Robert Shaw (31 December 1931 - 11 February 1996), who wrote as Bob Shaw, was born in Belfast and became one of the most important Irish science fiction writers of the twentieth century. He worked as an engineer, journalist and advertising copywriter before writing full time, and won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 1979 and 1980.

His fiction is marked by inventive technological concepts, dry humour, engineering-minded problem solving and a lasting interest in perception and memory. His best known invention is slow glass, introduced in the story "Light of Other Days" and the novel Other Days, Other Eyes: light passes through the material so slowly that a scene can be viewed years after the events it records.

The Orbitsville books imagine an enormous artificial world enclosing a star, and The Ragged Astronauts, a Hugo nominee in 1987, sends wooden balloon ships between two worlds sharing an atmosphere. Shaw also wrote about time travel, alien contact, ecological engineering and the social consequences of technology.