Name Leon Stover | Education Columbia University | |
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Died 2006, Chicago, Illinois, United States Nominations Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Books Stonehenge, Science Fiction from Wells to, Stonehenge City: A Reconstruction, Imperial China and the State, China: An Anthropological Perspective | ||
Leon Eugene Stover (April 9, 1929 – November 25, 2006) was an anthropologist, a Sinologist, and a science fiction fan, who wrote both fiction and nonfiction. He was a scholar of the works of H. G. Wells and Robert A. Heinlein and a frequent collaborator with Harry Harrison.
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Scholarly career
Stover did his undergraduate studies at Western Maryland College, and received his M.A. in 1952 and his Ph.D. in 1963 from Columbia University. His masters' thesis was The Chinese peasant family and communism; his dissertation, "Face" and verbal analogues of interaction in Chinese culture: a theory of formalized social behavior based upon participant-observation of an upper-class Chinese household, together with a biographical study of the primary informant. He was an instructor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City from 1955–1957, and assistant professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York from 1957 - 1963. He was visiting assistant professor at The University of Tokyo from 1963 - 1965 before being invited to serve as a professor of anthropology at the Illinois Institute of Technology where he taught from 1965 - 1995. In 1995 he became professor emeritus. It was a mention in Stover's unpublished biography of Heinlein (he had originally been authorized to write a definitive Heinlein biography, but later had a falling-out with Heinlein's widow) that led researcher Robert James to discover the hitherto-unpublished Heinlein novel For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs.
Non-fiction
Fiction
Personal life
Stover was born in Lewiston, Pennsylvania on April 9, 1929. He was of American-German background whose family was related to the Eisenhower family. He married Patricia Ruth McLaren, whom he met in drama class at Western Maryland College; they had one daughter, author Laren Stover. His second wife was Takeko Kawai Stover whom he married shortly after completing his dissertation at Columbia University. They collaborated on many books together. He died of complications from diabetes at his home in Chicago on November 25, 2006.