Michael Hagearty
Institute Communications and Public Affairs

Irving Flint “Bud” Foote, an emeritus professor of literature who helped push science fiction into the realm of academic research and debate, died of complications from a stroke earlier this month. He was 74.

As literature, Foote said he was drawn to science fiction for the way it spoke to the concerns of its time.

“Science fiction deals with our mixed feelings about the high rate of change which has occurred for the last 200 years,” he said during a 1994 interview for the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine. “We fear our technology because we can see the dangers in it. But we have great hopes for our technology. It’s that dynamic of contradiction that drives the machine.”

A native of Laconia, N.H., Foote graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1952 and earned his master’s degree from the University of Connecticut. He began teaching science fiction to Tech students in 1971, and spent nearly three decades pioneering university-level courses in the genre.

It was, he said, a natural extension of his personality.

“One of the things I enjoy most in life is reading books and talking about them,” Foote said in 1994. “So I got a job where I read books and talk about them, and they give me money — which seems a little immoral.”

Foote, who retired in 1999 after a 31-year career at Tech, donated 8,000 volumes of science fiction to the Library and Information Center. Housed in the Library Archives, the Bud Foote Science Fiction Collection includes many first editions and some of the best-known books by some of the most acclaimed writers over the past two centuries.

“Like everyone I know who ever crossed his path, I found Bud to be an amazing person,” said Literature, Communication and Culture Assistant Professor Lisa Yaszek. “[He was] a very passionate scholar and artist.”