Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer, known for his speculative fiction works, which have been variously categorized science fiction, historical fiction, maximalism, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk. Stephenson explores areas such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired Magazine, and has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (funded by Jeff Bezos) developing a manned sub-orbital launch system.

Born in Fort Meade, Maryland (home of the NSA and the National Cryptologic Museum) Stephenson came from a family comprising engineers and hard scientists he dubs "propeller heads". His father is a professor of electrical engineering whose father was a physics professor; his mother worked in a biochemistry laboratory, while her father was a biochemistry professor. Stephenson's family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in 1960 and then to Ames, Iowa in 1966 where he graduated from Ames High School in 1977. Stephenson furthered his studies at Boston University. He first specialized in physics, then switched to geography after he found that it would allow him to spend more time on the university mainframe. He graduated in 1981 with a B.A. in Geography and a minor in physics. Since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Seattle with his family.

Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic "The Baroque Cycle" (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) and the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Victories Greater Than Death, the first book in a new young-adult trilogy. Up next: Never Say You Can’t Survive, a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times; and a short story collection called Even Greater Mistakes.

Her novel The City in the Middle of the Night came out in 2019—it won the Locus Award for Best SF Novel, and was named one of the year's best books by the Guardian, Den of Geek, Polygon and Autostraddle, among others, and was optioned for television by Sony and Mom de Guerre Productions. Her 2016 novel, All the Birds in the Sky, was #5 on Time Magazine's list of the year's 10 best novels, and won the Nebula, Locus and Crawford awards. Her first novel, Choir Boy, won a Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Edmund White First Novel Award.

Charlie Jane was a founding editor of io9.com, a blog about science fiction and futurism, and went on to become its editor in chief. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney's, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Tor.com, Tin House, Teen Vogue, Conjunctions, Wired Magazine, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, Lightspeed Magazine, Catamaran Literary Reader, ZYZZYVA, and numerous anthologies and "best of the year" collections. Her novelette "Six Months, Three Days" won a Hugo Award, and her short story "Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue" won a Theodore Sturgeon Award.

Charlie Jane also won the Emperor Norton Award, for "extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason."

Her TED Talk, "Go Ahead, Dream About the Future" has been viewed more than two million times.

She hosts the long-running monthly reading series Writers With Drinks, in which she makes up fictional bios for the authors (and nobody's sued yet.) Charlie Jane also organizes the Bookstore and Chocolate Crawl, which brings a mob of people to local bookstores to buy tons of books, and eat chocolate along the way. And during the covid-19 crisis, she also helped to organize a series of online fundraisers for local bookstores, at welovebookstores.org. She also helps to organize and co-host the monthly Trans Nerd Meet Up.

Back in the day, Charlie Jane created the satirical website GodHatesFigs.com, which received many "best of the web" awards. She was also part of the editorial staff of Anything That Moves, the influential bisexual magazine, and helped out with many other queer publishing projects including Black Sheets/Black Books. And she also organized tons of events such as the notorious Ballerina Pie Fight—plus an event in a hair salon where people got their hair cut while reading stories about haircuts to an audience.

With Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane co-hosts a podcast about the meaning of science fiction called Our Opinions Are Correct. The podcast has been going strong for two years, and won a Hugo Award for Best Fancast. Anders and Newitz also collaborated on io9, plus an anthology called She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology & Other Nerdy Stuff, and a magazine called other magazine.

Charlie Jane hugs trees, and keeps a British penny in her left shoe at all times.

Ed Finn is the founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University where he is an assistant professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and the Department of English. He also helps run Future Tense, a partnership between ASU, New America and Slate Magazine, the Frankenstein Bicentennial Project, the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative and Emerge, an annual festival of art, ideas and the future.

Ed’s research and teaching explore digital narratives, creative collaboration, and the intersection of the humanities, arts and sciences. He is the author of What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing (MIT Press, March 2017) and co-editor of Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers and Creators of All Kinds (MIT Press, May 2017) and Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (William Morrow, 2014). He completed his PhD in English and American Literature at Stanford University in 2011 and his bachelor’s degree at Princeton University in 2002. Before graduate school, Ed worked as a journalist at Time, Slate, and Popular Science.