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Shaw, Bob

Entry updated 13 January 2025. Tagged: Author, Fan.

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Working name of Northern Irish author Robert Shaw (1931-1996), in Canada 1956-1958 and the mainland UK from 1973. He worked in structural engineering until the age of twenty-seven, then aircraft design, then industrial public relations and journalism, becoming a full-time author in 1975. Shaw was early involved in sf Fandom, with stories and articles published in the Fanzine Slant from 1951 and his first book being The Enchanted Duplicator (1954 chap) with Walt Willis, an allegory of fan and Fanzine activities; he received Hugos in 1979 and 1980 for his fan writing, which was also collected in such volumes as The Best of the Bushel (coll 1979 chap) and The Eastercon Speeches (coll 1979 chap); the former is a selection from his column "The Glass Bushel" in Hyphen (two later instalments were to appear in Science Fiction Review in 1984) and the latter assembles five early examples of the Serious Scientific Talks (joky and only tenuously scientific) which were for many years highly popular at Conventions [see Checklist below].

In the meanwhile Shaw published his first professional story, "Aspect" (see Matter Transmission), with Nebula Science Fiction in August 1954, followed by "The Trespassers" (his first professional sale but published second) in the December 1954 issue; during the mid-1950s he contributed several more stories to Nebula and one to Authentic Science Fiction before ceasing to write for some years. After a strong "come-back" tale – "... And Isles Where Good Men Lie" (October 1965 New Worlds) – he published "Light of Other Days" (August 1966 Analog), which established his reputation as a writer of remarkable ingenuity. Built around the intriguing concept of Slow Glass, a kind of Time Viewer through which light can take years to travel – thus allowing people to view scenes from the past – this story remains his best known. He later incorporated it, together with two thematically-related examinations of the theme, into Other Days, Other Eyes (fixup 1972; cut 1974).

Shaw's first novel was Night Walk (1967), a fast-moving chase story. A man who has been blinded and condemned to a penal colony on a far planet invents a device (see Invention) that enables him to see through other people's and even animals' eyes, and thus manages to escape. The Two-Timers (1968), a well written tale of Parallel Worlds, Doppelgangers and murder, demonstrates Shaw's ability to handle characterization and, in particular, his talent for realistic dialogue. In The Palace of Eternity (1969) he still more impressively controls a wide canvas featuring interstellar warfare, the environmental degradation of an Edenic planet, and human Transcendence; the central section of the novel, where the hero finds himself reincarnated as an "Egon" or soul-like entity (see Energy Beings; Identity), displeased some critics, though it is in fact an effective handling of a traditional sf displacement of ideas from Metaphysics or Religion. This intelligent reworking of well worn sf topoi was from the first Shaw's forte, as was demonstrated in his next novel, One Million Tomorrows (1970), an Immortality tale whose twist lies in the fact that the option of eternal youth entails sexual impotence – though only for males.

All Shaw's early books – which include also Shadow of Heaven (1969; cut 1970; rev vt The Shadow of Heaven 1991), involving Antigravity, and Ground Zero Man (1971; rev vt The Peace Machine 1985) – were published first (and sometimes solely) in the USA; and their efficient anonymity of venue may result from a highly competent attempt to appeal to a transatlantic audience. Only slowly did Shaw come to write tales whose placement and protagonists were distinctly UK in feel; and it could be argued, sadly, that his best work was his most impersonal. The fine first volume of the Orbitsville sequence – comprising Orbitsville (1975), Orbitsville Departure (1983) and Orbitsville Judgement (1990) – can almost certainly stand, after Other Days, Other Eyes, as his greatest inspiration. Like Larry Niven's Ringworld (1970) and Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama (1973), the Orbitsville books centre on the discovery of – and later developments within – a vast alien artefact in space (a Macrostructure, in fact), in this case a Dyson Sphere. Within the living-space provided by the inner surface of this artificial shell – billions of times the surface area of the Earth – Shaw spins an exciting story of political intrigue and exploration, which in later volumes develops, perhaps revealing an undue impatience with the venue he had invented, into a heavily plotted move into another universe entirely. Orbitsville gained a 1976 BSFA Award.

A Wreath of Stars (1976) may be Shaw's most original, and perhaps his finest, singleton. A rogue planet, composed entirely of antineutrino matter (see Antimatter), approaches the Earth. It passes nearby with no immediately discernible effect. However, it is soon discovered that an antineutrino "Earth" exists within our planet (see Matter Penetration) whose orbit has been seriously perturbed by the passage of the interloper. This is an ingenious, almost a poetic, idea, to which the plot only just fails to do full justice. Other books followed quickly: the overcomplicated Medusa's Children (1977); the Warren Peace sequence – comprising the successfully comic Who Goes Here? (1977; exp as coll Who Goes Here? And, The Giaconda Caper 1988) and its disappointing sequel Warren Peace (1993; vt Dimensions 1994) – both being jeux d'esprit akin to Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero (December 1964 Galaxy as "The Starsloggers"; exp August-October 1965 New Worlds; 1965), and suffering, as did Harrison's sequence, from rapidly diminishing inspiration; Ship of Strangers (fixup 1978), a homage to A E van Vogt in which the crew of the Stellar Survey Ship Sarafand, after some routine adventures, confront a striking Cosmological issue (see Miniaturization); Vertigo (1978; with "Dark Icarus" [April 1974 Science Fiction Monthly] added as prologue, exp vt Terminal Velocity 1991), an effective policier set in a world transformed by Antigravity devices allowing personal flight; plus Dagger of the Mind (1979) and The Ceres Solution (1981), in both of which Shaw's ingenuity declined, for a period, into something close to jumble. He had meanwhile been writing short stories – his collections include Tomorrow Lies in Ambush (coll 1973; with two stories added, rev 1973), Cosmic Kaleidoscope (coll 1976; with one story omitted and two added, rev 1977), A Better Mantrap (coll 1982), Between Two Worlds (coll 1986 dos) and Dark Night in Toyland (coll 1989) – which again demonstrate his professional skills but tend to lack a sense of commitment, to the point that some later stories seemed strained, frivolous, anecdotal.

However, with the Ragged Astronauts sequence – The Ragged Astronauts (1986), The Wooden Spaceships (1988) and The Fugitive Worlds (1989) – Shaw returned to his very best and most inventive form, creating an Alternate Cosmos which allowed him to describe with joyful exactness the sensation of emigrating, via hot-air Balloon, up the hourglass funnel of atmosphere that connects two planets which orbit each other. After his pattern, later volumes lose some of the freshness and elation of the first, but the series as a whole emphasizes Shaw's genuine stature in the genre as an entertainer who rarely failed to thrill the mind's eye with a new prospect. At his best, Shaw was an ingenious fabricator and lover of the worlds of sf. [DP/JC/DRL]

see also: Agriculture; Alternate History; Arts; Asteroids; Comics; Conceptual Breakthrough; Doc Weir Award; Eschatology; FAAn Awards; Fantastic Voyages; Faster Than Light; Gravity; Humour; Imaginary Science; Moon; Nova Awards; Parasitism and Symbiosis; Perception; Physics; Satire; Scientific Errors; Scientists; Space Flight; Time Paradoxes; Toys in SF; Under the Sea.

Robert Shaw

born Belfast, Northern Ireland: 31 December 1931

died Stockton Heath, Warrington, Cheshire: 11 February 1996

works

series

Orbitsville

Ragged Astronauts

Warren Peace

individual titles

collections and stories

nonfiction

series

Serious Scientific Talks

  • The Eastercon Speeches (West Ewell, Surrey: Paranoid/Inca Press, 1979) [nonfiction: coll: chap: Serious Scientific Talks: illus/pb/Jim Barker]
  • Serious Scientific Talks 1982-1984 (Carshalton, Surrey: The Shaw Fund, 1984) [nonfiction: coll: chap: front cover title is Serious Science: Serious Scientific Talks: pb/photographic]
    • A Load of Old BoSh: Serious Scientific Talks (Harold Wood, Essex: Beccon Publications/Confabulation, 1995) [nonfiction: omni of the above two with additional material: chap: Serious Scientific Talks: pb/Sue Mason]
      • The Serious Scientific Talks (Reading, Berkshire: Ansible Editions, 2019) [nonfiction: coll: ebook: exp of the above with further additional material: Serious Scientific Talks: na/Jim Barker]

The Glass Bushel

  • The Best of the Bushel (West Ewell, Surrey: Paranoid/Inca Press, 1979) [nonfiction: coll: chap: selected "Glass Bushel" columns from Hyphen: The Glass Bushel: illus/pb/Jim Barker]
  • Fourteen Bob the Bushel (Granada Hills, California: VERIP Press, 1995) [nonfiction: coll: chap: selection different from the above but overlapping: The Glass Bushel: pb/Larry Stewart]
  • The Full Glass Bushel (Reading, Berkshire: Ansible Editions, 2020) [nonfiction: coll: ebook: all the "Glass Bushel" columns plus other articles from Hyphen: edited by Rob Jackson and David Langford: The Glass Bushel: illus/na/Jim Barker]

nonfiction: individual titles

about the author

links

previous versions of this entry



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