Anthony R. Lewis

Anthony R. Lewis was a science fiction writer, anthologist, editor, and one of the central figures of Boston-area fandom for nearly sixty years. Born February 8, 1941, he earned a PhD in nuclear physics at MIT, joined the MIT Science Fiction Society as a student, and co-founded the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) in 1967, serving as its first president. He died in February 2025 at the age of 84.

Lewis coined two terms that the science fiction community still uses. "Recursive SF" describes science fiction in which the characters, setting, or subject matter are themselves science-fictional, and he compiled the field's first major bibliography of it: An Annotated Bibliography of Recursive Science Fiction (NESFA Press, 1990). "NASFiC," the North American Science Fiction Convention held in years when Worldcon meets overseas, was his coinage and is now a service mark of the World Science Fiction Society.

For writers, his most cited book is Space Travel: A Writer's Guide to the Science of Interplanetary and Interstellar Travel, co-authored with Ben Bova for Writer's Digest Books in 1997. It was a Hugo Award finalist for Best Non-Fiction Book in 1998. He also wrote the Concordance to Cordwainer Smith, an exhaustive reference to the Smith canon that went through several editions and was a Hugo Award finalist for Best Related Book in 2001. He edited The Best of Astounding (1978) and co-edited The Passage of the Light, a collection of recursive fiction by Barry N. Malzberg, with Mike Resnick.

Lewis chaired Noreascon, the 1971 Worldcon, and worked on three subsequent Worldcons in Boston. He published the fanzine Stroon and the apazine Along Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, and wrote the upcoming-conventions calendar for Analog magazine for three decades. NESFA awarded him the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award (the Skylark) in 2002 for his contributions to the field. Outside fandom he spent most of his career at Prime Computer as a technical writer and technical writing manager.