William L. Bade

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, William L. Bade was an American physicist, academic, and science fiction writer. He published science fiction from the late 1940s into the 1950s, with work appearing in magazines including Astounding and Fantastic Worlds.

Reference sources on speculative fiction describe him as a hard-SF writer, and that label fits well: his stories were built around scientific ideas rather than fantasy or melodrama. A short sequence beginning with "Advent" is the work most often singled out in bibliographies and encyclopedias of the field.

Outside fiction, Bade had a substantial scientific career. Obituary records describe him as a leader in biophysics and re-entry physics whose work was connected with the U.S. space program and NASA, giving his writing an unusual foundation in real-world science.