Alien Contact

by Marty Halpern

  “Last Contact” was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Locus Award in the short story category.

  Pat Cadigan sold her first professional science fiction story in 1980; her success as an author encouraged her to become a full-time writer in 1987. She emigrated to England with her son in 1996. She is the author of fifteen books, including two nonfiction books on the making of Lost in Space and The Mummy, a young adult novel, and the two Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novels Synners and Fools. Pat lives in gritty, urban North London with the Original Chris Fowler, her musician son Robert Fenner, and Miss Kitty Calgary, Queen of the Cats; and she can be found on Facebook and followed on Twitter as @cadigan.

  “Angel” was nominated for the Nebula, the Hugo, the World Fantasy Award, and the Asimov’s Reader Award, and won the Locus Award for best short story.

  In 1978, Orson Scott Card won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His novels Ender’s Game (1985) and sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986) both won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Orson Scott Card the only author to win both of American science fiction’s top awards in consecutive years. These two novels, along with Ender’s Shadow, are widely read by adults and younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools.

  Besides these and other science fiction novels, Scott writes contemporary fantasy (Magic Street, Enchantment, Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables, Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker, poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and scripts.

  He was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. He recently began a long-term position as a professor of writing and literature at Southern Virginia University. Scott currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, and their youngest child, Zina Margaret. Website: www.hatrack.com.

  Adam-Troy Castro has said in interviews that he likes to jump genres and styles, and has therefore steadfastly refused to stay in one place long enough to permit the unwanted birth of a creature who could be called “a typical Adam-Troy Castro story.” As a result, his works include everything from the stream-of-consciousness farce of his Vossoff and Nimmitz tales to the dark literary nightmare “Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs.” His nineteen books include three novels about his profoundly broken interstellar murder investigator Andrea Cort, including among them the Philip K. Dick Award winner Emissaries from the Dead, its immediate sequel The Third Claw of God, and the finale (for now) War of the Marionettes. He’s also responsible for four Spider-Man novels, nonfiction guides to the Harry Potter phenomenon and the reality show The Amazing Race, and the alphabet books Z Is for Zombie and V Is for Vampire (both illustrated by Johnny Atomic). A collaboration with Jerry Oltion, the novella “The Astronaut from Wyoming,” won the Japanese Seiun Award. Adam’s next major project, scheduled to start appearing from Grossett and Dunlap in 2012, will be a series of middle-school novels featuring the shadowy adventures of a very unusual young boy who goes by the monicker Gustav Gloom.

  Adam lives in Miami with his wife Judi and a pair of cats named Meow Farrow and Uma Furman. Website: www.sff.net/people/adam-troy.

  “Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl’s” was nominated for the Nebula Award and the Locus Award, and won Analog’s AnLab Award for best novella.

  Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, blogger, and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a contributor to The Guardian, the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wired, and many other newspapers, magazines, and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards, and treaties. He is currently a Visiting Senior Lecturer at Open University (UK); in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

  Cory is the author of the Tor Teens/HarperCollins UK novels For the Win and the bestselling Little Brother. His novels are simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus Award and the Sunburst Award, and been nominated for the Hugo, the Nebula, and the British Science Fiction awards. Website: craphound.com.

  George Alec Effinger’s first novel, science fiction/fantasy pastiche What Entropy Means to Me (1972), was a Nebula Award nominee, but his finest novels are the noir, hardboiled, near-future cyberpunk “Budayeen” series: Hugo and Nebula nominee When Gravity Fails (1987), Hugo nominee A Fire in the Sun (1989), and The Exile Kiss (1991). Short story “Schrödinger’s Kitten,” included in posthumous collection Budayeen Nights (2003), won the Nebula, Hugo, Theodore Sturgeon, and Japanese Seiun awards.

  Following the example of his first mentors, Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm, George helped other New Orleans writers through sf/fantasy writing courses at UNO’s Metropolitan College from the late 1980s to 1996, and with a monthly writing workshop he founded in 1988, which continues to meet regularly.

  After a lifetime filled with chronic pain and chronic illness, he died peacefully in his sleep in New Orleans on April 27, 2002.

  “The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything,” was nominated for the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Locus awards in the short story category.

  Jeffrey Ford is a graduate of Binghamton University, where he studied with the novelist John Gardner. He published his first story, “The Casket,” in Gardner’s literary magazine MSS in 1981, and his first full-length novel, Vanitas, in 1988. His next three novels comprised the “Well-Built City” trilogy: The Phsiognomy, Memoranda, and The Beyond.

  Jeff has twelve nominations for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the award six times: two for novels The Phsiognomy and The Shadow Year; two for collections The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories and The Drowned Life, one for novella “Botch Town,” and one for short story “Creation.” He teaches Writing and Early American Literature at Brookdale Community College. Website: www.well-builtcity.com.

  “Exo-Skeleton Town” won the 2006 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, the French national speculative fiction award.

  Karen Joy Fowler is the author of five novels and three short story collections. Her first book, collection Artificial Things, was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. Her first novel, Sarah Canary, won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian; her third, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner; and The Jane Austen Book Club was a New York Times bestseller. Her most recent publication is the collection What I Didn’t See from Small Beer Press. In 1991, in collaboration with author Pat Murphy, Karen helped found the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, a literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that “expands or explores our understanding of gender.”

  Karen currently lives in Santa Cruz, California, with her husband. Website: http://www.karenjoyfowler.com.

  Neil Gaiman has long been one of the top writers in modern comics, as well as writing books for readers of all ages. The Dictionary of Literary Biography lists him as one of the top ten living post-modern writers, and a prolific creator of works of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama.

  His New York Times bestselling 2001 novel, American Gods, was awarded the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, SFX, and Locus awards, and was nominated for many other awards, including the World Fantasy Award and the Minnesota Book Award.

  His children’s novel Coraline, published in 2002, was also a New York Times and international bestseller and an enormous critical success; it won the Elizabeth Burr/Worzalla, Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, and British Science Fiction awards.

  Neil was the creator/writer of monthly DC Comics series, Sandman, which won nine Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, including the award for best writer four times, and three Harvey Awards. Sandman #19 took t
he 1991 World Fantasy Award for best short story, making it the first comic ever to be awarded a literary award. In August 1997 the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a First Amendment organization, awarded Neil Gaiman their Defender of Liberty Award. Website: www.neilgaiman.com.

  “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” was nominated for the Hugo Award and won the Locus Award for best short story.

  Molly Gloss is a fourth-generation Oregonian who lives in Portland. Her short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Norton Book of Science Fiction and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. Her novel, The Jump-Off Creek, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for American Fiction, and a winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Oregon Book Award. In 1996, she was recipient of a Whiting Writers Award. The Dazzle of Day, a novel of the near future, was named a 1997 New York Times Notable Book, and was awarded the PEN Center West Fiction Prize. Wild Life, set in 1905 in the mountains and woods of Washington State, won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 2000, and was chosen as the 2002 selection for “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book.” The Hearts of Horses was a finalist for the WILLA Award and the Oregon Book Award, and was a national bestseller. Her work, including her published science fiction, frequently explores questions of landscape, western settlement, and the human response to wilderness. Website: www.mollygloss.com.

  “Lambing Season” was nominated for the Nebula, the Hugo, the Locus, and the Asimov’s Reader Award in the short story category.

  Ernest Hogan is a recombocultural Chicano mutant, known for committing outrageous acts of science fiction, cartooning, and other questionable pursuits. He can’t help but be controversial. However, any resemblance between Ernest and protagonist Pablo Cortez is purely coincidental. Ernest writes: “Pablo first came to me while I was experimenting with abstract expressionism in a painting class. Gravity limited the possibilities: if only there was a way to keep the drips from being pulled to the bottom of the canvas. Jackson Pollock set his on the floor, but I was a Space Age baby. I guess if I hadn’t been born an East L.A. Chicano, Pablo probably wouldn’t have had his graffiti connections.” “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren’s Song” formed the basis of Ernest’s novel Cortez on Jupiter, one of the Ben Bova’s Discoveries series from Tor Books. Though currently out of print, Cortez on Jupiter will soon be released as an ebook.

  Ernest’s other novels are High Aztech and Smoking Mirror Blues. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of periodicals and anthologies, including Amazing Stories, Analog, Science Fiction Age, Semiotext(E)SF, Angel Body and Other Magic for the Soul, Witpunk, and Voices for the Cure. He is married to the author Emily Davenport, and resides in Phoenix, Arizona. Website: www.mondoernesto.com.

  Nancy Kress is the author of twenty-six books: three fantasy novels, twelve SF novels, three thrillers, four collections of short stories, one YA novel, and three books on writing fiction. For sixteen years Nancy was the “Fiction” columnist for Writer’s Digest magazine. She is perhaps best known for the “Sleepless” trilogy that began with Beggars in Spain. The novel was based on the Nebula- and Hugo-winning novella of the same name. She won another Hugo Award in 2009 for the novella “The Erdmann Nexus.” Nancy has also won three additional Nebulas, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Award. Her most recent books are a collection, Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories (2008); a bio-thriller, Dogs (2008); and SF novel, Steal Across the Sky (2009). Nancy’s fiction has been translated into twenty languages. She lives in Seattle with her husband, SF writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle. Website: nancykress.blogspot.com.

  Ursula K. Le Guin writes both poetry and prose, and in various modes including realistic fiction, science fiction, fantasy, young children’s books, books for young adults, screenplays, essays, verbal texts for musicians, and voicetexts. She has published seven books of poetry, twenty-two novels, over a hundred short stories (collected in eleven volumes), four collections of essays, twelve books for children, and four volumes of translation. Three of Ursula’s books have been finalists for the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; additional honors and awards include the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award, the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award, the Library of Congress Living Legends Award in the “Writers and Artists” category, the 2002 PEN/Malamud Award for “excellence in a body of short fiction,” the National Book Award for Children’s Books (in 1973 for The Farthest Shore), the Pushcart Prize (in 1991 for “Bill Weisler”), and also in 1991, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

  Bruce McAllister grew up in a peripatetic Navy family—his father in love with the ocean sciences, his mother the behavioral sciences—who found that the one thing he could take with him anywhere in the world (or find once he got there) was science fiction. Over the years his short fiction has appeared in the major science fiction and fantasy magazines, literary quarterlies, year’s best anthologies, and college textbooks. His novelette “Dream Baby”—which was expanded into the critically acclaimed novel of the same name and received a National Endowment for the Arts award—was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. His short story “The Boy in Zaquitos” was selected for Best American Short Stories 2007, guest-edited by Stephen King. His first collection of SF stories, The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories, was published in 2007. He has served on the James Tiptree, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick award juries; was associate editor of the Harry Harrison/Brian Aldiss “year’s best SF” series for some years; and taught creative and professional writing, science fiction, and American cultural myth for twenty-five years in university, helping establish writing programs while there. Bruce is now a writing coach, publishing consultant, and interdisciplinary science consultant; he lives in southern California with his wife, choreographer Amelie Hunter, and in happy proximity to his children. Website: www.mcallistercoaching.com.

  “Kin” was nominated for both the Hugo Award and the Locus Award in the short story category.

  Paul McAuley worked as a research biologist in various universities, including Oxford and UCLA, and as a lecturer in botany at St. Andrews University, before becoming a full-time writer. His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, won the Philip K. Dick Award; his sixth, Fairyland, won the Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell awards. He is currently working on his eighteenth novel, In the Mouth of the Whale, scheduled to be published early in 2012. About “The Thought War,” Paul writes: “Where do writers get their ideas? In the case of this little alien invasion story, it was from the pages of New Scientist: an article about a theory that posits an extreme solution to the case of the well-established effect that observers have on collapsing super-imposed states of quantum particles—and my discovery of an old, history-steeped cemetery in a corner of North London.” Paul lives in North London. Website: unlikelyworlds.blogspot.com.

  Elizabeth Moon grew up in south Texas and started writing at an early age. She has degrees in history and biology, and served in the Marines from 1968–1971. She has written twenty-three novels, (two co-authored with Anne McCaffrey), including several popular series: Vatta’s War (concluded in 2008 with Victory Conditions), the Serrano Legacy, Planet Pirates (with McCaffrey), and the trilogy The Deed of Paksenarrion and its prequels. She has been a finalist for both the Hugo (Remnant Population) and the Arthur C. Clarke Award (The Speed of Dark); her novel The Speed of Dark won the 2004 Nebula Award. In 2007, Elizabeth won the Robert A. Heinlein Award for her body of work. She has had over thirty shorter works in magazines and anthologies, most recently her collection Moon Flights (2007). Her most recent novel is Kings of the North (2011), the second volume of Paladin’s Legacy.

  Besides writing, her other interests include classical music, prairie restoration, wildlife management, horses, Renaissance-style fencing, nature photography, and biomedical science. Elizabeth now lives in central Texas with her husband, two horses, a cat, and a John Deere tractor named Bo
mbadil. Website: www.elizabethmoon.com.

  Pat Murphy is a writer, a scientist, and a toy maker. Her novels include The Wild Girls, Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell, and The Falling Woman. Her fiction has won the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Seiun Award.

  Over the course of twenty-plus years as a writer and editor with San Francisco’s Exploratorium, Pat wrote and edited science books for children and adults. Her titles include The Science Explorer series, The Math Explorer, By Nature’s Design, Traces of Time, and Exploratopia.

  Currently, Pat works for Klutz, a publisher of how-to books that come with cool stuff. Pat’s books with Klutz include Invasion of the Bristlebots (which comes with robots that run on toothbrush bristles), Boom! Splat! Kablooey! (a book of explosions), and The Handbook (which comes with a skeletal model of a hand).

  Pat enjoys looking for trouble. Her favorite color is ultraviolet. Her favorite book is whichever one she is working on right now. Website: www.verlavolante.com.

  Mike Resnick has been nominated for thirty-five Hugo Awards—a record for writers—and except for 1999 and 2003, he has received at least one nomination every year to date since 1989. He has won the Hugo Award five times, most recently in 2005 for short story “Travels with My Cat.”