Sylvia Engdahl

Sylvia Engdahl is the author of science fiction novels first published in the 1970s and recently reissued. Though she is best known for her award-winning novel for children, most of her books are intended for older teens and are also enjoyed by adult readers. Miss Engdahl worked as a computer programmer for the SAGE Air Defense System in the late 50s and early 60s. Later, she did graduate work in anthropology with the intent of writing nonfiction on space colonization as a step in human evolution. She has been a strong believer in humanity's destiny in space since before the launch of Sputnik, and her aim as a novelist has been to encourage young people to think about it. She has also written a nonfiction book on the history of belief in extrasolar civilizations, and has taught an online graduate-level course on pop-culture science fiction as the mythology of the Space Age. Her Web page presenting her views on expansion into space as necessary to human survival, www.sylviaengdahl.com/space.htm, has had nearly 15,000 visitors since she began counting.