Skylife Book

I read this book some time ago, but copied these paragraphs from a longer article I wrote about it and three other books that appeared in The Writer in 2001 .

I found the first book in the SF anthology section: Skylife: Space Habitats in Story and Science (Harcourt) edited by Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski. Benford is a physicist, author of over a dozen novels and two-time Nebula award winner. Zebrowski's credits include science fiction novels, short fiction collections, anthologies and a book of essays. In this collection of fourteen prescient essays and stories, they plot the course of humanity as it takes its first steps away from Cradle Earth and colonizes space. Benford and Zebrowski introduce the book with a piece on how space travel and living have been portrayed in literature from the late 19th Century to the present day and end with a selected bibliography of space stations and habitats in fiction, non-fiction, and visual media.

The book contains 350 pages of visionary writing by SF luminaries. Larry Niven explains his Ringworld as well as Dyson spheres, multi-generation ships, and flying cities in "Bigger Than Worlds." Isaac Asimov explores the possibility of moon colonies and hollowing out asteroids for habitation in "Spomelife: The Universe and the Future." Arthur C. Clarke foreshadows life on a space station in "The Other Side of the Sky." In this book you learn from the masters how to put "science" back into "science fiction." The eight vintage color plates showing artists' renditions of space living also go a long way to replacing stray images of the Millenium Falcon and Deep Space Nine.