A child of the Space age, I started writing stories in the fourth grade. I kept writing as I followed the missions of Gemini and Apollo, through high school, and into my first career as a science teacher. My first professional publication was in the granddaddy of all science fiction magazines, AMAZING STORIES, in 1979. Other stories followed in Analog, Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Twilight Zone, and various anthologies.

I’m captivated by the question of the human prospect—why we want what we want, why we do what we do, and what sort of futures those qualities will allow. I’m a meliorist, but a skeptical one. That is, I believe it’s possible for the human condition to change for the better—but there’s no guarantee that it will. The tension between what calls us forward and what holds us back is something I explore in several stories—most especially in my Hugo Award-nominated novel The Quiet Pools.

So far, there are six other solo novels the reader can sample: the trilogy Emprise, Enigma, and Empery; and the stand-alones Alternities, Exile, and Vectors. These are my most personal works, the tales that I had to tell--the ideas which had me scribbling notes in the dark in the middle of the night, and dictating to my wife or son in the car (driving is always good thinking time).

I’ve also been privileged to collaborate with three of the science fiction world’s legendary creators—with Sir Arthur C. Clarke on our novel The Trigger, in Isaac Asimov’s robot universe with Robot City: Odyssey, and in George Lucas’s original Expanded Universe via the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy. Each of these shared visions offered unique pleasures and challenges.

When I’m not writing, you might find me noodling on my guitar or the piano, enjoying a movie with my wife, roaming the grounds at an air show, or having a cookout with friends. And I read, of course—most often military history, popular science, mysteries, and even some science fiction (but only when I’m not writing it myself!).