Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science-fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the Mirrorshades anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre.
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with societal collapse or decay. Much of cyberpunk is rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when writers like Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison examined the impact of drug culture, technology, and the sexual revolution while avoiding the utopian tendencies of earlier science fiction.
Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque.
Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy. The trilogy's first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland. Among VanderMeer's other novels are Shriek: An Afterword and Borne. He has also edited with his wife Ann VanderMeer such influential and award-winning anthologies as The New Weird, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction.
Michael Z. Williamson is an American military science fiction and military fiction author best known for his libertarian-themed Freehold series published by Baen Books. Between 2004 and 2016, Williamson published eight Freehold novels, exploring military and political themes as well as first contact with alien beings. This was followed by the Forged in Blood (2017) and Freehold: Resistance (2019) anthologies, consisting of short stories taking place in the Freehold universe, some by Williamson and some by other authors, including Larry Correia, Tony Daniel, Tom Kratman and Brad R. Torgersen.
Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling author and World Fantasy Award winner born in the Caribbean. He grew up in Grenada and spent time in the British and US Virgin Islands, which influence much of his work. His novels and almost one hundred stories have been translated into nineteen different languages. His work has been nominated for awards like the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and the Astounding Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. His 2008 novel, Halo: The Cole Protocol, made The New York Times Best Seller list. He currently lives in Bluffton, Ohio, where he works as an instructor at the Stonecoast MFA in the Creative Writing program.
Since the advent of the cyberpunk genre, a number of derivatives of cyberpunk have become recognized in their own right as distinct subgenres in speculative fiction, especially in science fiction.
Jonathan Strahan is an editor and publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His family moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1968, and he graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Arts in 1986.
Laird Samuel Barron is an American author and poet, much of whose work falls within the horror, noir, and dark fantasy genres. He has also been the Managing Editor of the online literary magazine Melic Review. He lives in Upstate New York.
Paul Collins is an Australian writer and editor who specializes in science fiction and fantasy.
Toni Weisskopf is an American science fiction editor and the publisher of Baen Books. She has been nominated four times for a Hugo Award. She has won the Phoenix Award, the Rebel Award, and the Neffy Award for best editor. She uses the nom de plume T. K. F. Weisskopf as an anthology editor.
Theodora Goss is a Hungarian-American fiction writer and poet. Her writing has been nominated for major awards, including the Nebula, Locus, Mythopoeic, World Fantasy, and Seiun Awards. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Year's Best volumes.
Carrie Vaughn is an American writer, the author of the urban fantasy Kitty Norville series. She has published more than 60 short stories in science fiction and fantasy magazines as well as short story anthologies and internet magazines. She is one of the authors for the "Wild Cards" books. Vaughn won the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award for Bannerless, and has been nominated for the Hugo Awards.
Melissa Marr is an American author of young adult/urban fantasy novels.
Joshua "Josh" Viola is a science fiction/fantasy/horror writer best known for Denver Moon.
Dangerous Women is a cross-genre anthology featuring 21 original short stories and novellas "from some of the biggest authors in the science fiction/fantasy field", edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois and released on December 3, 2013. The works "showcase the supposedly weaker sex's capacity for magic, violence, and mayhem" and "explores the heights that brave women can reach and the depths that depraved ones can plumb." In his own introduction, Dozois writes: "Here you'll find no hapless victims who stand by whimpering in dread while the male hero fights the monster or clashes swords with the villain ... And if you want to tie these women to the railroad tracks, you'll find you have a real fight on your hands."
Maurice Broaddus is an author who has published fiction across a number of genres including young adult, horror, fantasy and science fiction. Among his books are the The Knights of Breton Court urban fantasy trilogy from Angry Robot, the steampunk novel Pimp My Airship from Apex Publications, and the young adult novel The Usual Suspects from HarperCollins. His Afrofuturist space trilogy Astra Black will be released by Tor Books beginning in March, 2022. He has also published dozens of short stories in magazines such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Black Static, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Weird Tales along with anthologies including Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy and Sunspot Jungle.
Nightmares Unhinged is a horror fiction anthology edited by Joshua Viola, published on September 8, 2015. It is the first anthology from Hex Publishers.
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is an American science fiction author and editor. He has edited fifteen anthologies, a space opera trilogy, and an ongoing, near-future police procedural series set in Kansas City, Missouri. He wrote a non-fiction book on how to write a novel. He was a finalist, with Jennifer Brozek, for the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor for the anthology Shattered Shields. His anthology, Infinite Stars, was nominated for the 2018 Locus Award for Best Anthology.
