George Rippey Stewart was born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, the son of George and Ella May Wilson Rippey Stewart. He was awarded an A.B. at Princeton in 1917 before serving two years in the U.S. Army from 1917 to 1919. He subsequently was awarded an M.A. at the University of California in 1920 and a Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1922. After his marriage to Theodosia Burton, he began a teaching career in 1922 as an instructor of English at the University of Michigan. In 1923 he returned, as a teacher, to the University of California. He interrupted his long tenure there (until 1962) to become a resident fellow in creative writing at Princeton (1942-1943), and, again, to take a Fullbright professorship to teach American literature and civilization at the University of Athens (1952-1953). Although he wrote only one science-fiction novel, Earth Abides (1949), for which he won the International Fantasy Award in 1951, he...