Ben Bova, scientist, multiple Hugo Award winner, and prolific science fiction author and editor, died on November 29, 2020, of complications from Covid-19 and a stroke. He was 88. Bova wrote more than a hundred books, edited some of science fiction's best-known publications, and was president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for two terms 1990-1992 and was president of the National Space Society.
He began his career in a way that, Tor.com said, "brought experience to the science fiction genre that few authors could match" he was a technical editor for Project Vanguard, the U.S.'s first effort to launch a satellite into space in 1958. Bova then was a science writer for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, which built the heat shields for the Apollo 11 module.
Bova published his first novel, The Star Conquerors, in 1959, and followed up with dozens of others, as well as numerous short stories that appeared in, among other publications, Amazin
