Back to entry: obrien_sean | Show links black
(? - ) US teacher and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "World Enough and Time" in The Leading Edge for February 1997. His first novel, A Muse of Fire (2010 ebook), follows the childhood of a potential Superman on the colony planet of Mnemosyne (see Colonization of Other Worlds). Vale of Stars (2012) is a Generation Starship tale set partly on the long voyage from Earth, and partly, in a narrative spanning generations, on Epsilon Eridani III, where a complex mockery of First Contact has unpacked between the new arrivals and evolved humans who had left Earth long after the main cast, but who had arrived generations early in their Faster Than Light Starships (see Clichés). The Beltrunner Saga beginning with Beltrunner (2016 ebook) is Hard SF set in the Asteroid belt. Silent Manifest (2019) is a Space Opera set on a Starship freighting embryos to colonize an available planet.
O'Brien should not be confused with the UK poet and author Sean O'Brien (1952- ), some of whose short fiction and at least one collection have been ascribed to the subject of this entry; or with the Australian thriller writer, Sean Thomas O'Brien (1965- ); or with the UK Sean O'Brien, an academic associated with Birkbeck College, University of London, who has written on sf. [JC]
born
works
series
Beltrunner Saga
individual titles
links
Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 15:49 pm on 10 March 2026.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/obrien_sean>