Alien Contact (81 page)

Elizabeth Moon
grew up in south Texas and started writing at an early age. She has degrees in history and biology, and served in the Marines from 1968–1971. She has written twenty-three novels, (two co-authored with Anne McCaffrey), including several popular series: Vatta’s War (concluded in 2008 with
Victory Conditions
), the Serrano Legacy, Planet Pirates (with McCaffrey), and the trilogy
The Deed of Paksenarrion
and its prequels. She has been a finalist for both the Hugo (
Remnant Population
) and the Arthur C. Clarke Award (
The Speed of Dark
); her novel
The Speed of Dark
won the 2004 Nebula Award. In 2007, Elizabeth won the Robert A. Heinlein Award for her body of work. She has had over thirty shorter works in magazines and anthologies, most recently her collection
Moon Flights
(2007). Her most recent novel is
Kings of the North
(2011), the second volume of Paladin’s Legacy.

Besides writing, her other interests include classical music, prairie restoration, wildlife management, horses, Renaissance-style fencing, nature photography, and biomedical science. Elizabeth now lives in central Texas with her husband, two horses, a cat, and a John Deere tractor named Bombadil. Website:
www.elizabethmoon.com
.

Pat Murphy
is a writer, a scientist, and a toy maker. Her novels include
The Wild Girls, Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell,
and
The Falling Woman.
Her fiction has won the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Seiun Award.

Over the course of twenty-plus years as a writer and editor with San Francisco’s Exploratorium, Pat wrote and edited science books for children and adults. Her titles include
The Science Explorer
series,
The Math Explorer, By Nature’s Design, Traces of Time,
and
Exploratopia
.

Currently, Pat works for Klutz, a publisher of how-to books that come with cool stuff. Pat’s books with Klutz include
Invasion of the Bristlebots
(which comes with robots that run on toothbrush bristles),
Boom! Splat! Kablooey!
(a book of explosions), and
The Handbook
(which comes with a skeletal model of a hand).

Pat enjoys looking for trouble. Her favorite color is ultraviolet. Her favorite book is whichever one she is working on right now. Website:
www.verlavolante.com
.

Mike Resnick
has been nominated for thirty-five Hugo Awards—a record for writers—and except for 1999 and 2003, he has received at least one nomination every year to date since 1989. He has won the Hugo Award five times, most recently in 2005 for short story “Travels with My Cat.”

In addition, Mike has won a Nebula Award, and many other major awards in the US, France, Japan, Poland, Croatia, and Spain, and is, according to
Locus,
the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction. He is the author of more than sixty novels, more than 250 short stories, and two screenplays, and is the editor of forty anthologies.

Recently, Mike sold a movie option on all the John Justin Mallory books and stories—
Stalking the Unicorn, Stalking the Vampire, Stalking the Dragon,
plus six novelettes and a short story—to Heath Corson and Criminal Mastermind Entertainment. Website:
mikeresnick.com
.

“The 43 Antarean Dynasties” was nominated for the Locus and Theodore Sturgeon awards, and won the Hugo Award, the Asimov’s Reader Award, and the Spanish Premios Ignotus (given at HispaCon, Spain’s national SF convention) for best short story.

In 1949,
Robert Silverberg
started a science fiction fanzine called
Spaceship,
and made his first professional sale to
Science Fiction Adventures
, a nonfiction piece called “Fanmag,” in the December 1953 issue. His first professional fiction publication was “Gorgon Planet” in the February 1954 issue of the British magazine
Nebula Science Fiction
; his first novel,
Revolt on Alpha C
, was published in 1955.

The best known of his many novels and stories are
Dying Inside, Lord Valentine’s Castle, Nightwings,
“Born with the Dead,” “Sailing to Byzantium,” and “Passengers.” He has won five Nebula Awards and five Hugo Awards, and in 2004 was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. In 2007, Bob was elected President of the
Fantasy Amateur Press Association, and currently serves as President Emeritus.

He and his wife Karen, also a writer under the name of Karen Haber, live in the San Francisco area. Website:
www.majipoor.com
.

Amanda and the Alien
was filmed in 1995, directed by Jon Kroll, and starring Nicole Eggert, John Diehl, Michael Dorn, and Stacy Keach.

Jack Skillingstead
was one of five winners in Stephen King’s 2001 “On Writing” contest. Two years later his first professional sale appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction:
short story “Dead Worlds” went on to be short-listed for the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and Gardner Dozois reprinted it in his annual
Year’s Best Science Fiction
anthology series. Since then Jack has sold thirty short stories, published critically acclaimed collection
Are You There and Other Stories
(2009), and debuted as a novelist that same year with
Harbinger
. His stories have appeared in
Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy,
and a number of other publications, including Lou Anders’s acclaimed
Fast Forward
series. His fiction has been described as “brilliant” by famed critic John Clute, and has been translated into four languages, podcast, and dissected in university classrooms from Rutgers to San Diego State.

Jack lives in Seattle with his wife, fellow writer Nancy Kress. Website:
www.jackskillingstead.com
.

Bruce Sterling,
author, journalist, editor, and critic, was born in 1954. Best known for his ten science fiction novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews, design criticism, opinion columns, and introductions for books ranging from Ernst Jünger to Jules Verne. His nonfiction works include
The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier
(1992),
Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years
(2003), and
Shaping Things
(2005).

Bruce is a contributing editor of
Wired
magazine and writes a weblog. During 2005, he was the “Visionary in Residence” at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. In 2008 he was the Guest Curator for the Share Festival of Digital Art and Culture in Torino, Italy, and the Visionary in Residence at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam.

He has appeared on ABC’s
Nightline,
BBC’s
The Late Show
, CBC’s
Morningside,
on MTV and TechTV, and in
Time, Newsweek,
The Wall Street Journal,
the
New York Times, Fortune, Nature, I.D., Metropolis, Technology Review, Der Spiegel, la Repubblica,
and many other venues. Blog:
www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond
.

“Swarm” was nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards in the novelette category.

Born in darkest Yorkshire,
Charles Stross
currently lives in historic Edinburgh, capital of Scotland, with his wife, cats, carnivorous plants, and a herd of senescent computers. His first published short story, “The Boys,” appeared in
Interzone
in 1987; his first novel,
The Atrocity Archive,
was originally serialized in the British magazine
Spectrum SF,
number 7, November 2001, through number 9, November 2002.

He holds degrees in pharmacy and computer science, and is the author of
The Web Architect’s Handbook
(1996). Charlie has worked as a technical author, freelance journalist, programmer, and pharmacist at different times. He is now a full-time writer.

In 2005, he was nominated for three Hugo Awards: one nomination for best novel and two nominations for best novella; he won the Hugo Award for best novella for “The Concrete Jungle,” included in
The Atrocity Archives
(2004).

Charlie has written several series of novels, including the Eschaton series, the Merchant Princes series, the Halting State series, and the Laundry Files series. Much of his work concerns the singularity, but he writes near-future speculations and stories that incorporate Lovecraftian horror.

Michael Swanwick
is one of the most acclaimed and prolific science fiction and fantasy writers of his generation. He has received a Hugo Award for fiction in an unprecedented five out of six years (1998–2003) and has been honored with the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Award, as well as receiving nominations for the British Science Fiction and Arthur C. Clarke awards.

His first novel,
In the Drift
(1985), was published as part of the New Ace Science Fiction Specials series, edited by Terry Carr. Michael’s new novel,
Dancing with Bears,
featuring post-Utopian confidence artists Darger and Surplus, was published by Night Shade Books on May Day, 2011. He has also written photo-story “October Leaves,” available online on Flickr.com.

Michael has written about the field as well. He published two long essays on the state of science fiction (“A User’s Guide to the Post Moderns,” 1986) and fantasy (“In the Tradition...,” 1994); both essays were collected together in
The Postmodern Archipelago
(1997).

He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter. Website:
www.michaelswanwick.com
.

“A Midwinter’s Tale” was nominated for the Locus Award, and won the Asimov’s Reader Award for best short story.

Mark W. Tiedemann
attended Clarion in 1988 and, shortly thereafter, began publishing. He has sold over fifty short stories, to
Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Tomorrow SF, Tales of the Unanticipated,
and anthologies such as
Universe 2, Vanishing Acts, Bending the Landscape, War of the Worlds: the Global Dispatches,
and others.

In 1999 he was invited to write in Isaac Asimov’s Robot City universe and subsequently published the Robot Mystery trilogy:
Mirage, Chimera,
and
Aurora
. In 2001 the first book of his Secantis Sequence was published:
Compass Reach
was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award. Two more novels followed,
Metal of Night
and
Peace & Memory
. In 2006, his standalone novel
Remains
was shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award.

While all this was going on, he joined the board of directors of the Missouri Center for the Book, the Missouri affiliate to the Library of Congress Center for the Book, an institution that works to promote and support the state literary heritage and the culture of the book. In 2005, he was elected its president. Though retired now, during his tenure, the Center advocated for and achieved the establishment of the first Missouri State Poet Laureate.

Mark has lived in St. Louis all his life, for the past thirty years with his companion, best friend, and first reader, Donna. He occasionally plays piano and guitar, doodles in idle moments, and is somehow, according to friends, still sane after all these years, a condition which could change at any moment.

Harry Turtledove
received his PhD in Byzantine history from UCLA in 1977. His dissertation was entitled
The Immediate Successors of Justinian: A Study of the Persian Problem and of Continuity and Change in Internal Secular Affairs in the Later Roman Empire During the Reigns of Justin II and Tiberius II Constantine (A.D. 565–582)
.

In 1979, he published his first two novels,
Wereblood
and
Werenight
, under the pseudonym “Eric G. Iverson.” Harry later explained that his editor at Belmont Tower did not think people would believe the author’s real name was “Turtledove” and came up with something more Nordic. He continued to use the “Iverson” name until 1985, when he began publishing under his real name. In the 1980s, Harry also worked as a technical writer for the Los Angeles County Office of Education. In 1991, he left the LACOE and turned to writing full-time.

Harry has been dubbed “The Master of Alternate History”: he is known both for creating original alternate history scenarios such as survival of the Byzantine Empire or an alien invasion in the middle of the Second World War, and for giving a fresh and original treatment to themes previously dealt with by many others, including the Confederacy winning the Civil War and a Nazi Germany victory in World War II. He is married to mystery writer Laura Frankos; they have three daughters. Website:
www.sfsite.com/~silverag/turtledove.html
.

“The Road Not Taken” was nominated for a Locus Award and an AnLab (
Analog
) Award in the novelette category.

Marty Halpern
is a two-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award–Professional for his work with Golden Gryphon Press. His career with GGP began in 1999, and in the next 7 years (while working a full-time, high-tech job through half of those years), he edited 23½ hardcovers, 4 limited edition chapbooks, and 4 reprint trade paperbacks. The “½” hardcover is original anthology
The Silver Gryphon
(marking the press’s twenty-fifth book in 2003), which he co-edited with publisher Gary Turner.

Marty now freelances, working directly with authors to prepare their manuscripts for publication, as well as working primarily for independent publishers Night Shade Books and Tachyon Publications, for whom he has edited a combined 20 titles (and copyedited far too many more to count), and other publishers including Ace Books, Damnation Books (
Realms of Fantasy
magazine), and Morrigan Books UK.

In addition to his work as an editor, Marty has written a series of columns entitled “The Perfect Sentence,” published in
The Valley Scribe,
the newsletter of the San Fernando Valley Chapter of the California Writers Club. And was a guest faculty at the 2004 East of Eden Writers Conference in Salinas, California.