基思·迪坎迪多

Keith Robert Andreassi DeCandido (born April 18, 1969) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer (using Keith R. A. DeCandido), martial artist, and musician, who works on comic books, novels, role-playing games and video games, including numerous media tie-in books for properties such as Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, Supernatural, Andromeda, Farscape, Leverage, Spider-Man, X-Men, Sleepy Hollow, and Stargate SG-1.

Early life

DeCandido was born in the Bronx in New York City, the son of Robert L. DeCandido and GraceAnne Andreassi DeCandido. He claims to have been a Star Trek fan even before his birth, as his parents were fans of Star Trek: The Original Series.

DeCandido attended New Rochelle Academy and Halstead School, and then Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx before attending Fordham University. While attending Fordham University, DeCandido worked as an editor and writer of one of the college newspapers, called simply the paper.

Career

After graduation, DeCandido worked as editor at several publishing companies, most notably for the various book packaging companies owned by Byron Preiss. Along with John S. Drew, in the 1990s he co-produced a public-access television cable TV show in Manhattan about science fiction called The Chronic Rift, which he also co-hosted. DeCandido and Drew and others revived the show as a podcast in 2008. DeCandido also used to host his own monthly podcast, Dead Kitchen Radio, on hiatus as of February 2019.

While DeCandido spent much of the early part of his writing career penning Star Trek fiction, he has written tie-ins for other popular sci-fi and fantasy series as well, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, Supernatural, Stargate SG-1, Sleepy Hollow, Farscape, and Leverage as well as comic books (Spider-Man, X-Men), movies (Cars, Serenity, Alien), role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons), and video games (World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Command & Conquer, Resident Evil). He has also written fiction in universes of his own creation: Dragon Precinct and its sequels, a high-fantasy police procedural; urban fantasy short stories set in Key West about a weirdness magnet named Cassie Zukav, who learns she is a Dís; the Adventures of Bram Gold, urban fantasy novels set in the Bronx; Super City Cops, novels, novellas, and short stories featuring cops in a city filled with superheroes; and Supernatural Crimes Unit: NYPD, an urban fantasy series that debuted in 2025 from the Weird Tales Presents imprint of Blackstone Publishing.

He has also edited or co-edited various anthologies, including OtherWere (with Laura Anne Gilman), Urban Nightmares (with Josepha Sherman), Imaginings, Double Trouble: An Anthology of Two-Fisted Team-Ups (with Jonathan Maberry), The Four ???? of the Apocalypse (with Wrenn Simms), the Doctor Who collection Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership, and the Star Trek anthologies New Frontier: No Limits (with Peter David), Tales of the Dominion War, and Tales from the Captain's Table. Among his other editorial accomplishments are editing the Marvel novels published by Berkley Books from 1994 to 2000 and the Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers series of monthly eBook novellas from 2000 to 2008. He continues to do freelance editorial work for personal clients.

In 2009, DeCandido was named Grandmaster by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. In 2026, he was awarded the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction, also known as the Skylark.

He has written rewatches for Reactor Magazine (formerly Tor.com) since 2011, including Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Stargate, Batman 1966, "4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch," about every live-action superhero movie based on a comic book, and Babylon 5. DeCandido also writes reviews and commentary for Reactor, including reviews of many of TV adaptions of comic books and of the new Star Trek shows Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Prodigy, Short Treks, Section 31, and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.

Personal life

DeCandido is an avid baseball fan, particularly of the New York Yankees. He has contributed in the past to both the Replacement Level Yankees Weblog and Pinstripe Alley, and he currently serves as an occasional freelance editor for the Society for American Baseball Research.

DeCandido is a percussionist. He was with the Don't Quit Your Day Job Players (a rock/blues band that played science fiction conventions, clubs, and fairs) from 1994 until the band broke up in 2000. He has played with David Honigsberg, Steven Rosenhaus, the Randy Bandits, and the Chris Abbott Band, and since 2006 has been a member of the Maryland-based parody band Boogie Knights, who are a fixture of several east coast science fiction conventions.

Since 2004, DeCandido has trained in Kenshikai Karate. He achieved his shodan (first-degree black belt) in 2009, and has been a yondan (fourth-degree black belt) since 2021.