Les Johnson is a physicist and author. With Ben Bova, he is the coauthor of Rescue Mode, and with Travis S. Taylor, he is the coauthor of Back to the Moon and On to the Asteroid. He is the coeditor of the science/science fiction collection Going Interstellar. His first solo novel was Mission to Methone. He was technical consultant for the movies Europa Report and Lost in Space and has appeared on the Discovery Channel series Physics of the Impossible in the How to Build a Starship episode. He has also appeared in three episodes of the Science Channel series Exodus Earth. By day, he serves as Solar Sail Principal Investigator of NASA's first interplanetary solar sail mission and leads research on various other advanced space propulsion technologies at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. His latestest solar sail project was recently funded for 65 million dollars. Jack McDevitt is the Nebula Award-winning author of The Academy series, including The Long Sunset. He attended La Salle University, then joined the Navy, drove a cab, became an English teacher, took a customs inspector's job on the northern border, and didn't write another word for a quarter-century. He received a master's degree in literature from Wesleyan University in 1971. He returned to writing when his wife, Maureen, encouraged him to try his hand at it in 1980. Along with winning the Nebula Award in 2006, he has also been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. In 2015 he was awarded the Robert A. Heinlein Award for Lifetime Achievement. He and his wife live near Brunswick, Georgia.