About the Author

Tani Kōshū graduated in civil engineering and worked in the field for many years, but later joined JICA, volunteering his services to construction in Nepal. His first SF sale was in 1979. In addition to hard SF, mostly in his evolving future history, he also pens thrillers, often based on his mountaineering experiences in the Himalayas and elsewhere. He won the 15th Nitta Jirō Literary Prize in 1996 for Shirakimine no otoko (Man of the Snowcapped Peaks). Simon Varnam was raised in a large family in the south of England on a diet of music, science fiction and walks in the country. He moved to Japan shortly after he finished college at Bangor, North Wales, where besides reading Physical Oceanography and Math he spent much effort on mountaineering and horn-playing. Having failed to become competent in French despite five years of study at secondary school, he was surprised to find that, thanks to complete immersion in the far north of the Tōhoku region, he picked up Japanese with relatively little effort. Twenty years later, he passed JLPT level 1 at first try and discovered the internet which led him to Japanese conservation organizations who needed English versions of their documents. Since then he has translated (presentations, documents, articles, video subtitles and website pages) in a variety of fields; biodiversity and conservation, nuclear engineering, Japanese culture and an old love, science fiction. Simon now lives in the countryside at the foot of Mt Fuji with a Japanese wife, daughter and cat, and a garden full of wildlife. Ian Stead hails from the northwest of England, and now lives in the historic city of Lancaster, with his wife Angie and a rabbit... He became interested in art at an early age, and has always had an obsession with scifi, thanks for a steady diet including a diet of Space 1999, Blake's 7 and Doctor Who. Beginning with 3D programs such as DOGA (a free Japanese modeling program), Ian has since moved onto more sophisticated programs like SketchUp, along with Photoshop for post-work and backdrops, and Illustrator for plans and logos. He has worked for publishers including Spica, Gypsy Knights games, Zozer, VBAM games, MJ12, Mindjammer Press, En-World, and Mongoose Publishing.