About the Authors
National best-selling author Quincy J. Allen, one of the four founders of The Eldros Legacy, is a cross-genre author with a growing number of published novels under his belt. He has published Seeds of Dominion in the Eldros Legacy and will be releasing its sequel, Demons of Veynkal, in the spring of 2023.
His media tie-in novel Colt the Outlander: Shadow of Ruin was a Scribe Award finalist in 2019, and his noir novel Chemical Burn was a Colorado Gold Award finalist in 2010. Blood Oath, book 3 of his Blood War Chronicles series, debuted in February of 2019, and he is working on the fourth book in that six-book fantasy steampunk series, entitled Blood World. His numerous short story publications include “Sons of the Father” in Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter Files from Baen Books, as well as several novelettes in Chris Kennedy Publishing’s military science fiction anthologies, appearing in and out of the Four Horseman universe. He works out of his home in Charlotte, North Carolina, and hopes one day to be a New York Times best-selling author. You can follow him on Facebook and at quincyallen.com.
Best-selling author Jason Cordova has had his novels published in multiple languages around the world. He was both a John W. Campbell Award and Dragon Award finalist (though not in the same year). Editor of the anthology Chicks in Tank Tops (Baen Books), author of the forthcoming Black Tide Rising novel Mountain of Fire, and coauthor of Monster Hunter Memoirs: Fever, with Larry Correia, he currently resides in North Carolina with his muse and a plethora of animals.
Ron Goulart (1932–2022) was noted for writing wacky science fiction short stories, often with technology going wrong, abetted by bumbling human incompetence. His first publication in an SF magazine was a parody of a pulp magazine letter column, which The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction reprinted from a college humor magazine. When he began writing SF novels, the wackiness continued, although his 1979 novel, After Things Fell Apart, about a future United States fragmented into several disputatious enclaves, is more restrained in its humor, for a more believable, though hardly desirable, future. He also wrote books under a large collection of pseudonyms, including romance novels under a female pseudonym, novels featuring the pulp hero The Avenger, and comic strip heroes The Phantom and Flash Gordon. He wrote many mystery stories and was twice nominated for the Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America. In nonfiction, he often wrote authoritative articles about pop culture, and at greater length in the book, Cheap Thrills, subtitled “An Informal History of the Pulp Magazines.” My (Hank’s) favorite Goulart remains his series of short stories about Max Kearney, which slyly parody such classic investigators of the supernatural as John Silence and Jules de Grandin. Of particularly fond memory is the time Kearney had to deal with a haunting by the ghost of a big band of the swing era and its conductor. I’ll bet the music was great!
Joe Haldeman (b. 1943) is a Vietnam veteran whose classic novels The Forever War and Forever Peace have the rare distinction of having won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel of the year. He has served twice as president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. That organization also made him a Grand Master of the Field. He was an adjunct professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology until his recent retirement. Stephen King has said, “Haldeman writes with wit, grace, and ease. If there was a Fort Knox for the science fiction writers who really matter, we’d have to lock Haldeman up there.” His most recent science fiction work is the Marsbound trilogy comprising Marsbound, Starbound, and Earthbound. More recently, he has published a suspense novel, Work Done for Hire.
Harry Harrison (1925–2012) was known for his popular fast-paced adventure novels, often enlivened by an undercurrent of humor and satire, notably Deathworld and The Stainless Steel Rat, both of which were followed by popular sequels. Another such was his Bill, the Galactic Hero, which was strongly influenced by Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Later in his career, he wrote more serious novels, such as the “Eden” series, and the despairing novel of overpopulation, Make Room, Make Room, which was the loose basis for the movie, Soylent Green. Harrison was a prolific short story writer, with over a hundred stories published in SF magazines of the fifties through the nineties. He was named to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made him a Grand Master in 2008.
Karin Lowachee was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. She has been a creative writing instructor, adult education teacher, and volunteer in a maximum security prison. Her novels have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have been published in numerous anthologies, best-of collections, and magazines.
Christopher Ruocchio (b. 1996) is the internationally award-winning author of the Sun Eater series, which blends elements of both science fiction and fantasy, as well as more than twenty works of short fiction. A graduate of North Carolina State University, he sold his first novel, Empire of Silence, at twenty-two, and his books have appeared in seven languages. He curated several short story anthologies for Baen Books, including Sword & Planet, Time Troopers, and Worlds Long Lost. His work has also appeared in Marvel Comics. Christopher lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his family.
Brandon Sanderson (b. 1975) has published seven solo novels with Tor Books and Gollancz—Elantris, the Mistborn series, Warbreaker, and The Way of Kings—as well as four books in the middle-grade Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians series from Scholastic. He was chosen to complete Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, writing The Gathering Storm (2009), Towers of Midnight (2010), and the final book in the series, A Memory of Light (2012). In addition to his writing, Brandon continues to teach aspiring authors.
Ethan Skarstedt is a Sergeant First Class in the Utah National Guard and has deployed to Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Senegal. He has written a military SF novel as well as many short stories in several genres, and he occasionally blogs about things at ethanskar.com. He is author of Vetus Bellator and Among the Apple Trees, available from Amazon Kindle.
George Henry Smith (1922–1996) was a prolific author of over a hundred novels, most of which weren’t science fiction, some with such intriguing titles as Brutal Ecstasy and Lesbian Triangle. When not supporting the sexual revolution, Smith was a frequent contributor to science fiction magazines under his own name during the fifties, sixties, and seventies. He also wrote such novels as Doomsday Wing, The Forgotten Planet, and The Four-Day Weekend, and notably, the trilogy set on a world parallel to Earth comprising Kar Kaballa, The Second War of the Worlds, and The Island Snatchers, with invasions by parallel Mongols and Martians, a Lovecraftian thing which wants to eat the world, and Gallic gods interfering with mortal affairs. This George H. Smith should not be confused with another George H. Smith who is a prominent libertarian writer.
Allen Steele (b. 1958), after working as a journalist, began writing SF in 1988, and has garnered an impressive number of awards, beginning with his novel, Orbital Decay, which received a Locus Award. His short stories, “The Death of Captain Future,” “Where Angels Fear to Tread,” and “The Emperor of Mars” have all received Hugo Awards. He serves on the Boards of Advisors for the Space Frontier Foundation and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. His Coyote series of novels, described by one critic as “blue-collar space opera,” has been very popular, and his most recent work includes his Captain Future series, consisting of the novel, Avengers of the Moon, and four novellas with the overall title of The Return of Ul Quorn.
Larry S. Todd (b. 1948) has had a long and notable career as a cartoonist and illustrator, with work appearing in publications ranging from science fiction magazines, such as Galaxy and Fantastic to slick men’s magazines, to a long list of underground comics and magazines, such as Last Gasp. His notable creations include Dr. Atomic and Miami Mice. Another notable project by Todd was illustrating Harlan Ellison’s Chocolate Alphabet for Last Gasp. Todd studied art at Syracuse University, where he met Vaughn Bodē which led to him and Bodē doing many collaborations until Bode’s untimely death. Later Vaughn Bodē’s son, Mark, also a talented artist, collaborated with Todd, reviving Vaughn Bodē Cobalt 60 series.
John C. Wright has been an attorney, a newspaperman, a technical writer, and most important (of course), a notable science fiction and fantasy writer. His first novel, The Golden Age, was praised by Publishers Weekly, whose reviewer wrote that Wright “may be this fledgling century’s most important new SF talent.” The novel was followed by The Phoenix Exultant and The Golden Transcendence, to make up the major space opera trilogy The Golden Oecumene, which reads like a collaboration between A.E. Van Vogt and Jack Vance. Speaking of Van Vogt, Wright wrote a powerful continuation (and possible culmination) of the classic Null-A novels, the Null-A Continuum, as well as a companion book to another classic, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, titled Awake in the Night Land. His fantasy novel Orphans of Chaos was a Nebula Award finalist, and his novel Somewhither won the Dragon Award for the best novel of 2016. In 2015, he was nominated for six Hugo Awards in both fiction and nonfiction: one short story, one novelette, three novellas, and one nonfiction related work, setting a historical record for the most Hugo Award nominations in a single year. His short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s SF Magazine, Absolute Magnitude, and other publications. For more details on his work, visit his website, scifiwright.com. He lives in Virginia with his wife, fellow writer L. Jagi Lamplighter, and their four children.