Paul K. Alkon (1935-2020)

SF scholar Paul K. Alkon, 84, died January 13, 2020. His non-fiction works of genre interest include Defoe and Fictional Time (1979), Eaton Award winner Origins of Futuristic Fiction (1987), Science Fiction Before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology (1994), Transformations of Utopia: Changing Views of the Perfect Society (1999, with Danièle Chatelain, Roger Gaillard, and George E. Slusser), and Winston Churchill’s Imagination (2006). He also wrote many critical and scholarly articles, and was a regular attendee at the Science Fiction Research Association’s Eaton conference.

Paul Kent Alkon was born May 1, 1935 in Rockingham NH. He attended Harvard and earned his PhD in English literature at the University of Chicago. He taught at the University of California Berkeley, the University of Maryland, the University of Minnesota, and was the Leo S. Bing Professor of English Literature at the University of Southern California from 1980 until his retirement to emeritus status. His principal area of expertise was 18th- and 19th-century French literature. Alkon is survived by his wife Ellen and their daughters Cynthia and Margaret..

For more, see his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.