Ben Bova, Science Fiction Editor and Author, Is Dead at 88
As editor of the magazines Analog and Omni, he was a champion of a new generation of authors, including George R.R. Martin.
The author and editor Ben Bova signing an autograph for a young fan at a science fiction convention in 1967. “Ben Bova is the last of the great pulp writers,” one critic wrote.Credit...Jay Kay Klein/UC Riverside, Special Collections and University Archives
Published Dec. 13, 2020Updated Dec. 21, 2020
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.