Lynn Abbey
Lynn Abbey was born in the city of Peekskill, New York. She attended the University of Rochester getting 2 degrees in European history and was working on a PhD, when she decided to become a computer programmer working in New York City for a large insurance company. About the time of the NYC Bankruptcy Crisis of 1976, she moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan. There she began work on her first novel, Daughter of the Bright Moon. Through 80s, she wrote more novels and co-edited (with Robert Asprin) the 12 volumes of Thieves' World,a shared-world anthology series. In 1993 she moved to Oklahoma City.

Joan Aiken
Aiken's latest work is The Cockatrice Boys (Tor, 1996), in which the world is invaded by monsters, causing the downfall of modern civilization (you can find books with similar ideas in the political science section of your local library).

Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams was born in Cambridge in 1952 and educated in Essex before returning to Cambridge to study at St John's College. He worked as a radio and television writer and producer before the publication of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in 1979. The novel went on to sell more than 14 million copies and was followed by the sequels The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything and So Long and Thanks For All the Fish. He married Jane Belson in 1991 and they had a daughter in 1994. He died in May 2001 in Santa Barbara, California, following a heart attack.

Brian W. Aldiss
Brian W. Aldiss was born in 1925 in the UK. He grew up in rural Norfolk and Devon, the son of a department store owner. He served 3 years in Burma and Asia with the Forgotten Army. This part of the world was later to become quite influential on his work. Having played a seminal role in SF's New Wave in the 60s, he is now considered by many to be the elder statesman of UK SF.

Kevin J. Anderson
Kevin J. Anderson was born in 1962 and was raised in Oregon, Wisconsin. At 10, he had saved up enough money from mowing lawns and doing odd jobs that he could either buy a bicycle or a typewriter -- he chose the typewriter and has been writing ever since. He sold his first novel, Resurrection, Inc., by the time he turned 25. Anderson worked in California for 12 years as a technical writer and editor at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he met his wife Rebecca Moesta and his frequent co-author, Doug Beason.

Piers Anthony
Piers Anthony is a pen name for Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob. The author of better than 100 published books, he is perhaps best known for his Xanth series of fantasy novels which now number twenty. His first novel, Chthon, was published in 1967. He lives in Inverness, Citrus County, Florida.

Tom Arden
Tom Arden was born in 1961 and grew up in Mount Gambier, a small town in Australia. He wrote his first novel, Moon Escape, when he was seven years old -- a tale of lunar explorers kidnapped by evil aliens. He has been in bands and worked as a disc jockey on a public radio station. Studying English at the University of Adelaide, he graduated with First Class Honours in English. Later he completed a PhD thesis on Clarissa, the epic tale by the 18th-century novelist Samuel Richardson. In 1990, Tom moved to the UK and for some years was a university lecturer in Northern Ireland. He now lives in Brighton.

Catherine Asaro
Catherine Asaro's latest book is The Last Hawk. It, like its two predecessors, Primary Inversion andCatch the Lightning, is set in the same universe. But they are stand-alone novels and can be read in any order. The Last Hawk continues the adventures within the Skolian Empire. A fourth book will be called The Radiant Seas, a sequel to Primary Inversion, and will appear in 1998.

Excerpts Catch the Lightning The Last Hawk

Neal Asher
Neal Asher was born in 1961 in Billericay in Essex. He started writing SF and fantasy at 16 after what he terms an "overdose" of E.C. Tubb books. After leaving school, he worked for a steel furniture maker, then operated a milling machine and began writing again. Thereafter, he decided to go back to school and finally graduated. He continued to write, having his work published in a number of magazines and producing a short story collection called Runcible Tales from Piper's Ash.

Robert Asprin
Robert Lynn Asprin was born in 1946 in St. John's, Minnesota. He attended the University of Michigan and work for a number of years at University Microfilm in Ann Arbor until he decided to write full-time in 1978. The Cold Cash War was his first published novel followed by Another Fine Myth, a hilarious farce with dragons, stranded demons and bad puns. He has also collaborated with Lynn Abbey to edit the very popular 12-volume Thieves' World series -- it became the touchstone for shared-world anthologies.

Steve Aylett
Steve Aylett was born in Bromley, England at the end of the sixties. He left school at 17 and worked in a book warehouse, and later in trade and law publishing. His first book The Crime Studio, published in 1994, was generally regarded as a cry for help. This was followed by Bigot Hall, Slaughtermatic, The Inflatable Volunteer, Toxicology, Atom, Shamanspace and Only an Alligator. He's published by Orion in the UK and Four Walls Eight Windows in the US, and was a finalist for the 1998 Philip K Dick Award (for Slaughtermatic).