George Zebrowski

George Zebrowski’s nearly forty books include novels, short fiction collections, anthologies, and a book of essays.

Science fiction writer Greg Bear calls him “one of those rare speculators who bases his dreams on science as well as inspiration,” and the late Terry Carr, one of the most influential science fiction editors of recent years, described him as “an authority in the SF field.” Zebrowski has published more than seventy works of short fiction and more than a hundred and forty articles and essays, and has written about science for Omni Magazine. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Amazing Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Nature, the Bertrand Russell Society News, and many other publications.

His best known novel is Macrolife (Harper & Row, 1979), which Arthur C. Clarke described as “a worthy successor to Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker. It’s been years since I was so impressed. One of the few books I intend to read again.” Library Journal chose Macrolife as one of the one hundred best science fiction novels, and The Easton Press included it in its “Masterpieces of Science Fiction” series. Zebrowski’s stories and novels have been translated into a half-dozen languages; his short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Stranger Suns (Bantam, 1991) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

The Killing Star (William Morrow, 1995), written with scientist/author Charles Pellegrino, received unanimous praise in national newspapers and magazines. The New York Times Book Review called it “a novel of such conceptual ferocity and scientific plausibility that it amounts to a reinvention of that old Wellsian staple, [alien invasion]...” The Washington Post Book World described the novel as “a classic SF theme pushed logically to its ultimate conclusions.”

Brute Orbits (HarperCollins, 1998), an uncompromising novel about the future of the penal system, was praised by reviewers for its characters, originality, and thought. Paul Di Filippo, in Asimov's Science Fiction, said that “Zebrowski never ceases to invest his individual characters with three-dimensional roundness...Startling, sobering, provocative”, while Publishers Weekly called this novel “boldly speculative.” The book was also honored with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel of the Year in 1999.

Cave of Stars, a novel that is part of his Macrolife mosaic, was published by HarperCollins in 1999. Skylife, an anthology edited by George Zebrowski with physicist and writer Gregory Benford, was published by Harcourt Brace in 2000. Swift Thoughts, a hardcover collection of his stories, with an introduction by Gregory Benford, came out in 2002. A second hardcover collection, In the Distance, and Ahead In Time, was also published in the same year. Synergy SF: New Science Fiction, the next volume of his legendary Synergy series of original anthologies, was published in 2004. Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts (Golden Gryphon), with an introduction by Howard Waldrop, came out in 2006, and a new edition of Macrolife was published in that year by Pyr Books, with an introduction by Ian Watson. Golden Gryphon published his horror novel Empties in 2009.

In early 2011, Zebrowski and Gregory Benford did a podcast interview for SF Signal Interview with Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski + How Events of the Past Decade Have Influenced Speculative Fiction