Author of a favorite online site is terminally ill

BIG sadness. Winchell Chung a.k.a. nyrath@twitter.com, and creator of the Atomic Rockets - Atomic Rockets website, went into the hospital at the end of August and has since been diagnosed with metastasized prostate cancer. It’s a foregone conclusion that barring a miracle it’s now just a matter of how long it’ll take him to die.

Winchell built Atomic Rockets up into one of the most beloved and influential reference sites for hard SF writers, astronomy buffs, and space enthusiasts; to the point where his own site leads the list of returns for internet searches on various science fiction and science fact topics.

We are about the same age and grew up with the same cultural influences, so we synched up well in correspondence over the years, and several of my suggestions were deemed worthy of inclusion on his site.

Plans are underway to curate his site, but he will be sorely missed.

Well, I never heard of that site, but I looked at it and it’s surely the work of someone who cares.

I once helped out the owner of a website devoted to a single old TV cartoon show by sending him a tape of the soundtrack of one lost episode that I’d recorded off the air, decades ago. He was able to use it to make a reconstituted version, which made him very happy indeed. Later I found out he’d died, and I always hoped others could take over his site (no one has, though it’s still online).

Since Mr. Chung’s site probably has broader appeal, here is hoping he has found a successor to keep it up-to-date. That would be his best legacy.

It’s sad because like me, Winchell is of an age to have seen the Apollo missions in his childhood, only to then have the promise of space go largely unfulfilled through a forty-year interregnum. He may not get to see SpaceX’s Starship conduct a manned flight, let alone see the colonization of Mars. I’m just glad at least Inspiration4 took place in time.

Interesting.

I recognized Winchell Chung’s name not from the context of spaceflight, but his work as a game illustrator.

He practically invented the look of the Ogre cybertank and all the other assorted armor units of the eponymous game and its successors.

Those games were my introduction to tabletop wargaming in my callow youth. Chung’s diagnosis is a very unwelcome reminder of my own mortality and age.