Alexei Panshin is known not only for his award-winning science fiction, but also for his criticism; he is one of the major young writers in the field. His first novel, Rite of Passage , received the 1968 Nebula Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America; he had earlier received the 1967 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. Panshin was born in Lansing, Michigan, the son of Alexis John and Lucie Padgett Panshin. His father was a Russian emigrant; his mother traced her family back to the pilgrims. Panshin served in the United States Army in the early 1960s and was stationed in Texas and Korea. Later he worked as a librarian in New York. In 1965 he was awarded a B.A. from Michigan State University and in 1966 an M.A. from the University of Chicago. He began writing in 1958, having his first science-fiction story, "Down to the Worlds of Men...