Stanley Schmidt was born in Cincinnati and graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1966. He began selling stories while a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University, where he completed his Ph.D. in physics in 1969. He continued freelancing while an assistant professor at Heidelberg College in Ohio, teaching physics, astronomy, science fiction, and other oddities. (He was introduced to his wife, Joyce, by a serpent while teaching field biology in a place vaguely resembling that well-known garden.) He has contributed numerous stories and articles to original anthologies and magazines including Analog, Asimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Rigel, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, American Journal of Physics, Camping Journal, Writer's Digest, and The Writer. He has edited or coedited about a dozen anthologies.
Since 1978, as editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, he has been nominated 27 times for the Hugo award for Best Professional Editor. He is a member of the Board of Advisers for the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, and has been an invited speaker at national meetings of those organizations, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the American Association of Physics Teachers, as well as numerous museums and universities. In his writing and editing he draws on a varied background including extensive experience as a musician, photographer, traveler, naturalist, outdoorsman, pilot, and linguist. Most of these influences have left traces in his five novels and short fiction. His nonfiction includes the book Aliens and Alien Societies: A Writer's Guide to Creating Extraterrestrial Life-Forms and hundreds of Analog editorials, some of them collected in Which Way to the Future?. He was Guest of Honor at BucConeer, the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore, and has been a Nebula and Hugo award nominee for his fiction.
Books currently available
Aliens and Alien Societies: A Writers Guide to Creating Extraterrestrial Life-Forms, ISBN 0-89879-706-3, Writer's Digest Books, 1995
Argonaut, ISBN 0-312-87726-9, Tor Books (www.tor.com), 2002
trade paperback edition August 2003
Which Way to the Future?, ISBN 0-765-30104-0, Tor Books (www.tor.com), 2001
Generation Gap and Other Stories, ISBN 0-7862-4161-6, Five Star, 2002
The Coming Convergence (April 2008)
Books by Stan Schmidt from FoxAcre Press
- Lifeboat Earth , ISBN 0-9671783-5-5, FoxAcre Press, 2000; Embiid e-book editions, 2001
- Newton and the Quasi-Apple, ISBN 0-9709711-3-3, FoxAcre Press, 2001; Embiid e-book editions, 2001
- The Sins of the Fathers, ISBN 0-9671783-4-7, FoxAcre Press, 2000; Embiid e-book editions, 2001
- Tweedlioop, ISBN 0-9709711-2-5, FoxAcre Press, 2002; Embiid e-book editions, 2000
- Newton and the Quasi-Apple, ISBN 0-9709711-3-3, FoxAcre Press, 2001; Embiid e-book editions, 2001
Paper editions are also available through barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com; Embiid e-book editions through embiid.com.
Photo by Joyce Schmidt