Bob Shaw books

Anthologies

Land and Overland Reading Order

Non-Fiction

Orbitsville Reading Order

Short Story Collections

Standalone Novels

Warren Peace Reading Order

Bob Shaw was a Northern Irish science fiction writer who spent most of his career in Belfast before moving to England in the 1970s. Trained as a structural engineer, he turned to writing full-time in 1975 after years of publishing short fiction and novels alongside his day job.

His most famous creation is “slow glass,” a material that takes years or decades for light to pass through, first described in the 1966 short story “Light of Other Days.” The concept became one of SF’s most widely discussed thought experiments. Shaw won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in both 1979 and 1980, and his novel Orbitsville took the BSFA Award in 1976.

Shaw was part of the Irish Fandom circle that included James White and Walt Willis, and his fan writing collected in volumes like Best of the Bushel shows the wit and warmth he brought to everything he wrote. He died in 1996, leaving behind a body of work that ranges from hard SF to humor to space opera.