Robert L. Forward's BiographyLast Updated: 1/Sept/97

Dr. Robert L. Forward writes science fiction novels and short stories, as well as science fact books and magazines articles. Through his scientific consulting company, Forward Unlimited, he also engages in contracted research on advanced space propulsion and exotic physical phenomena. Dr. Forward obtained his Ph.D. in gravitational physics from the University of Maryland. For his thesis he constructed and operated the world's first bar antenna for the detection of gravitational radiation. The antenna is now in the Smithsonian Museum.

For thirty-one years, from 1956 until 1987, when he left in order to spend more time writing, Dr. Forward worked at the Hughes Aircraft Company Corporate Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, in positions of increasing responsibility, culminating with the position of senior scientist on the staff of the director. During that time he constructed and operated the world's first laser gravitational radiation detector, invented the rotating gravitational mass sensor, published over sixty-five scientific publications, and was awarded eighteen patents.

From 1983 to the present, Dr. Forward has had a series of contracts from the U.S. Air Force and NASA to explore the forefront of physics and engineering in order to find breakthrough concepts in space power and propulsion. He has published journal papers and contract reports on antiproton annihilation propulsion, laser beam and microwave beam interstellar propulsion, negative matter propulsion, space tethers, space warps, and a method for extracting electrical energy from vacuum fluctuations, and was awarded a patent for a Statite: a sunlight-levitated solar-sail direct-broadcast spacecraft that does not orbit the Earth, but "hovers" over the North Pole.

In addition to his professional publications, Dr. Forward has written over eighty popular science articles for publications such as the Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook, Omni, New Scientist, Focus, Aerospace America, Science Digest, Science 80, Analog, and Galaxy. His science fact books are Future Magic, Mirror Matter: Pioneering Antimatter Physics (with Joel David), and Indistinguishable from Magic. His science fiction novels are Dragon's Egg and its sequel Starquake; Rocheworld and its four sequels, Return to Rocheworld and Rescued from Paradise (with his daughter, Julie Forward Fuller), and Ocean Under the Ice and Marooned on Eden (with his wife, Martha Dodson Forward); Martian Rainbow, Timemaster, Camelot 30K, and now Saturn Rukh. The novels are of the "hard" science fiction category, in which the science is as accurate as possible.

Dr. Forward is a fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and former editor of the interstellar studies issues of its journal, associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a member of the American Physical Society, Sigma Xi, Sigma Pi Sigma, the National Space Society, the Science-Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the Author's Guild.

He lives in Scotland and in Clinton, Washington.


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