Born in Alberta in 1923, GORDON RUPERT DICKSON moved with his parents to the US at the age of 13. After three year's service in the Army in the Second World War he returned to his studies at the University of Minnesota and then took to writing. He had a great many stories published in the science fiction magazines but was perhaps best known for the group of stories and novels involving Dorsai ~ the world which produces as its only export the finest mercenary soldiers in known space. The Hugo-winning Soldier, Ask Not is part of this series, which is only part of a much larger scheme Gordy called the Childe Cycle. Call Him Lord, a non-Dorsai story won a Nebula in 1966. He had collaborated with Poul Anderson, Keith Laumer and Harry Harrison.

Among other things, he served two consecutive terms as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was known to indulge in the vice of filksinging, had been a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and some swear that in the misty past they had seen spirits cross his lips. Gordy was plagued a respiratory illness for many years and died on 31 January 2001, a few months after a surgery from which he never fully recovered.

Kelly Freas:

Recognized as the most prolific and popular Science Fiction artist worldwide, FRANK KELLY FREAS has illustrated stories by some of Science Fiction's greatest writers: Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, A. E. Van Vogt, Poul Anderson, and Frederik Pohl, to name a few. Nominated an unprecedented twenty times, Freas was the first to receive ten Hugo Awards (World Science Fiction "Oscars") for achievement in the field as Best Professional Artist.

He has been active in the Science Fiction field since 1950. In the course of his remarkable career, his endeavors have covered many areas including MAD Magazine covers from 1955 to 1962. An official NASA mission artist, his space posters hang in the Smithsonian. He was commissioned by the Skylab I astronauts to design their crew patch. You can find his art on record and CD albums (for instance his cover for Queen's first two million sale: News of the World, or on the cover of DC Comics' 1992 STAR TREK ANNUAL. He painted beautiful women on the noses of World War II bombers, as well as portraits of five hundred saints for the Franciscans. He's also been commissioned to create biomedical art.

Author and illustrator of the books The Astounding Fifties, Frank Kelly Freas: The art of Science Fiction, and A Separate Star, as well as a number of magazine articles, he now resides in the Los Angeles area.

Robert Asprin:

Born in 1946, ROBERT LYNN ASPRIN is a first generation American of Filipino-Irish descent. Raised in the university town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, he was exposed to a wide range of bookstores, museums, and cultures from an early age. Attending the University of Michigan and enlisting in the Army during the stormy and controversial Vietnam era of the sixties only served to enhance his awareness and appreciation of diversity, and working his way through the accounting department of a small subsidiary of the Xerox corporation for twelve years prior to becoming a full-time writer provided the finishing touches to his unique view of the people around him.

Bob has two children, Annette and Daniel. His interests are many and varied, ranging from fencing and music to tropical fish and needlework.He claims to have been at one time or another a fencing coach, a Mongol warlord, a Klingon, a cost accountant and a deep space mercenary. Scholars of the genre consider this biography to be highly fictional, due to the fact that the fourth named would be grounds for arrest anywhere in the civilized universe. Author of the books Tambu, The Cold Cash War and The Bug Wars, as well as the MYTH and Phule's Company series, he is also the editor, with Lynn Abbey, of the bestselling Thieves' World anthology series. Robert Asprin is currently living in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Robert Heinlein:

ROBERT ANSON HEINLEIN was born on 7 July 1907 in Butler, Bates County, Missouri though at a young age his family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he grew up. Heinlein entered the Naval Academy in 1925, was commissioned in 1929 and served on a variety of ships, including the USS Lexington (the first true United States aircraft carrier) and the destroyer USS Roper.

Between 1934 and 1939 Heinlein was believed to have worked at several occupations in both Los Angeles and Colorado Springs. He studied advanced engineering and mathematics at UCLA (having a bachelor's in Naval Engineering from the Academy), as well as architecture.

In late 1938 the science fiction magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories announced a story contest. He turned out Life-Line in four days in April 1939 and submitted it not to TWS, which he assumed would be flooded with manuscripts, but to John W. Campbell at Astounding Science Fiction. Campbell promptly bought the story at one cent per word, or $70. Excepting his World War II service, Heinlein never seriously worked at any other trade for the remainder of his life.

Heinlein won four Hugo awards for best novel (an unmatched record), the first Grandmaster Nebula ever awarded and was nominated for a dozen more major awards.

Heinlein died peacefully during his morning nap on 8 May 1988, finally succumbing to a combination of emphysema and related health problems that had plagued him for the last several years of his life. His remains were scattered from the stern of a Navy warship off the coast of California, near his beloved Santa Cruz home of twenty years, Bonny Doon. There is no memorial or cenotaph.