Gateway Essentials: Colin Kapp
As we’ve noted before, methodology for choosing who to highlight in our ongoing tour of the Gateway Essentials is . . . mixed. We’ve not explored anthropomancy or haruspicy yet, you’ll no doubt be relieved to discover, nor have we resorted to names-in-a-hat (although we have a very nice top hat in the office, should it come to that). One criterion we have used is birthdays. And now, seeing as only two things are certain in life: death and taxes (unless you’re incredibly wealthy or a multinational, obviously; then it’s only death), we’ve hit upon another method of selection . . .
Colin Kapp died on this day in 2007. A British SF writer and a worker in electronics, who later becoming a freelance consultant in electroplating, his writing career began with the publication of ‘Life Plan’ in New Worlds in November 1958. Kapp contributed a number of stories to the pre-Michael Moorcock New Worlds, after which his stories appeared primarily in Analog, Galaxy and New Writings in SF.
We recommend starting with space opera The Patterns of Chaos and his cult story collection, The Unorthodox Engineers:
You can find more of Colin Kapp’s work via his Author page on the SF Gateway website and read about him in his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
