Alexei Panshin

Born on August 14, 1940, Alexei Panshin was an American science fiction writer and critic. He is most widely remembered for Rite of Passage, which won the Nebula Award, and for a career that blended storytelling with serious engagement in the history and ideas of science fiction.

Panshin also wrote important critical works about the genre, including Heinlein in Dimension, and later collaborated with his wife, Cory Panshin, on The World Beyond the Hill, a major study of science fiction that won the Hugo Award. His writing is often noted for being both intellectually ambitious and accessible to general readers.

He died on August 21, 2022. Together, Alexei and Cory Panshin remained closely associated with science fiction scholarship as well as fiction, and his work continues to matter to readers interested in both classic SF stories and the history behind them.