ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
David Boop is a Denver-based speculative fiction author & editor. He’s also an award-winning essayist, and screenwriter. Before turning to fiction, David worked as a DJ, film critic, journalist, and actor. As Editor-in-Chief at IntraDenver.net, David’s team was on the ground at Columbine making them the only internet newspaper to cover the tragedy. That year, they won an award for excellence from the Colorado Press Association for their design and coverage.
David’s debut novel is the sci-fi/noir She Murdered Me with Science from WordFire Press. A second novel, The Soul Changers, is a serialized Victorian Horror novel set in Pinnacle Entertainment’s world of Rippers Resurrected. David was editor on the bestselling and award-nominated weird western anthology series Straight Outta Tombstone, Straight Outta Deadwood, and Straight Outta Dodge City for Baen.
David is prolific in short fiction with many short stories and two short films to his credit. He’s published across several genres including media tie-ins for Predator (nominated for the 2018 Scribe Award), The Green Hornet, The Black Bat, and Veronica Mars.
David works in game design, as well. He’s written for the Savage Worlds RPG for their Flash Gordon (nominated for an Origins Award) and Deadlands: Noir titles. He owns Longshot Productions, a multimedia company that, among other things, produces a line of Author Centric T-shirts, and a comic strip about the adventures of a new author called “Sign Here, Please.”
He’s a summa cum laude graduate from UC Denver in the Creative Writing program. He temps, collects Funko Pops, and is a believer. His hobbies include film noir, anime, the blues, and history. You can find out more at Davidboop.com, longshot-productions.net, Facebook.com/dboop.updates or Twitter @david_boop.
David would like to give a special thanks to Hugh S. Gregory III, Daniel D. Dubrick, and C. Stuart Hardwick for their insights on Jupiter and Europa. You made the station a reality.
Elizabeth Moon grew up on the Texas-Mexico border, and started writing as soon as she could hold a pencil. She has degrees in history (Rice University) and biology (University of Texas) with graduate work in biology at U.T. San Antonio. Besides twenty-eight novels and over fifty short fiction works, she has written poetry, essays, and one-act plays for school and community production. Her first published book, Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, won the Compton Crook award in 1989; Remnant Population was a Hugo nominee in 1997, and The Speed of Dark won the Nebula in 2004. Her most recent book, Into the Fire, came out in spring 2018. Then she got bucked off a new horse and acquired a fourth concussion…do not try this at home; it’s not fun. On the other hand, it’s an excuse for confusion other than simple aging.
In addition to writing, Moon’s interests include nature photography, prairie restoration and wildlife management, horses, music, and just about anything but housework. She lives in central Texas with her husband, enjoys making epic soups and “fusion” burritos, and is busy with a new book in the Vatta universe.
Michael F. Haspil is a geeky engineer and nerdy artist. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, he had the opportunities to serve as an ICBM crew commander and as a launch director at Cape Canaveral. The art of storytelling called to him from a young age, and he has plied his craft over many years and through diverse media. He has authored original stories for as long as he can remember and has dabbled in many genres. However, science fiction, fantasy, and horror have whispered directly to his soul. He hosts the Quantum Froth Dispatches podcast, which examines storytelling through pop-culture classics and shares author interviews.
When he isn’t writing, you can find him sharing stories with his role-playing group, cosplaying, computer gaming, or collecting and creating replica movie props. He devotes the bulk of his hobby time to assembling and painting miniatures for his tabletop wargaming addiction. Michael is a regular contributor to The Long War, a premiere podcast and webcast dedicated to tabletop gaming, but especially to Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000. He has also collected and made replica movie props for over twenty years and enjoys the way a particular collectible lets an individual connect with a meaningful story.
His novel from Tor Books, Graveyard Shift, an urban fantasy story about an immortal pharaoh out to stop an ancient vampire conspiracy in modern-day Miami, was well-received by critics and readers alike and was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Michael is currently working on other stories within the same world, known as “Umbra Case Files,” as well as other novels. He is represented by Sara Megibow of the KT Literary Agency.
Gini Koch writes the fast, fresh, and funny Alien/Katherine “Kitty” Katt series for DAW Books, the Necropolis Enforcement Files series, the Martian Alliance Chronicles series, and, as G.J. Koch, the Alexander Outland series. Gini’s made the most of multiple personality disorder by writing under a variety of other pen names as well, including Anita Ensal, Jemma Chase, A.E. Stanton, and J.C. Koch. She has stories featured in a variety of excellent anthologies, available now and upcoming. Writing as A.E. Stanton, she has an audio release, Natural Born Outlaws: The Legend of Belladonna Part 1, from Graphic Audio.
Gini is an in-demand speaker who panels regularly at conventions and conferences such as San Diego Comic-Con, Phoenix Comicon, the Tucson Festival of Books, Multiverse, and LibertyCon. She’s also been part of the faculty for the San Diego State University Writers Conference, Jambalaya Con, the Desert Dreams Writers Conference, the James River Writers Conference, and High Desert Book Fair, among others.
As Anita Ensal she writes in all areas of speculative fiction and has stories in many fine anthologies (such as this one) including Love and Rockets and Boondocks Fantasy from DAW Books, Guilds & Glaives, Portals, and Derelict from Zombies Need Brains, The Book of Exodi from Eposic, A Dying Planet from Flame Tree Press, and the upcoming The Reinvented Heart from CAEZIK SF & Fantasy. She also has the novella A Cup of Joe and will be re-releasing her The Neighborhood series sometime in 2022.
Born in New York City in 1946, Alan Dean Foster was raised in Los Angeles. After receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema from UCLA (1968, l969) he spent two years as a copywriter for a small Studio City, California, advertising and public relations firm.
His writing career began when August Derleth bought a long Lovecraftian letter of Foster’s in 1968 and, much to Foster’s surprise, published it as a short story in Derleth’s biannual magazine, The Arkham Collector. Sales of short fiction to other magazines followed. His first attempt at a novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, was bought by Betty Ballantine and published by Ballantine Books in 1972. It incorporates a number of suggestions from famed SF editor John W. Campbell.
Since then, Foster’s sometimes humorous, occasionally poignant, but always entertaining short fiction has appeared in all the major SF magazines as well as in original anthologies and several “Best of the Year” compendiums. His published oeuvre includes more than 120 books.
Foster’s work to date includes excursions into hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He has also written numerous nonfiction articles on film, science, and scuba diving, as well as having produced the novel versions of many films, including such well-known productions as Star Wars, the first three Alien films, Alien Nation, The Chronicles of Riddick, Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation, and two Transformers films. Other works include scripts for talking records, radio, computer games, op-eds for the New York Times, and the story for the first Star Trek movie. His novel Shadowkeep was the first-ever book adaptation of an original computer game. In addition to publication in English, his work has been translated into more than fifty languages and has won awards in Spain and Russia. His novel Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first work of science fiction ever to do so. He is the recipient of the Faust, the IAMTW Lifetime achievement award.
Though restricted (for now) to the exploration of one world, Foster’s love of the faraway and exotic has led him to travel extensively. After graduating from college he lived for a summer with the family of a Tahitian policeman and camped out in French Polynesia. He and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, of Moran, Texas, have traveled to Europe and throughout Asia and the Pacific in addition to exploring the back roads of Tanzania and Kenya. Foster has camped out in the “Green Hell” region of the Southeastern Peruvian jungle, photographing army ants and pan-frying piranha (lots of small bones; tastes a lot like trout); has ridden forty-foot whale sharks in the remote waters off Western Australia, and was one of three people on the first commercial air flight into Northern Australia’s Bungle Bungle National Park. He has rappelled into New Mexico’s fabled Lechugilla Cave, white-water rafted the length of the Zambezi’s Batoka Gorge, driven solo the length and breadth of Namibia, crossed the Andes by car, sifted the sands of unexplored archeological sites in Peru, gone swimming with giant otters in Brazil, surveyed remote Papua New Guinea and West Papua both above and below the water, and dived unexplored reefs throughout the South Pacific and Indian Ocean. His filmed footage of great white sharks feeding off South Australia has appeared on both American television and the BBC.
Besides traveling he enjoys listening to both classical music and heavy metal. In April of 2020, he began writing orchestral music and to date has written a number of short pieces in addition to two symphonies. Other pastimes include hiking, body surfing, and scuba diving. In his age and weight class he is a current world and Eurasian champion in powerlifting (bench press). He studied karate with Aaron and Chuck Norris before Norris decided to give up teaching for acting. He has taught screenwriting, literature, and film history at UCLA and Los Angeles City College as well as having lectured at universities and conferences around the world. A life member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he also spent two years serving on the Planning and Zoning Commission of his hometown of Prescott, Arizona. Foster’s correspondence and manuscripts are in the Special Collection of the Hayden Library of Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.
The Fosters reside in Prescott in a house built of brick salvaged from a turn-of-the-century miners’ hotel/brothel, along with assorted dogs, cats, fish, several hundred houseplants, visiting javelina, roadrunners, eagles, red-tailed hawks, skunks, coyotes, bobcats, and the ensorceled chair of the nefarious Dr. John Dee. He is presently at work on several new novels and media projects.
Alex Shvartsman is a writer, translator, game designer, and anthologist from Brooklyn, NY. His adventures so far have included traveling to over thirty countries, playing a card game for a living, and building a successful business. Alex resides in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife and son.
Over 120 of his short stories have appeared in Analog, Nature, Strange Horizons, Fireside, Weird Tales, Galaxy’s Edge, and many other venues. He won the WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction in 2014 and was a two-time finalist (2015 and 2017) for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Fiction. His political fantasy novel Eridani’s Crown was published in 2019.
Alex’s translations from Russian have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Apex, Samovar, Amazing Stories, and other venues.
He’s the editor of the Unidentified Funny Objects series of humorous SF/F, as well as a variety of other anthologies, including The Cackle of Cthulhu (Baen), Humanity 2.0 (Arc Manor), and Funny Science Fiction (UFO). He’s the editor and publisher of Future Science Fiction Digest, a magazine that focuses on international fiction.
His website is www.alexshvartsman.com and his Twitter handle is @AShvartsman.
Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Their 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Their most recent work is space opera You Sexy Thing, the first in a series from Tor Macmillan. Upcoming in 2022 is the sequel, along with the final book of the Tabat Quartet, Gods of Tabat, and anthology The Reinvented Heart, co-edited with Jennifer Brozek. A former two-term president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Rambo continues to volunteer with the organization’s Grievance Committee and other projects. Rambo also runs The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, an online school featuring some of the best genre writing instructors in the field. Their website is www.catrambo.com and their Twitter handle is @Cat Rambo.
J.R. Martin was born in Fort Hood, Texas. He started writing to bring worlds to life that reflected his background and experience. Recently, J. R. finished a steampunk novel and is working on a new short project. When he’s not writing he’s spending time with his two boys and dog in Dallas, Texas.
Patrick Swenson runs Fairwood Press, a book line, which began in 2000. A graduate of Clarion West, his first novel, The Ultra Thin Man, appeared from Tor; the sequel is The Ultra Big Sleep. His new novel is Rain Music, a ghost story with music and magic. He has sold stories to the anthology Unfettered III, Seasons Between Us, Like Water for Quarks, and a handful of magazines. He runs the Rainforest Writers Village retreat every spring at Lake Quinault, Washington. He’s been a high school teacher for thirty-five years. He lives in Bonney Lake, Washington.
Martin L. Shoemaker is a programmer who writes on the side…or maybe it’s the other way around. Programming pays the bills, but a second-place story in the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest earned him lunch with Buzz Aldrin. Programming never did that! His work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Galaxy’s Edge, Digital Science Fiction, Forever Magazine, Writers of the Future, and numerous anthologies including Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF 4, Man-Kzin Wars XV, The Jim Baen Memorial Award: The First Decade, Little Green Men—Attack!, More Human Than Human: Stories of Androids, Robots, and Manufactured Humanity, Avatar Dreams, and Weird World War III. His Clarkesworld story “Today I Am Paul” appeared in four different year’s best anthologies and eight international editions. His follow-up novel, Today I Am Carey, was published by Baen Books in March 2019. His novel The Last Dance was published by 47North in November 2019, and was the number one science fiction eBook on Amazon during October’s prerelease. The sequel, The Last Campaign, was published in October 2020.
Born in London, England, and raised in Canada, Alastair Mayer apparently inherited the gene for science fiction from his father, who published Arthur C. Clarke’s first stories. He’s always had a sense of adventure, and served in the armed forces, scuba dived, parachuted, became a pilot, an astronaut candidate, and space activist, as well as more mundane things like farmhand, mapmaker, and software developer. In 1989, he moved to Colorado, ultimately working for a satellite network company.
He began writing as a contributing editor to Byte Magazine, breaking into fiction with five stories in Analog Science Fiction magazine, plus stories in several anthologies, including Footprints and Space Horrors.
As of this writing, Alastair has published nine novels set in his T-Space (terraformed space) universe, including the five-volume (and counting) Carson & Roberts series, beginning with The Chara Talisman. His story in this collection, “Incident at Raven’s Rift,” is a prequel to that novel.
Larry Niven’s Tales of Known Space convinced Jane Lindskold that being a prospector and miner out among the asteroids would be the coolest job ever. The New York Times bestselling author of over twenty-five novels and seventy-some short stories, her novels include the Firekeeper Saga, the Breaking the Wall series, the Artemis Awakening series, the Athanor novels, and a number of standalone works. She’s also written in collaboration with David Weber, Roger Zelazny, and Fred Saberhagen. Jane lives in New Mexico, and when she’s not writing, she rides herd on a passel of cats and guinea pigs.
You can find out more about her and her publications at www.janelindskold.com.
Engineer/Novelist/Journalist/Entrepreneur Wil McCarthy is a former contributing editor for WIRED magazine and science columnist for the SyFy channel (previously SciFi channel), where his popular “Lab Notes” column ran from 1999 through 2009. A lifetime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he is a two-time winner of the AnLab award, has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Seiun, Colorado Book, Theodore Sturgeon and Philip K. Dick awards, and contributed to projects that won a Webbie, an Eppie, a Game Developers’ Choice Award, and a General Excellence National Magazine Award. In addition, his imaginary world of “P2/Sorrow” was rated one of the ten best science fiction planets of all time by Discover magazine. His short fiction has graced the pages of magazines like Analog, Asimov’s, WIRED, and SF Age, and his twelve published novels include the New York Times Notable Bloom, Amazon.com “Best of Y2K” The Collapsium (an international bestseller), and, most recently, Antediluvian and Rich Man’s Sky. He has also written for TV and video games, appeared on The History Channel and The Science Channel, and published nonfiction in half a dozen magazines, including WIRED, Discover, GQ, Popular Mechanics, IEEE Spectrum, and the Journal of Applied Polymer Science.
Previously a flight controller for Lockheed Martin Space Launch Systems and later an engineering manager for Omnitech Robotics and founder/president/CTO of RavenBrick LLC, McCarthy now writes patents for a top law firm in Denver. He holds patents of his own in seven countries, including thirty-one issued U.S. patents in the field of nanostructured optical materials.