Madeline Ashby grew up in a household populated by science fiction fans. She graduated from a Jesuit university in 2005, after having written a departmental thesis on science fiction. After meeting Ursula K. LeGuin in the basement of the Elliott Bay Book Company that year, she decided to start writing science fiction stories. While immigrating to Canada from the United States in 2006, she could not work or study and joined the Cecil Street Irregulars - a genre writers' workshop founded by Judith Merril - instead. Since then she has been published in Tesseracts, Flurb, Nature, Escape Pod and elsewhere. She has a masters degree in Manga and Anime and writes on such matters for i09, Tor.com and BoingBoing. Currently she works as a strategic foresight consultant in Toronto.

Greg Egan is a computer programmer and the author of the acclaimed science fiction novels Permutation City, Diaspora, Teranesia, Quarantine, and the Orthogonal trilogy. Greg has won the Hugo Award as well as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He lives in Australia.

Robert Reed is a writer and postcard collector from Knightstown, Indiana. He has written a number of other books for Schiffer Publishing.

Peter Watts is a former marine biologist, flesh-eating-disease survivor and convicted felon whose novels--despite an unhealthy focus on space vampires--have become required texts for university courses ranging from Philosophy to Neuropsychology.

His work is available in 21 languages, has appeared in over 350 best-of-year anthologies, and been nominated for over 50 awards in a dozen countries. His (somewhat shorter) list of 20 actual wins includes the Hugo, the Shirley Jackson, and the Seiun.

Peter is the author of the Rifters novels (Starfish, Maelstrom) and the Firefall series (Blindsight, Echopraxia).

Elizabeth Bear shares a birthday with Frodo and Bilbo Baggins. This, coupled with a tendency to read the dictionary as a child, doomed her early to penury, intransigence, friendlessness, and the writing of speculative fiction. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in central Connecticut with the exception of two years (which she was too young to remember very well) spent in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, in the last house with electricity before the Canadian border.

She's a second-generation Swede, a third-generation Ukrainian, and a third-generation Transylvanian, with some Irish, English, Scots, Cherokee, and German thrown in for leavening. Elizabeth Bear is her real name, but not all of it. Her dogs outweigh her, and she is much beset by her cats.

Bear was the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005. She has won two Hugo Awards for her short fiction, a Sturgeon Award, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. She is the author of the acclaimed Eternal Sky series, the Edda of Burdens series, and coauthor (with Sarah Monette) of the Iskryne series. Bear lives in Brookfield, Massachusetts.

Matt Forbeck is an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author and game designer. He has more than thirty novels and countless games published to date. His latest work includes Dungeonlogy, the Star Wars: Rogue One junior novel, the last two editions of The Marvel Encyclopedia, his Monster Academy YA fantasy novels, and the upcoming Shotguns & Sorcery roleplaying game based on his novels. He lives in Beloit, WI, with his wife and five children, including a set of quadruplets. For more about him and his work, visit Forbeck.com.

Neil Clarke is a respected historian from Shropshire with a particular interest in the history of transport in the region. He is a Friend of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust, and is in contact with the librarian/archivist who is willing to help him with images. He grew up in the area and has lived in Shropshire all his life, so he is very familiar with its history, and his involvement with a local historical society means that he knows what local history and transport enthusiasts want from this book.