Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He studied at Newcastle and St Andrews Universities and has a Ph.D. in astronomy.

He stopped working as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency to become a full-time writer.

Revelation Space and Pushing Ice were shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Revelation Space, Absolution Gap, Diamond Dogs and Century Rain were shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Award and Chasm City won the British Science Fiction Award.

Justina Robson is an Arthur C. Clarke shortlisted author of ten SFF novels, including the highly regarded Quantum Gravity series, and was one of the first writers to win amazon.co.uk's Writer's Bursary in 2000.

Based in Leeds, she's been shortlisted for multiple international awards and is a sought-after creative writing teacher who has taught at the Arvon Foundation. A graduate of the Clarion West workshops in Seattle (1996) she has been invited to teach there also, though she hasn't made it yet for various practical reasons.

She acted as a judge for the Arthur C Clarke awards on behalf of the Science Fiction Foundation in 2006. Her most recently published novel is Glorious Angels, shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Best Novel 2015.