ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ALLEN STEELE

Before becoming a science fiction author, Allen Steele was a journalist who’d worked for newspapers and magazines in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Missouri, and his home state of Tennessee. But SF was his first love, so he eventually ditched journalism and instead began producing that which made him want to be a writer in the first place.

Since then, Steele has published eighteen novels and nearly a hundred short stories. His work has received numerous awards, including three Hugos, and has been translated worldwide, mainly in languages he can’t read. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Space Frontier Foundation and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He also belongs to Sigma, a group of SF writers who frequently serve as unpaid consultants on matters regarding technology and security.

Allen Steele is a lifelong space buff, and this interest has not only influenced his writing, but also taken him to some interesting places. He has witnessed numerous space shuttle launches from Kennedy Space Center and has flown NASA’s shuttle cockpit simulator at the Johnson Space Center. In 2001, he testified before the U.S. House of Representatives in hearings regarding the future of space exploration. He would like very much to go into orbit, and hopes that one day he’ll to be able to afford to do so.

Steele lives in western Massachusetts with his wife Linda and a continual procession of adopted dogs. He collects vintage science fiction books and magazines, spacecraft model kits, and dreams.

JAY LAKE

Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His books for 2012 and 2013 include Kalimpura from Tor and Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh from Prime. His short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay is a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

KEN SCHOLES

Ken Scholes grew up in a trailer outside a smallish logging town not far from the base of Mount Rainier in the Pacific Northwest. Baptized into Story at a young age, he fed himself on Speed Racer, Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants and Marine Boy sprinkled with a generous dose of dinosaur picture books. One day, his parents brought home two science fiction books—Trapped in Space, by Jack Williamson, and Runaway Robot, by Lester Del Rey. They set him on a reading path that eventually swept across genres—mysteries, westerns, science fiction, fantasy, sword and sorcery, thrillers, horror. Still, speculative fiction remained home base for Ken; he cites Bradbury and Burroughs, Howard, Moorcock and King as strong influences.

He sold his first story to Talebones magazine in 2000 and won the Writers of the Future contest in 2004. His quirky, offbeat fiction continues to show up in various magazines and anthologies like Polyphony 6, Weird Tales and Clarkesworld Magazine. More recently, his novel Lamentation appeared as the first in a five-book series from Tor called “The Psalms of Isaak.”

GARDNER DOZOIS

Gardner Dozois is the former editor of Asimov’s magazine and currently edits the annual anthology series, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, now in its Twenty-Ninth annual edition. He has won fifteen Hugo Awards and thirty-four Locus Awards for his editing, plus two Nebula Awards and a Sidewise Award for his own writing. He is the author or editor of over a hundred books. Coming up are two new anthologies edited with George R.R. Martin, Old Mars and Old Venus.

AVRAM DAVIDSON

Avram Davidson, one of the most celebrated Grand Masters of Science Fiction, won a Hugo Award in 1958 for his story “Or All the Seas with Oysters.” Most of his books are currently available from Wildside Press, and Audible recently released several of his books in audiobook format, including The Adventures of Dr. Eszterhazy. Visit Audible.com to check it out.

CAROL EMSHWILLER

Carol Emshwiller (born April 12, 1921) is an American writer of avant garde short stories and science fiction who has won prizes ranging from the Nebula Award to the Philip K. Dick Award. Ursula K. Le Guin has called her “a major fabulist, a marvelous magical realist, one of the strongest, most complex, most consistently feminist voices in fiction.” Among her novels are Carmen Dog and The Mount. She has also written two cowboy novels called Ledoyt and Leaping Man Hill. Her most recent novel, The Secret City, was published in April 2007.

CHARLES L. FONTENAY

Charles Louis Fontenay (1917–2007) was an American journalist and science fiction writer. He wrote science fiction novels and short stories. His non-fiction includes the biography of prominent New Deal era politician Estes Kefauver.Fontenay served as editor of the Nashville Tennessean, among other newspapers, worked with the Associated Press and Gannett News Service. He retired to St. Petersburg, Florida where he continued to write science fiction until shortly before his death.

CORY DORCOTOW

Cory Doctorow writes: “In spring 2004, in the wake of Ray Bradbury pitching a tantrum over Michael Moore appropriating the title of Fahrenheit 451 to make Fahrenheit 9/11, I conceived of a plan to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous sf shorts, which would pick apart the totalitarian assumptions underpinning some of sf’s classic narratives.”

His story “I, Robot” is part of this series.

PAMELA SARGENT

Pamela Sargent has won the Nebula and Locus Awards and is the author of the novels Cloned Lives, The Sudden Star, Watchstar, The Golden Space, The Alien Upstairs, Eye of the Comet, Homesmind, Alien Child, The Shore of Women, Venus of Dreams, Venus of Shadows, Child of Venus, and Climb the Wind. Ruler of the Sky, her 1993 historical novel about Genghis Khan, was a bestseller in Germany and in Spain, where she was invited to speak at the Institute of American Studies, the University of Barcelona, and the Complutense University of Madrid. She also edited the Women of Wonder anthologies, the first collections of science fiction by women, published in the 1970s by Vintage/Random House and in updated editions during the 1990s by Harcourt Brace. A short story, “The Shrine,” was produced for the syndicated TV anthology series Tales from the Darkside.

Tor Books reissued her 1983 young adult novel Earthseed, selected as a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association, and a sequel, Farseed, in early 2007. Farseed was chosen by the New York Public Library for their 2008 Books for the Teen Age list of best books for young adults. A third novel, Seedship, was published in 2010. Earthseed has been optioned by Paramount Pictures, with Melissa Rosenberg, scriptwriter for all five Twilight films, set to write and produce through her Tall Girls Productions.

GEORGE ZEBROWSKI

George Zebrowski is an award-winning novelist, story writer, essayist, editor, and lecturer. He is the author of the novel Empties (Golden Gryphon Press) and the editor, with Gregory Benford, of Sentinels in Honor of Arthur C. Clarke (Hadley Rille Books). A new short story will appear in Nature this fall.

BRANDA W. CLOUGH

Brenda W. Clough (who also writes as B.W. Clough) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. She was nominated for both the Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in 2002 for her Novella “May Be Some Time.” Currently she teaches writing workshops at the Writers Center in Bethesda, MD. Her most recent novel, Speak to Our Desires, is available through Book View Cafe: http://www.bookviewcafe.com—and her web site is:

http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/

BRUCE BETHKE

Bruce Bethke coined the term “cyberpunk” with his story “Cyberpunk”—which he later expanded into the novel Cyberpunks. He works with computers (obviously) when not writing or editing. Check out his anthology series, Stupefying Stories, at www.stupefyingstories.com.

EVERETT B. COLE

Everett B. Cole was an American writer of science fiction short stories and a professional soldier. He worked as a signal maintenance and property officer at Fort Douglas, Utah. His first science fiction story, “Philosophical Corps” was published in the magazine Astounding in 1951. His fix-up of that story and two others, The Philosophical Corps, was published by Gnome Press in 1962. A second novel, The Best Made Plans, was serialized in Astounding in 1959, but never published in book form. He also co-authored historical books about the south Texas region.

STERLING E. LANIER

Sterling Edmund Lanier (1927–2007) was an American editor, science fiction author and sculptor who published as both Sterling Lanier and Sterling E. Lanier. He is perhaps known best as the editor who championed the publication of Frank Herbert’s bestselling novel Dune—though he was an excellent author in his own right.

KEITH LAUMER

John Keith Laumer (1925–1993) was an American science fiction author. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, he was an officer in the United States Air Force and a U.S. diplomat. His brother March Laumer was also a writer, known for his adult reinterpretations of the Land of Oz (also mentioned in Keith Laumer’s The Other Side of Time).

GRANIA DAVIS

Grania Davis is an author and editor of science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. She is also the primary editor of the posthumous work of her late former-husband, Avram Davidson. Her short stories have appeared in various genre magazines, anthologies, and ‘best of’ collections. Her story “The Boss in the Wall” (1998, with Avram Davidson) was nominated for a Nebula Award in the Best Novella category.

LAWRENCE WATT-EVANS

Lawrence Watt-Evans is the author of about fifty novels and over a hundred short stories, mostly in the SF, fantasy, and horror fields. He won the Hugo award in 1988 for his short story, “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers,” and was president of the Horror Writers Association for two years. Recent books include Tales of Ethshar, a collection of short stories set in the same universe as The Misenchanted Sword and many of his finest fantasy novels, and The Unwelcome Warlock, a new Ethshar novel.

JAMES C. STEWART

James C. Stewart appeared in the debut issue of Paradox: The Magazine of Historical & Speculative Fiction. He’s currently seeking a publisher for two novels, and is at home working on his third. He lives in North Bay, Ontario, Canada.

ALAN E. NOURSE

Alan Edward Nourse (1928–1992) was an American science fiction author and physician. He wrote both juvenile and adult science fiction, as well as nonfiction works about medicine and science. His SF works generally focused on medicine and/or psionics.

RICK RAPHAEL

Rick Raphael (1919-1994) was an American science fiction author. His story “Code Three” was a Hugo Award finalist in 1964. He expanded it into a novel under the same title in 1967.

FREDERIK POHL

Frederik George Pohl, Jr. (born November 26, 1919) is an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years—from his first published work, “Elegy to a Dead Planet: Luna” (1937), to his most recent novel, All the Lives He Led (2011).

From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy and its sister magazine If; the latter won three successive annual Hugo Awards as the year’s best professional magazine. His 1977 novel Gateway won four “year’s best novel” awards: the Hugo voted by convention participants, the Locus voted by magazine subscribers, the Nebula voted by American science fiction writers, and the juried academic John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He won the Campbell Memorial Award again for the 1984 collection of novellas Years of the City, the only repeat winner in forty years. For his 1979 novel Jem, Pohl won a U.S. National Book Award in the one-year category Science Fiction. It was a finalist for three other year’s best novel awards. In all he has won four Hugo and three Nebula Awards.

Pohl became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993 and he was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1998. He won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2010, citing his blog “The Way the Future Blogs.”

ROBERT SHECKLEY

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical. Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.

WALTER J. SHELDON

Walter James Sheldon (1917–1996) was a frequent short story writer during the Golden Age of pulp science fiction, under his own name and as “Seldon Walters.” His only novel, The Beast, appeared in 1980.

WALTER S. TEVIS

Walter Stone Tevis (1928–1984) was an American novelist and short story writer. Three of his six novels were adapted into major films: The Hustler, The Color of Money and The Man Who Fell to Earth. His books have been translated into at least 18 languages worldwide.

DONALD E. WESTLAKE

Donald Edwin Westlake (1933–2008) was an American writer, with over a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into science fiction or other genres. He was a three-time Edgar Award winner, one of only two writers (the other is Joe Gores) to win Edgars in three different categories (1968, Best Novel, God Save the Mark; 1990, Best Short Story, “Too Many Crooks”; 1991, Best Motion Picture Screenplay, The Grifters). In 1993, the Mystery Writers of America named Westlake a Grand Master, the highest honor bestowed by the society.

DARRELL SCHWEITZER

Darrell Schweitzer is an American writer, editor, and essayist in the field of speculative fiction. Much of his focus has been on dark fantasy and horror, although he does also work in science fiction and fantasy. Schweitzer is also a prolific writer of literary criticism and editor of collections of essays on various writers within his preferred genres, many of which are available from Wildside Press.

Over the last year, Audible has released who of his novels in audiobook format: The White Isle and The Shattered Goddess. Check them out!