Hello! My name is Eric Choi, and I am a Hong Kong born aerospace engineer, writer, and editor in Toronto, Canada. With Ben Bova I co-edited the hard SF anthology Carbide Tipped Pens (Tor), and with Derwin Mark I co-edited the Aurora Award winning anthology The Dragon and the Stars (DAW). I have twenty-four published stories of which fifteen are featured in my collection Just Like Being There (Springer). I was the first recipient of the Asimov Award (now the Dell Award) for my novelette “Dedication”, I have twice won the Aurora Award for my short story “Crimson Sky” and for co-editing The Dragon and the Stars, and I received a 2023 Sidewise Award for Best Short Form Alternate History for my novelette “A Sky and a Heaven”.

An aerospace engineer by training, I have a bachelor’s degree in engineering science and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering, both from the University of Toronto, and an MBA from York University.  I am also an alumnus of the International Space University.  Over the course of my aerospace engineering career, I have worked on a number of space projects including QEYSSat (Quantum Encryption and Science Satellite), the Meteorological (MET) payload on the Phoenix Mars Lander, the Canadarm2 on the International Space Station, the RADARSAT‑1 Earth-observation satellite, and the MOPITT (Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere) payload on the Terra satellite. In 2009, I was one of the Top 40 finalists (out of 5,351 applicants) in the Canadian Space Agency’s astronaut recruitment campaign.

Go to Concatenation.org to read about the Top 10 scientists and engineers born in the 20th Century who have most inspired or influenced me, and check out Shepherd.com to discover five of my favourite books on aviation and space history. ImmigrantStory.ca tells the tale of how my parents and I came to Canada from Hong Kong.

[Back]