether he dealt with monstrous aliens or teenage prodigies, he could put characters on the page that I cared about.
Charles Sheffield died on November 2nd, 2002.
Find out more about Charles Sheffield here.
- Godspeed (1993) - Treasure Island set a few centuries in the future, but complete with the entire cast. Well, Ben Gunn is a bit better looking, and there's more than one of him. The book appears to be aimed at younger readers. Because Sheffield did his job so well, I wonder if this book is the reason why he signed on for Tor Book's "Jupiter Novels". (You can actually download Treasure Island from the net. It is part of Project Gutenberg.)
- The Ganymede Club (1995)
- Higher Education (1996) - with Jerry Pournelle.
- Convergence (1997) - the universe isn't what we thought it was, and someone has been making plans.
- The Billion Dollar Boy (1997) - spoiled rich brat gets marooned in the sticks where he gets to prove to everyone that he's not so bad, after all. A "Jupiter Novel," in which Sheffield tried to teach a bit about the real universe, as well as making up some fanciful scenery. As was Godspeed, this novel was based on a revered classic, as anyone who has read Captains Courageous will recognize. (This is another Project Gutenberg download.) I read Captains only after someone pointed this out to me, and I think that BD Boy would be interesting even to readers who were familiar with Kipling's 1937 classic.