Larry Niven is the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the Ringworld series, along with many other science fiction masterpieces. He lives in Chatsworth, California. He and Jerry Pournelle wrote a number of
New York Times bestsellers including
Inferno,
The Mote in God's Eye,
Footfall, and
Lucifer's Hammer.
Many of Niven's stories—sometimes called “The Tales of Known Space”—take place in his Known Space universe, in which humanity shares the several habitable star systems nearest to the sun with over a dozen alien species, including the aggressive feline Kzinti and the very intelligent but cowardly Pierson's Puppeteers, which are frequently central characters. The Ringworld series is part of the Tales of Known Space, and Niven has shared the setting with other writers since a 1988 anthology, The Man-Kzin Wars (Baen Books, jointly edited with Jerry Pournelle and Dean Ing). There have been several volumes of short stories and novellas.
Larry Niven is also known in science fiction fandom for "Niven's Law": There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
Brad R. Torgersen is an American science fiction author whose short stories regularly appear in various anthologies and magazines, including Analog Science Fiction and Fact and Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show.
Torgersen's stories have won the Analog AnLab readers' choice award three different times, and he was a triple finalist in 2012 for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Hugo Award for best novelette, and the Nebula Award for best novelette. In addition to short fiction, Torgersen has two published novels, including the 2019 Dragon Award winner, A Star-Wheeled Sky. The Who's Who page for Analog magazine lists him as one of the "leading writers in the genre".
Matthew Joseph Harrington, son of historian Joseph Daniel Harrington, was born in 1960 at the US Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan. He taught himself to read at the age of two. He was enrolled in public schools in Bowie, Maryland, and received an education by skipping class to hang out in the public library. At 10 he pushed a two-ton truck uphill unassisted.
First story ever sold was to Larry Niven for Man-Kzin Wars series— which, given that the authors up to then were such lights as Poul Anderson, Hal Colebatch, Dean Ing, Donald Kingsbury, and Dr. Jerry Pournelle, was an experience not unlike showing up for a draft physical and being inducted into the Justice League. His third published story, Soul Survivor, in Baen's Universe, has been recommended for the Nebula. He is coauthor, with Larry Niven, of The Goliath Stone.
