Ben Bova has written more than one hundred twenty futuristic novels and nonfiction books, and has been involved in science and high technology since the very beginnings of the space age. His Baen books include
Mars, Inc. and
Laugh Lines. President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science Fiction Writers of America, Bova received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, "for fueling mankind's imagination regarding the wonders of outer space." His 2006 novel
Titan received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. In 2008 he won the Robert A. Heinlein Award "for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature." Bova is a frequent commentator on radio and television and a widely popular lecturer. His articles, opinion pieces and reviews have appeared in
Scientific American, Nature,
The New York Times,
The Wall Street Journal, and many other newspapers and magazines. Earlier, he was an award-winning editor and an executive in the aerospace industry. His Grand Tour novels, such as bestseller
Mars, combine romance, adventure, and the highest degree of scientific accuracy to show how the human race will expand through the solar system, and the impact this will have on individual human lives and society as a whole. Bova has taught science fiction at Harvard University and at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, where he has also directed film courses. Bova currently lives in Florida.
Les Johnson is a NASA physicist and author. By day, he serves as the Deputy Manager for the Advanced Concepts Office at the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. In the early 2000s, he was NASA's Manager for Interstellar Propulsion Research and later managed the In-Space Propulsion Technology Project. He was technical consultant for the movie 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. He is the author of novel Back to the Moon, coauthored with Travis S. Taylor, and the coeditor of the groundbreaking science/science fiction collection Going Interstellar.