Allen Steele Science Fiction Writer Live From The Mars Hotel Orbital Decay Locus Award Winner

Allen Mulherin Steel, who is popularly known as Allen Steel, is among the most well known science fiction writers of all ages. Throughout his literary career, he has acted as the source of inspiration for the science fiction writers of his nation and other countries. After the completion of his Masters degree in Journalism from the Missouri University, he started writing for a newspaper. In the early stage of his career, he also worked for various general and business magazines. After garnering valuable on-hand experience, he published his debut story under the title of “Live From The Mars Hotel” in the year 1988. This story foreshadowed the arrival of an author with tremendous potential.


Futuristic society is one of the recurrent themes of his novels. Most of Allen Steel’s science fictions describe a story, which is set in remote future. “Orbital Decay” and “Clarke County, Space” are two popular novels by him and they were published in 1989 and 1990 respectively. ‘Orbital Decay’ describes the story of proletarian classes who are engaged in executing a massive constructional project in space. This novel was honored with the “Locus Award” in the year 1990 in the category of “Best First Novel”. Another novel “Clark County, Space” was also nominated for the prestigious “Philip K. Dick Award” in 1991. These two novels helped him to consolidate his position among the writers in the genre.

In his long and memorable literary career, Allen Steel has contributed in “Absolute Magnitude and Artemis” by providing articles regularly. His literary career reached the acme of success in mid 1990s. His famous novella “The Death Of Captain Future” was honored with the prestigious “Hugo Award” in the category of “Best Novella”. It became so popular that it was elected for the honorable “Nebula Award” in 1997. Apart from that, this novella was also honored with “Seiun Award” in the category of “Best Foreign Short Story” and “Science Fiction Weekly Reader Appreciation Award” in 1996.

His famous novella is “Where Angels Fear to Tread” and it was also honored with some prestigious awards like Science Fiction Chronicle Readers Award, the Asimov's Readers Award, Hugo Award, the Locus Award etc. Apart from that, this novella was nominated for some coveted awards like Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, Seiun awards, Nebula etc. Allen Steele was also honored with the Phoenix Award and Donald A. Wollheim Award in the year 2002 and 1993 respectively for his contribution to literature. Allen Steele