John Adams - Wastelands 2

Nancy Kressis the author of thirty-four books, including twenty-seven novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. Her work has won five Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. She has also lost over a dozen of these awards. Nancy’s most recent work is Yesterday’s Kin , about a surprising genetic inheritance (Tachyon, 2014). In addition to writing, Kress often teaches at various venues around the country and abroad; in 2008 she was the Picador visiting lecturer at the University of Leipzig. Kress lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle.

Joe R. Lansdaleis the author of more than three hundred short stories and forty novels. His work has been awarded with the Edgar, nine Bram Stokers, The British Fantasy Award, The Herodotus, and many others. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, The Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and is Writer in Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University. He has received the Grandmaster Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Horror Writers Association, and is a Grandmaster and Founder of Shen Chuan, Martial Science. His work has been filmed several times. Among these films are Bubba Hotep, Cold in July, Christmas with the Dead , and Incident On and Off a Mountain Road . Forthcoming are films of The Bottoms , directed by Bill Paxton, and The Thicket , starring Peter Dinklage. The Sundance Channel has plans to create a series from his Hap and Leonard novels.

George R. R. Martinis the wildly popular author of the A Song of Ice and Fire epic fantasy series, and many other novels, such as Dying of the Light and The Armageddon Rag . His short fiction—which has appeared in numerous anthologies and in most if not all of the genre’s major magazines—has garnered him four Hugos, two Nebulas, the Stoker, and the World Fantasy Award. Martin is also known for editing the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero anthologies, and for his work as a screenwriter on such television projects as the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast . A TV series based on A Song of Ice and Fire debuted on HBO in 2011.

Jack McDevitthas been described by Stephen King as “The logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.” He is the author of twenty-one novels, eleven of which have been Nebula finalists. His novel Seeker won the award in 2007. In 2003, Omega received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel. McDevitt’s most recent books are Starhawk , which follows the young Priscilla Hutchins as she seeks to qualify as an interstellar pilot; and Coming Home , in which far-future antiquarian Alex Benedict visits Earth to learn why an archeologist who’d devoted his life to searching for the lost artifacts of the early space age apparently found them but never told anyone. Both are from Ace. A Philadelphia native, McDevitt had a varied career before becoming a writer. He’s been a naval officer, an English teacher, a customs officer, and a taxi driver. He has also conducted leadership seminars. He is married to the former Maureen McAdams, and resides in Brunswick, Georgia, where he keeps a weather eye on hurricanes.

Seanan McGuirewas born and raised in Northern California, resulting in a love of rattlesnakes and an absolute terror of weather. She shares a crumbling old farmhouse with a variety of cats, far too many books, and enough horror movies to be considered a problem. Seanan publishes about three books a year, and is widely rumored not to actually sleep. When bored, Seanan tends to wander into swamps and cornfields, which has not yet managed to get her killed (although not for lack of trying). She also writes as Mira Grant, filling the role of her own evil twin, and tends to talk about horrible diseases at the dinner table.

Maureen F. McHughwas born in what was then a sleepy, blue collar town in Ohio called Loveland. She went to college in Ohio, and then graduate school at New York University. She lived a year in Shijiazhuang, China. Her first book, Tiptree Award winner China Mountain Zhang , was published in 1991. Since then she has written three novels and a well-received collection of short stories, Story Prize finalist Mothers & Other Monsters . McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen , and Nine Inch Nails. She lives in Los Angeles, where she has attempted to sell her soul to Hollywood.

D. Thomas Mintonrecently traded a warm tropical island for the Pacific Northwest of the continental USA, where he now lives a short walk from vineyards and an alpaca farm. When not writing, he gets paid to “play” in the ocean, travel to remote places, and help communities conserve coral reefs. His fiction has been published in Asimov’s , Lightspeed , and Daily Science Fiction and his idle ramblings hold court at dthomasminton.com.

Rudy Ruckeris a writer and a mathematician. His thirty-plus published books include both novels and non-fiction books on the fourth dimension, infinity, and the meaning of computation. His novels include Mathematicians in Love , The Ware Tetralogy , Postsingular, Hylozoic , Jim and the Flims , Turing & Burroughs: A Beatnik SF Novel , and The Big Aha.

Ramsey Shehadehsplits his time between writing software and writing stories. His fiction has appeared in Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Shimmer, Podcastle , and The Drabblecast , as well as in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s Steampunk Reloaded anthology.

Robert Silverberg—four-time Hugo Award winner, five-time winner of the Nebula Award, SFWA Grand Master, SF Hall of Fame honoree—is the author of nearly five hundred short stories, nearly one hundred and fifty novels, and is the editor of in the neighborhood of one hundred anthologies. Among his most famous works are Lord Valentine’s Castle, Dying Inside, Nightwings , and The World Inside . Learn more at www.majipoor.com.

Bruce Sterlingis the author of many novels, including Islands in the Net, Heavy Weather, Distraction, Holy Fire, The Zenith Angle, The Caryatids , and, with William Gibson, The Difference Engine . Much of his short fiction, which has appeared in magazines such as F&SF and Omni , was recently collected in Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling .

Rachel Swirskyholds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in venues including Tor.com and Clarkesworld Magazine , and been nominated for the Hugo, the Locus Award, and the World Fantasy Award, and won the Nebula Award twice. Her second collection, How the World Became Quiet: Myths of the Past, Present, and Future , came out from Subterranean Press in 2013. The titular story, reprinted in this anthology, was inspired by a dream—not a good one, or a bad one, but a surreal one. Narrative and many details were added, but female mosquito warriors were there from the start.

Genevieve Valentine’s first novel , Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti , won the 2012 Crawford Award and was nominated for the Nebula Award. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Clarkesworld , Lightspeed, Nightmare , Strange Horizons , Journal of Mythic Arts, Fantasy , and Ape x, as well as in the anthologies Federations, The Living Dead 2, The Way of the Wizard, Teeth, After , and others. Her short work has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award, and several stories have been reprinted in best-of-the-year anthologies. She has written nonfiction and reviews for such venues as NPR, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales , and Tor.com , and she is a co-author of the book Geek Wisdom . Her latest book is a young adult novel, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club , and a new SF novel for adults, Persona , is out in March 2015. Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her blog at genevievevalentine.com.