My novel The Silk Code won the Locus Award for Best First Novel of 1999. My other science fiction and mystery novels include Borrowed Tides (2001), The Consciousness Plague (2002), The Pixel Eye (2014), The Plot To Save Socrates (2006; Entertainment Weekly called it "challenging fun"), Unburning Alexandria (2013), and Chronica (2014). The Plot to Save Socrates and The Consciousness Plague are available as audiobooks on Audible. My short stories have been published in Analog, Amazing Stories, Nature, Buzzy Mag, and other leading magazines, and have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards. "The Chronology Protection Case" (Nebula nominee, 1995) was made into a short film by Jay Kensinger, now on Amazon Prime, and was a Finalist in the Movies4Movies Film Festival Summer 2017. A radio play of "The Chronology Protection Case," nominated for the Edgar Award, is available as an audiobook on Audible. My alternate history story about The Beatles, "It's Real Life" (2022), was made into a radio play in 2023, is available as an audiobook on Audible, and was expanded into a novel, published in 2024. (The short story won The Mary Shelley Award fo Outstanding Fiction in 2023.) Nine nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997), Digital McLuhan (1999), RealSpace (2003), Cellphone (2004), and New New Media (2009, 2012) have been the subject of major articles in the New York Times, Wired, the Christian Science Monitor, and have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Arabic, and ten other languages. I co-edited Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Intersection of Space Travel and Religion in 2015. My short books McLuhan in an Age of Social Media (2015), Fake News in Real Context (2016), and Cyber War and Peace (2017) are published on Kindle and in paperback and continuously updated. I appear from time to time on MSNBC, CNN, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, NPR, BBC Radio and other TV and radio programs -- I like talking just as much as writing. I'm also a songwriter, and have been in several bands over the years - one (The Other Voices) had two records out on Atlantic Records in 1960s. My 1972 album Twice Upon a Rhyme (on HappySad Records) was reissued on CD by Beatball/Big Pink Records and on Vivid Records in 2009, and on re-pressed vinyl by Whiplash/Sound of Salvation Records in 2010. In the Fall of 2018, I recorded Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time, a new album of my science fiction songs; it was released in early 2020 on Old Bear Records, with vinyl distributed by Light In The Attic Records. I was listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Top 10 Academic Twitterers" in 2009. I review television in my Infinite Regress.tv blog. Last but not least: I have a PhD in Media Ecology from New York University and am Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City.

Mike Brotherton is a professor of astronomy at the University of Wyoming where he investigates the most luminous active galactic nuclei, the quasars. Powered by supermassive black holes, quasars outshine the galaxies within which they exist and shape the course of their evolution. He uses the Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Array in New Mexico, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and any other telescope that will grant him observing time. He is also the author of the science fiction novels Star Dragon (2003) and Spider Star (2008), both from Tor books, as well as a number of short stories in various markets. He is the editor or co-editor of the anthologies Diamonds in the Sky (2009), Launch Pad (2014), and Science Fiction by Scientists (2016). He is the founder of the NASA and National Science Foundation funded Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers, which brings professional writers to Wyoming every summer in order to better educate and inspire their audiences.

Amy H. Sturgis earned her Ph.D. in Intellectual History from Vanderbilt University. Her primary fields include Science Fiction/Fantasy Studies and Native American Studies.

Sturgis is author of four books as well as more than forty scholarly and mainstream book chapters, articles, and presentations on historical and speculative fiction topics. She also edits books on science fiction and fantasy subjects. In 2006, Sturgis was honored with the Imperishable Flame Award for Achievement in Tolkien/Inklings Scholarship. In 2015, the Los Angeles Press Club named her Reason article "Not Your Parents' Dystopias: Millennial Fondness for Worlds Gone Wrong" the Best Magazine Criticism/Commentary of the year.

She contributes regular "History of the Genre" features to and narrates contemporary science fiction stories for the U.K.-based podcast StarShipSofa. In 2010, StarShipSofa became the first podcast ever to win a Hugo Award.

Sturgis teaches Liberal Studies at the university level and serves as Editor in Chief for Hocus Pocus Comics. She frequently speaks at colleges and genre conventions across North America.

Robert Jeschonek is an envelope-pushing, USA TODAY bestselling author whose fiction, comics, and non-fiction have been published around the world. His stories have appeared in CLARKESWORLD, STARSHIPSOFA, PULPHOUSE, and many other publications. He has written official STAR TREK and DOCTOR WHO fiction and has scripted comics for DC, AHOY, and others. His young adult slipstream fantasy novel, MY FAVORITE BAND DOES NOT EXIST, won the Forward National Literature Award and was named one of BOOKLIST's Top Ten First Novels for Youth. He also won an International Book Award, a Scribe Award for Best Original Novel, and the grand prize in Pocket Books' Strange New Worlds contest. Visit him online at www.bobscribe.com. You can also find him on Facebook and follow him as @TheFictioneer on X (Twitter) and on BlueSky as @bobscribe.bsky.social. Subscribe to the Blastoff Books Newsletter: http://newsletter.blastoffbooks.net/.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Jacob Clifton, a full-time fiction writer currently living in Austin, was previously a staff writer at Television Without Pity and Gawker editor. You can find him at JacobClifton.com, contact him on Facebook, or find him on Twitter, at @jacobtwop.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more