Nahin, Paul J
Entry updated 24 August 2026. Tagged: Author, Critic.
(1940- ) US author, electrical engineer and academic, professor of electrical engineering at the University of New Hampshire until he retired and moved to professor-emeritus status in 2004. He began to publish fiction of genre interest with "Publish and Perish" as Paul Nahin in Analog for April 1978; further stories followed in the same magazine, as well as Omni and anthologies, to 1988. His nonfiction includes technical studies of electrical engineering, popular-science explorations of Mathematics and Physics, biographies of mathematicians and scientists, and several books on the scientific conceits of sf. The last began with Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction (1993), examining fictional and real-world possibilities for Time Machines and Time Travel; Nahin returned to the subject in Time Travel: A Writer's Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel (1997), a how-to manual for writers, and Time Machine Tales: The Science Fiction Adventures and Philosophical Puzzles of Time Travel (2017). Religious themes in sf are usefully explored in Holy Sci-Fi!: Where Science Fiction and Religion Intersect (2014). For further titles of some genre relevance see Checklist below.
Nahin received the 2017 Chandler Davis Prize for Excellence in Expository Writing in Mathematics, named in honour of Chandler Davis. [DRL]
Paul J Nahin
born Berkeley, California: 26 November 1940
works (selected)
nonfiction
- Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction (New York: Springer Verlag/American Institute of Physics, 1993) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Time Travel: A Writer's Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel (Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 1997) [nonfiction: in the publisher's Science Fiction Writing Series: pb/Bob Eggleton]
- Number-Crunching: Taming Unruly Computational Problems from Mathematical Physics to Science Fiction (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Holy Sci-Fi!: Where Science Fiction and Religion Intersect (New York: Springer, 2014) [nonfiction: in the publisher's Science and Fiction series: pb/]
- Time Machine Tales: The Science Fiction Adventures and Philosophical Puzzles of Time Travel (New York: Springer, 2017) [nonfiction: in the publisher's Science and Fiction series: pb/]
- How to Fall Slower Than Gravity and Other Everyday (and Not So Everyday) Uses of Mathematics and Physical Reasoning (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2018) [nonfiction: hb/C Alvarez-Gaffin]
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