Chris McKitterick is an award-winning author, editor, educator, amateur astronomer, and backyard engineer. He's probably best known for his short fiction and essays, his teaching, and for leading and creating three science-fiction research and educational organizations.
McKitterick lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where he teaches science fiction and writing at the Ad Astra Institute, the University of Kansas, and beyond (see his classes here); dwells amid thousands of books, restores old vehicles, watches the sky, and enjoys life with the best kitty, cockatiels, wife, and baby in the history of ever.
Education and History with Science Fiction @KU
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C.V.
In
retrospect, McKitterick's diverse experiences and
education seem tailored for a life in science fiction. A childhood spent moving
from state to state and living in Korea for a year taught him perspective
about diverse places and people, and being the alien helped him understand the notion
of "the Other." His earliest idol was spaceflight pioneer
Robert H. Goddard,
which led to (mostly failed) rocketry experiments.
He earned his BA in English-Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin, though his studies began at the University of Minnesota in the summer before starting 11th grade. Among other topics, he studied astronomy, astrophysics, education, and psychology on his route to SF scholar, writer, and teacher. Early college years focused on science; this led to work as planetarian, astronomy teaching assistant, and observatory assistant-director. Eventually his focus shifted to writing and editing.
After his undergrad years, McKitterick taught at a tiny school in northeastern Montana, when he began publishing professionally. As much as he loved the state's dark skies, endless prairie, and badlands bristling with fossils, in 1992 he moved to Lawrence, Kansas, to learn from science-fiction Grand Master and Hall-of-Fame honoree James Gunn. This decision proved pivotal in his life, launching a decades-long relationship with Gunn, Gunn's original Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and the University of Kansas.
There being no better place to study pure science fiction literature and writing in the world - and nowhere to earn a PhD in the field (still true today!) - he pursued the best available opportunity by earning an MA (MFA equivalent) in creative writing with a primary emphasis in science-fiction writing, literature, and scholarship at KU under Gunn's mentorship, who offered all his SF and writing courses during this time. But that wasn't the end of McKitterick's education in SF.
Ever since earning his graduate degree in 1995, McKitterick has continued post-graduate studies. For at least a month each year during the Gunn's annual summer Science Fiction Literature Institute and SF Workshop, he served as co-instructor, apprenticing under Gunn's mentorship. The summer program also provided the unique opportunity to study under a diverse, ever-changing series of SF scholars and authors, including Brian Aldiss, Paolo Bacigalupi, Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan, Bradley Denton, Cory Doctorow, Andy Duncan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Joe Haldeman, Kij Johnson, John Kessel, Nancy Kress, Geoffrey A. Landis, Ian MacLeod, Jack McDevitt, China Miéville, James Morrow, Claire North, Frederik Pohl, Pamela Sargent, Robert J. Sawyer, Charles Sheffield, Joan Slonczewski, Vernor Vinge, Robert Charles Wilson, George Zebrowski, and many other guests.
Attending Gunn's annual professional workshops and teaching institutes for decades, working with Gunn and other SF experts, engaging in regular discussions and correspondence, plus co-teaching with the best in the field, McKitterick feels more fortunate in his opportunities than he can express. It was a great honor to work with Gunn, perhaps the world's foremost expert on SF literature, scholarship, and writing. He could not have gotten a deeper or more-immersive education in SF anywhere, at any level of education.
After graduation, McKitterick moved to Seattle where he worked for gaming and high-tech companies - returning each year to study with Gunn and co-teach his month-long summer SF program. After seven years away, in 2002 he was recruited to teach writing and SF full-time at KU. The summer 2022 Spec-Fic Workshop marked his 30th anniversary of being part of our SF Summer program, and 2026 will be his 30th year teaching it.
In 2004, David Brin, James Gunn, and he founded AboutSF.org, an educational-outreach program for educators and librarians. He served as co-instructor with Gunn until 2010, when he succeeded his mentor as the center's Director and began developing and teaching his own SF literature, teaching, scholarship, and writing workshops, courses, and seminars. As Gunn had before, McKitterick now invites the nation's best SF writers and scholars to co-teach as guest authors - and as a side-effect, continues perpetual study in the genre!
In 1995 Gunn named him Assistant Director of his original Center for the Study of SF, and when the University of Kansas recruited him to teach full-time in 2002, he became Associate Director. The Board and Gunn named him Director when Gunn stepped down in 2010. After KU-English declared an intention to take control of Gunn's original SF center after his death and subsume it into their department in 2021, McKitterick announced his resignation from that department and launched the KU Ad Astra Center to pursue our vision of "Saving the world through science fiction," making KU the only university boasting two very different SF research and educational centers. In 2023, new KU rules prompted us to expand Ad Astra into the independent, not-for-profit Ad Astra Institute for Science Fiction & the Speculative Imagination to focus on educational outreach.
Since 2002, McKitterick served as a juror for the prestigious John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best SF novel, was named Chair in 2018, and served until the end of Gunn's original SF Center. Though a sometimes overwhelming task - the jurors read upwards of 100 novels/year - serving the Award kept him current on the state of SF publishing, benefiting not only his SF studies but also those of his students.
In 2015, he was invited to attend a workshop purely as a student: The Schrödinger Sessions: Science for Science Fiction, hosted by the Joint Quantum Institute (a combined initiative of the University of Maryland and NIST). This grant-funded, intensive workshop provided an in-depth "crash course" in quantum physics for science fiction writers through three full days of lectures and discussions with the world's top quantum-physics researchers, guided tours of JQI's labs, and off-campus events with NASA officials and other scientists. In 2019, he was invited to the LaunchPad Astronomy Workshop, another grant-funded, intensive workshop for science fiction writers, hosted by the University of Wyoming and led by professors Mike Brotherton (also an SF author), Jim Verley, and others.
He organized and co-led James Gunn's Campbell Conference from 1996–2019, and the academic-programming track of the 2016 World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City (MidAmeriCon II).
To pay forward the unique and humbling learning opportunities provided him over the years, McKitterick makes it his mission to offer, through Ad Astra, one of the most outstanding, holistic SF educations available anywhere in the world today, and shares as much of his teaching materials as possible here and elsewhere.
In 2026,
McKitterick served as Author Guest of Honor at
ConStellation 15,
where he launched his new story collection,
and Keynote speaker at the Lawrence Book Festival,
where he launched the new Ad Astra Folios Edition of his novel, Transcendence.
Since first seeing print in 1984, McKitterick's award-winning creative work has appeared in many markets including Abyss & Apex, Aftermaths, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Artemis, Captain Proton, Discovery Channel Magazine, E-Scape, Global Warming Aftermaths, James Gunn's Ad Astra, Mission: Tomorrow, Mythic Circle, NOTA, Ruins: Extraterrestrial, Sentinels: In Honor of Arthur C. Clarke, Synergy, Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, Top Deck magazine, various TSR publications, Visual Journeys, Westward Weird, a bowling poem anthology, and elsewhere. A poem or two became lyrics for songs. His "Ashes of Exploding Suns, Monuments to Dust" was on the Tangent Recommended Reading List and won the Analytical Laboratories Readers' Award (AnLab) for best novelette.
His debut novel, Transcendence, is out in a special new edition from Ad Astra Folios, and his first fiction collection, Visions of Space & Time, came out in 2026. He recently finished the far-future novel Empire Ship and the first book in The Galactic Adventures of Jack & Stella, and has several other projects on the burners, including the next Jack & Stella book, a hybrid collection of short fiction and book on SF writing, a poetry collection, and Stories From a Perilous Youth - a humorous memoir of surviving childhood and the Cold War. Empire Ship chapters are now dropping weekly on his Patreon blog.
His scholarly writing has appeared in many publications including Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Argentus, The Astounding Analog Companion, Extrapolation, Foundation, James Gunn's Ad Astra, Libraries Unlimited, Locus, NOTA, Saving the World Through Science Fiction, Sense of Wonder, SFRA Review, various TSR publications, and World Literature Today. McKitterick was honored to be guest editor (and webmaster) of the special World Literature Today "International Science Fiction" issue, with much internet-exclusive content available online. He also wrote several pieces for the issue and developed the website. He's currently an editor for the upcoming Woodneath Libraries Anthology of Science Fiction, and editorial consultant for James Gunn's Ad Astra Magazine.
Other publications include astronomy newsletters, science articles, manuals, grants, and promotional materials. He regularly contributed to the Microsoft Windows Server Resource Kits series, where he was an editor, writer, and documentation manager; his work on these projects have earned a number of Society for Technical Communication (STC) awards. He's also a regular blogger and online commentator.
Transcendence
Visions of Space & Time
Empire Ship
...and others in progressEssays and Nonfiction Bibliography
McKitterick's C.V. (ridiculously long pdf based on KU's "Professional Records Online" format)
For more (including downloads of his debut novel), check out his personal website:
McKitterick began teaching in high school, leading directed-studies astronomy courses. Since then, he has taught countless tutorials, lectures, workshops, university courses and master classes in astronomy, writing, science fiction, and teaching. Before he began leading Ad Astra's intensive, residential Speculative Fiction Writing Workshop and Science Fiction Teaching Institute in 2010, he apprenticed with and co-taught the original programs with James Gunn and Kij Johnson since 1995. In 2018, he was one of three finalists for the H.O.P.E. (Honor for Outstanding Progressive Educator) Teaching Award, the most prestigious teaching award given at the University of Kansas (presented on the stadium field during Homecoming!).
In addition to managing two SF centers and an institute, for 20 years McKitterick taught several regular-semester courses in science fiction and writing at KU (list of Creative Commons licensed syllabi at the bottom of this page), directed independent studies in SF, and served on numerous thesis and dissertation committees. He is also a popular workshop instructor at venues around the world.
McKitterick speaks regularly about science fiction, science, teaching, futurism, and writing for academic conferences, fan conventions, libraries, public events, schools, webcasts, and National Public Radio.
In 2026, he was Author Guest of Honor at ConStellation 15, where he launch his newest book. Some other highlights include serving as keynote speaker at the 2026 Free State Book Festival, the 2012 UCO Liberal Arts Symposium (keynote on SF as the mythology for a changing age), the 2014 Southwest Philosophical Society Conference (keynote on SF and philosophy), and the 2015 University of Iowa Medical Science Training Program retreat (keynote on "Positive Feedback Loops: Science Fiction and Science"). In 2016, he was asked to organize and head up the academic-programming track of the World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City (MidAmeriCon II). His first Special Guest convention appearance was at Nebraska's ConStellation. In October-November 2019, he was a Special Guest at the China SF Convention in Beijing, where he taught SF writing workshops, spoke on panels, and gave radio and TV interviews. See recent and upcoming appearances on his website.
McKitterick created the jury panel and served as nominations director for the Theodore A. Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short SF story of the year from 1992–2016, when Kij Johnson and later Jason Baltazar took over the role. Starting in 2002, he served as nominations director and juror for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best SF novel of the year, was named Chair in 2018, and served until the end of Gunn's original SF Center. He also regularly serves on other writing and awards juries.
Want to get in touch? cmckit.sf@gmail.com
(serves the same as his prior cmckit@ku.edu email),
or cmckit@gmail.com for personal stuff.
Academia.edu
Ad Astra Institute for Science Fiction & the Speculative Imagination
Bluesky
Christopher-McKitterick.com
Cohost
Dreamwidth
Goodreads
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Mastodon
SFWA Speaker's Bureau
Patreon (read his work and support Ad Astra)
Pillowfort
Tumblr (primary blog)
(writers: check out the "Writing Tips," "Science Fiction," and other tags listed in detail on our Writing Resources page)
Wikipedia
Xitter
YouTube
For student convenience, educational outreach, community engagement, and multimedia interactivity, McKitterick usually posts course materials online. Courses he's taught in the past several years, most with links to syllabi:
Regular semesters: for-credit, with professional option for non-degree-seekers
Science into Fiction Writing Workshops:
"The Higgs Boson in This Particular Universe"
"Creativity and the Brain"
"Writing in (and about) the Age of Artificial Intelligence"
"Six great stories and what makes them work: The science of SF writing"
Series #5 for Fall 2026 coming soon!Science Fiction and the Popular Media
Fiction Writing (open to all genres, with an emphasis on spec-fic)
The Literature of Science Fiction (grad/undergrad)
The Science Fiction Novel
The Science Fiction Short StoryScience, Technology, and Society: Examining the Future Through a Science-Fiction Lens (grad/undergrad)
Views of Science Fiction: Critical Approaches to Speculative Fiction Studies (grad seminar)
Science Fiction Summer: professional adult courses
Intensive Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction (grad/undergrad)
The Science Fiction Novel
The Science Fiction Short StorySpeculative Fiction Writing Workshop (professional or grad credit)
"Repeat Offenders" (advanced spec-fic writing workshop)
Technical communication courses: for-credit, with professional option for non-degree-seekers
Foundations of Technical Writing (live and hybrid online undergrad versions)
Advanced Technical Writing (grad/undergrad)
Advanced Technical Editing (grad/undergrad)
Technical Communication Internship (grad/undergrad)
We believe strongly in the free sharing of information, so you'll find a lot of content - including course syllabi and many materials from our classes - on this and related sites and social networks as educational outreach. Feel free to use this content for independent study, or to adapt it for your own educational and nonprofit purposes; just please credit us and link back to this website. We'd also love to hear from you if you used our materials!
This site is associated with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA), AboutSF, and other organizations, and its contents are copyright 1992-present Christopher McKitterick except where noted, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License: Feel free to use and adapt for non-profit purposes, with attribution. For publication or profit purposes, please contact McKitterick or other creators as noted.
This site does not use cookies and is free from tracking. We do not use or condone the use of machine-generated text or images for educational or creative purposes (except as satire), and do not accept student or teacher work manufactured by algorithms.
Works on this site are licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
updated 5/20/2026