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About the Authors

Dr. Lloyd Biggle, Jr., Ph.D., (1923-2002) was a musician, author, and internationally known oral historian. He began writing professionally in 1955, and became a full-time writer with the publication of his novel, All the Colors of Darkness, in 1963, a profession that he followed until his death. Both Dr. Biggle's science fiction and mystery stories have received international acclaim. He was celebrated in science fiction circles as the author who introduced aesthetics into a literature known for its scientific and technological complications. He published two dozen books as well as magazine stories and articles beyond count. His most recent novel was The Chronicide Mission. He was writing almost to the moment of his death. "I can write them faster than the magazines can publish them," he once said, with the result that even though his writing has been stilled, his publications will continue until his backlog of stories is exhausted.

Robert J. Sawyer won the Nebula Award for best novel of 1995 for The Terminal Experiment; he's also been nominated six times for the Hugo Award. He has twice won Japan's top SF award, the Seiun, and twice won Spain's top SF award, the Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción. His twelfth novel, Calculating God, hit number one on the best-sellers' list published by Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field, and was also a top-ten national mainstream bestseller in

Sawyer's native Canada. His latest novel, Hominids, a June 2002 hardcover, was the third of Sawyer's novels to be serialized in Analog, the world's number-one bestselling SF magazine. Visit Rob's website at sfwriter.com.

Mike Resnick worked anonymously from 1964 through 1976, selling more than 200 novels, 300 short stories and 2,000 articles, almost all of them under pseudonyms. After a more than ten-year hiatus to pursue a career in dog breeding and exhibiting, he returned to fiction writing. His first novel in this "second career" was The Soul Eater. His breakthrough novel was the international bestseller Santiago, published by Tor in 1986. Tor has since published eleven more of Mike's novels and the collection Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Shut Off the Sun? Mike's most recent novel is Starship Mutiny for Pyr Books. His work has garnered fans around the world, and has been translated into twenty-two languages. Since 1989, Mike has won, five Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award, a Seiun-sho, a Prix Tour Eiffel (French), two Prix Ozones (French), 10 Homer Awards, an Alexander Award, a Golden Pagoda Award, a Hayakawa SF Award (Japanese), a Locus Award, an Ignotus Award (Spanish), a Futura Award (Croatian), an El Melocoton Mechanico (Spanish), two Sfinks Awards (Polish), and a Fantastyka Award (Polish). In 1993 he was awarded the Skylark Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science Fiction.

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean born speculative fiction writer who now lives (through many odd twists of fate and strangely enough to him) in Ohio with his wife Emily. He has published in various magazines and anthologies. He is a Clarion graduate, Writers of the Future winner, and Campbell Award for Best New SF Writer Finalist. His work has received Honorable Mentions in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. His first novel, Crystal Rain, will be out from Tor Books in July of 2005. You can visit www.TobiasBuckell.com for more information.

Brad Linaweaver has worked frequently in the alternate history subgenre, producing stories such as "Destination: Indies," an alternate telling of Christopher Columbus's journey across the Atlantic, and "Unmerited Favor" which takes a more militant approach to the story of Jesus Christ's life. He is also the author of the books Moon of Ice, Clownface, The Land Beyond Summer, and Sliders: The Novel; and was a co-editor of Free Space, a collection of original libertarian SF short stories. Winner of the Prometheus Award in 1989, he lives and works in Los Angeles, California. His last recent novel is Anaquia, a collaboration with Keith Hastings

Michael A. Stackpole is the author of eight New York Times bestselling Star Wars novels. He's the author of thirty-seven novels, including Fortress Draconis, the second novel in the DragonCrown War Cycle of fantasy novels. "According to Their Need" is the fifth story set in his Purgatory Station universe.

New Zealand has held a special place in Jane Lindskold's heart since she visited there some years ago. The opportunity to celebrate that lush green land along with its interesting and varied people gave her the setting of this story. Currently, Lindskold resides in New Mexico, a place unlike New Zealand in every way except in its variety. She is the author of fifty short stories and fifteen or so novels, including The Firekeeper's saga which begins with Through Wolf's Eyes as well as the stand alone novels The Buried Pyramid and Child of a Rainless Year. Her newest project is the forthcoming "Breaking the Wall" series

Jack Williamson has been writing science fiction since 1928, with more than fifty novels published. The most recent is Terraforming Earth. One section of it, "The Ultimate Earth," received the 2000 Hugo Award as the best novella. He lives in New Mexico, where he arrived with his parents and siblings in a covered wagon when he was seven years old. He is still writing, as well as teaching occasional courses at Eastern New Mexico University, his hometown school. His new novel, The Stonehenge Gate, will be published in the spring of 2005.

Mark Tier is an Australian who lives in Hong Kong partly because, as he puts it, "paying taxes is against my religion." A long-time SF fan and hard-core libertarian, he was a co-founder of the Australian equivalent of the Libertarian Party. He published and edited the investment newsletter World Money Analyst from 1974 to 1991.

James P. Hogan began writing science fiction as a hobby in the mid 1970s, and his works have been well received within the professional scientific community as well as among regular science fiction readers. In 1979 he left DEC to become a full-time writer, and in 1988 moved to the Republic of Ireland. Currently he maintains a residence in Pensacola, Florida, and spends part of each year in the United States. To date, he has published twenty-one novels, including the libertarian classic Voyage From Yesteryear, a nonfiction work on artificial intelligence, and two mixed collections of short fiction, nonfiction, and biographical anecdotes entitled Minds, Machines & Evolution and Rockets, Redheads & Revolution. A new nonfiction work, Kicking the Sacred Cow, will be released by Baen Books in June 2004. He has also published some articles and short fiction. Further details of Hogan and his work are available from his web site at www.jamesphogan.com.

Christopher Anvil is the pseudonym of Harry C. Crosby, Jr., a gifted short story author whose work was published in Astounding Science Fiction and Analog more often than any other author from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. He also wrote four novels, including The Day the Machines Stopped, Strangers in Paradise, and Pandora's World, but, like so many of his contemporaries, it is for his short fiction that he is best known. Stories such as "Mind Partner," considered by many to be his best work, "The Great Intellect Boom" and "Uncalculated Risk" show off his examination of social mores and ideas, and often turning them on their head.

Vernor Vinge won the 2000 Hugo award for best novel for his book A Deepness in the Sky, the sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep. Other novels by him include Grimm's World, The Witling, and Across Realtime. His short fiction has been collected in the anthologies True Names . . . and Other Dangers and Threats . . . and Other Promises. Born in Wisconsin, he currently lives in San Diego, where, along with writing excellent novels and short stories, he works as a professor of mathematics at San Diego State University.

Murray Leinster (1896-1975) was the pseudonym for William Fitzgerald Jenkins, a consummate professional who wrote for a wide number of venues during his varied career. Although he wrote more than forty novels during his fifty-year career, it is his short fiction, including stories such as "The Lonely Planet," "First Contact," and "Sidewise in Time" that he is best remembered. Fascinated with the idea of alternatives to reality as we or his protagonists know it, he pioneered the concept of the multiple points along one time continuum, or the simple concept of parallel worlds. Well regarded in the science fiction community, he was the Guest of Honor at the 21st World Science Fiction convention in 1963.

Alfred Elton (A.E.) van Vogt (1912-2000) burst onto the science fiction scene in 1939 with his first published science fiction story, "Black Destroyer," which was immediately hailed as a classic in the field, and the arrival of a bold new voice in speculative fiction. His first novel, Slan, appeared in 1940 and cemented his reputation as the most popular and exciting author of the era. Although his work has been criticized for deficiencies in plot, logic, and sometimes rationality, his stories operated on an emotional depth that swept readers along into new and exciting worlds filled with strange and alien ideas and races. Born in Manitoba, Canada, he discovered Amazing Stories when he was 14 and became a lifelong reader of science fiction. After joining the Canadian civil service at 19, he also took a writing course, and sold his first fiction piece in 1932. Novels such as The World of Null-A, the first science fiction novel from a major publisher, Simon and Schuster, and his classic work The Weapon Shops of Isher, based in part on the novella in this book, show the work of this Grand Master in full bloom.

Katherine MacLean has used her novels and short stories to explore complex ethical issues about medical and scientific experimentation. In novels such as Cosmic Checkmate, written with Charles de Vet (and based on the short story included in this anthology), The Missing Man, and Dark Wing she has explored the rights of the individual versus the good of the society. She is especially effective at shorter lengths, with stories such as "The Origin of the Species," "Contagion," and "The Other." Her short fiction has been collected in the anthologies The Diploids, and Flights of Fancy, Trouble With Treaties, and The Trouble with You Earth People.

Although Frank Herbert (1920-1986) wrote more than twenty novels and many short stories during his career, it is his six-novel galaxy—and millennium-spanning epic Dune series that towers above all his other work. This is not to say that his other books are any less important or imaginative. Novels such as The Dosadi Experiment, The God Makers, Destination: Void, and The Jesus Incident reveal his gift for unparalleled world-building, complete yet complex and varied alien races, and the unfolding of monumental events that affected entire civilizations and generations to come, often hinging on a group or even one man's choices and actions. Born in Tacoma, Washington, he was a reporter and editor for various West Coast newspapers, then went to the University of Washington as a lecturer in general and interdisciplinary studies. He was awarded the Nebula award in 1965 for Dune, the Hugo award in 1966, also for Dune, and the Prix Apollo award in 1978.

Eric Frank Russell (1905-1978) first achieved recognition with the publication of Sinister Barrier, the novel that launched John W. Campbell's Unknown magazine in 1939. Usually at the forefront of the science fiction scene for the next two decades, he was adept at tackling such humanistic issues as race relations, transposing them to the science fictional realm. Although he wrote several novels, including Three to Conquer and Sentinels From Space, it is his short fiction that garnered the most attention. A founding member of the British Interplanetary Society, his short story "Allamagoosa" won the Hugo award for best short fiction of the year in 1955.

THE END

 

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