J. Madison Davis has been writing on international crime and mystery for WLT since 2004. The author of several crime novels and nonfiction books, he serves as president of the International Association of Crime Writers and teaches novel and film-script writing in the Gaylord College of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma.

Davis contributed the essay, Two Ways of Describing the Elephant: Science Fiction and the Mystery.

Chris Dearner is a student in linguistics and English writing at the University of Oklahoma. His first experience with SF was reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and he has never regretted it.

Dearner contributed the "Outposts" piece on Galaxy Bookshop for the print issue.

Paul Di Filippo sold his first story in 1977, and his second in 1985. Since then, he has accumulated over 150 periodical credits, and had 25 books published. He has two more due out in 2010. He reviews for a number of venues, including the Barnes & Noble Review. He has lived with his partner, Deborah Newton, for thirty-four years in Providence, Rhode Island, currently with a calico cat named Penny Century and a chocolate cocker spaniel named Brownie.

Di Filippo contributed the review piece, The Best Speculative Fiction of 2009.

Cory Doctorow is an SF author, blogger, and technology activist. He co-edits Boing Boing and contributes to many publications including Make, the New York Times, Popular Science, Salon.com, and Wired. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. His fiction has been nominated for all the major awards and won the Locus Award, Sunburst Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Doctorow speaks frequently about copyright, technology, and post-scarcity economics. Photo by Joi Ito, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

Doctorow is the subject of Rob Vollmar's interview, and his work is the subject of two reviews in this issue.

David Fowler is a professor of mathematics education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His special interests include visual representations of mathematics using Mathematica - the system produced by Wolfram Research, Inc. - and mathematics as a cultural phenomenon.

Fowler contributed the essay, "Mathematics in Science Fiction: Mathematics as Science Fiction" for the print issue.

James Gunn's career has bridged the gap between the writing and study of science fiction. He has received the major awards of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (the Grand Master), the Science Fiction Research Association (the Pilgrim), and fandom (the Hugo), and has served as president of both organizations. He is the author or editor of 41 books, including The Immortals, The Listeners, Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction, the six-volume Road to Science Fiction anthology, and the most recent Reading Science Fiction (with Marleen Barr and Matthew Candelaria).

Gunn contributed the essay, Science Fiction around the World, and the online reference, A Basic Science Fiction Library.

Grady Hendrix is a film programmer and writer living in New York City. For the past five years he has been a regular film critic for the New York Sun (before it died) and has written for Slate, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, Playboy Magazine, and Variety. He is a frequent guest commentator on the BBC and National Public Radio, and one of the directors, programmers, and co-founders of the New York Asian Film Festival, a nine-year-old film festival in New York City, which the New York Times has called "...one of the city's most valuable events."

Hendrix contributed the essay, "From Nuclear Nightmare to Networked Nirvana: Futuristic Utopianism in Japanese SF Films of the 2000s" for the print issue.

Elizabeth Anne Hull has served as president of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) and editor of its newsletter. Hull has served on the jury for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for more than 20 years. With Frederik Pohl, she edited the anthology Tales from the Planet Earth. She is currently editing Gateways, a tribute anthology by 18 of the top writers in the field dedicated to Frederik Pohl on the occasion of his 90th year, each with an afterword about how Pohl impacted on their lives (scheduled for July 2010 by Tor); she notes that James Gunn contributed four pieces from his novel in progress for it. Hull is Professor Emerita of William Rainey Harper College, where she taught English for more than 30 years.

Hull contributed the essay, The Challenge Remains: Doctorow's Little Brother Revisited.

Kij Johnson is the author of several novels and more than thirty fantasy, science fiction, and slipstream stories; winner of the 2009 World Fantasy Award, the 2010 Nebula Award, the Crawford Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (now a juror); and a multiple finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. She is an associate director and teaches for the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. She lives in Seattle. Click here to visit her website and read stories, poetry, and more.

Johnson contributed the story, 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss.

Marla Johnson Marla has been a member of the World Literature Today staff for almost eighteen years. She has roots in Nebraska and Iowa, and spent her college years at Oregon State University and the University of Oklahoma. She navigates through the constant stream of book reviews at WLT, along with creating an occasional piece of artwork for the magazine. It has been rumored that a cat lives in her house, or perhaps a dog, possibly a goldfish, or at the very least, something with fuzz on it is growing in the refrigerator. One of her favorite books is Independent People by Halldór Laxness.

Johnson contributed the art for Kij Johnson's story and George Zebrowski's story.

Roger Johnston is an amateur digital photographer, grows a cactus garden, plays the violin, and dabbles in computer graphics. His flame fractals can be seen at the Webshots website.

Johnston contributed the issue's cover art and the special science fiction section art.

Paul Kincaid is the recipient of the SFRA's Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service for 2006. His collection of essays and reviews, What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction (2008), was published by Beccon Publications, and his review-commentary on Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr.'s Seven Beauties of Science Fiction appears on page 44 of the May 2010 print issue of World Literature Today. Click here to see his website.

Kincaid contributed the essay, Against a Definition of Science Fiction. and the review, "Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr.'s The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction" for the print issue.

Christopher McKitterick is an author, editor, technical writer, teacher, amateur astronomer, and backyard engineer. Chris' short work has appeared in a variety of magazines, anthologies, and journals. He teaches science fiction and writing at the University of Kansas and is Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. He recently finished a far-future novel, Empire Ship, and his first novel, Transcendence, will appear in 2010 from Hadley Rille Books. For more, check out his website and blog. Photo by Cory Doctorow.

McKitterick edited this special issue and contributed the essays, The Literature of Change and "Essential SF Anthologies," plus the references to Don't-Miss Speculative Fiction Events, Science Fiction on the Web, Teaching and Scholarly Resources on the Web, and A Basic Science Fiction Library. He also built this month's website.

China Mièville (http://chinamieville.net) has published several novels, a collection of short fiction, and one book of nonfiction. He has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and British Fantasy Award twice each. His most recent book is The City and the City. He lives and works in London.

Mièville contributed an excerpt from his rejectamentalist manifesto for the print issue.

Frederik Pohl has been involved in science fiction since the age of 11. First he was a compulsive reader of SF magazines, then a fan who was a publisher of fanzines and a member and sometimes organizer of six or seven fan clubs in the New York area, including the fabled Futurians. At 16, he took part in the first SF con ever, in Philadelphia in 1936. At 19, he became the editor of two professional SF magazines, and somewhere in that period he began writing SF, by now having published some 60 or 70 novels, half of them written alone and the other half being collaborations with C.M. Kornbluth, Jack Williamson, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and several other writers. He has received six Hugo Awards, three Nebula Awards, and forty or fifty other awards, some of which he has given himself. He is still writing. His most recent book is The Last Theorem (with Clarke), and he is currently finishing Under the Mountain, out soon from Tor.

Pohl contributed the tribute, "Remembering Isaac Asimov" for the print issue. Pohl's piece is part of a longer online memoir, "The Way the Future Blogs" (a play on his important memoir, The Way the Future Was, available here.

Daniel Powell teaches English composition, film criticism, and American literature at Florida State College at Jacksonville. He writes speculative fiction and is an avid outdoorsman and long-distance runner. He enjoys fishing the tidal creeks and marshes of Duval County from atop his kayak, and he shares a small home near Florida's Intracoastal Waterway with his wife, Jeanne, and his daughter, Lyla. His web journal on speculative storytelling can be read at danielwpowell.blogspot.com.

Powell contributed the essay, After the End of the Whole Mess: Isolation and Confinement in American Narratives of the Apocalypse.

Tina-Louise Reid is a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the Film and Media Studies program at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. Her current research interests include the permutations of fairy tales, the literary and visual depictions of carnivals, circuses and sideshows as well as the multi-media persistence of Steampunk. She has published articles on video artist Van McElwee in Afterimage, Outsider artist Prophet Blackmon for Raw Vision, and Surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer in Peter Hames’s collection The Cinema of Central Europe.

Reid contributed the review, "Lunar Flair" for the print issue.

Pamela Sargent's science-fiction novels include The Shore of Women, The Golden Space, and the Venus trilogy (Venus of Dreams, Venus of Shadows, and Child of Venus); she is also the author of a historical novel, Ruler of the Sky, and an alternative history, Climb the Wind. She edited the Women of Wonder series, the first anthologies of science fiction by women, and has won the Nebula Award and the Locus Award; the Washington Post Book World called her “one of the genre's best writers.” Her most recent collection of short fiction, Thumbprints, was published by Golden Gryphon Press. Her novel Seed Seeker, a sequel to her novels Earthseed and Farseed, will be out in 2010. Photo copyright © by Jerry Bauer.

Sargent contributed the story, The True Darkness.

Tom Shippey now Professor Emeritus at Saint Louis University, is best known for his books on Tolkien, such as The Road to Middle-earth (3rd ed., 2003), but has also been involved with science fiction for many years, acting as a judge for the John Campbell Award since 1975, speaking at many conventions and conferences, and writing many articles on both science fiction and fantasy. He regularly reviews science fiction, contemporary novels, and works on medievalism for the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, and the Wall Street Journal.

Shippey contributed the review, "Neal Stephenson's Anathem" for the print issue.

Daniel Simon Daniel joined the WLT staff in 2002, after previous editorial positions at the University of Oklahoma Press and University of Nebraska Press. He received his doctorate in comparative literature - with an emphasis in translation studies - from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 2000. At OU, in addition to his work at WLT, he serves as an adjunct assistant professor in the English department and affiliate faculty member in the School of International & Area Studies (SIAS), teaching a course in magazine editing and publishing every fall. He is a member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) and PEN American Center, the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization. A Nebraska native, Daniel lives in Norman with his wife and three daughters.

Simon is editor-in-chief of WLT and contributed this month's editorial note.

Davor Slamnig (b. 1956, Zagreb) spent some time in the U.S. in his youth, getting hooked on folk songs and SF. He had a go at different musical instruments, ranging from ukulele to saxophone, before finally settling on the guitar. His first stories were published in Croatia in the 1980s, followed by four books (three story collections and a novel). Currently, he is writing mostly in C++. His website (in English) contains English translations of many of his stories and novel excerpts.

Slamnig contributed the story, "Meaning" for the print issue.

Lavie Tidhar grew up in Israel and South Africa and has since lived in the United Kingdom, Vanuatu, and Laos. He is the author of the novels The Bookman and the forthcoming Camera Obscura, both published by HarperCollins. He is also the author of the novellas An Occupation of Angels, Cloud Permutations, and Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God, and two novels with Nir Yaniv, the English-language Tel Aviv Dossier and the Hebrew Retzach Bidyoni. Other forthcoming novels include Martian Sands and Osama. He is also a prolific short-story writer and edited the anthologies A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults and The Apex Book of World SF. He runs the World SF News Blog at http://worldsf.wordpress.com.

Tidhar contributed the story, Wrong Number, and the essay, The Aliens Won: Around the World and Back Again.

Rob Vollmar is a writer of and about comics from Norman, Oklahoma, and an associate contributing editor to World Literature Today. His first graphic novel with Pablo G. Callejo, The Castaways, was nominated for a Will Eisner Comics Industry award in 2002 and their second collaboration, Bluesman has sold over 10,000 copies worldwide. Vollmar also regularly contributes to The Comics Journal as well as writing criticism and reviews online at MangaWorthReading.com and elsewhere. Inanna’s Tears is his first graphic novel in collaboration with artist and co-creator mpMann. A graduate of the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, Vollmar resides in Norman with his wife and entirely too many cats, dogs and bearded dragons.

Vollmar contributed the podcast interview with Cory Doctorow.

Wu Yan is an associate professor of education and literature at Beijing Normal University, with a PhD in management. He's a four-time Chinese Science Fiction Galaxy Award winner. His principal works include the novels Adventure in Soul (1994) and In the Sixth Day: Life or Death (1996), the anthologies Green-times in a Drawer (1999) and Exodus (2003), and the textbooks Psychology of Leadership (1996) and Foundation of Educational Management (2003). His science-fiction criticism includes Jia Baoyu on Submarine: Studies of Chinese Early Science Fiction (2006) and Theories and Frameworks of Science Fiction Studies (2008). In 1991 he created the first undergraduate course in science fiction in China and a master's program in 2003.

With Janice Bogstad and Wang Pengfei, Wu Yan contributed Science Fiction in China.

George Zebrowski won the John W. Campbell Award for Best SF Novel of the Year, for Brute Orbits, an uncompromising, evil comedy about the future of penal systems. He is also a multiple Nebula Award finalist, along with the Sturgeon Award, for short fiction, gathered in the Publishers Weekly starred collections Swift Thoughts and Black Pockets (Golden Gryphon Press). Macrolife is his classic novel about mobile space habitats. A new novel, Empties, was chosen by Edge Boston as one of the best novels of the year. He is the editor of many anthologies, the latest being Sentinels In Honor of Arthur C. Clarke, co-edited with Gregory Benford, from Hadley Rille Books. Photo Copyright © by Mark Levy.

Zebrowski contributed the story, "Once We Were Dragons," and two poems ("The morning schoolbus" and "Nature has confessed") for the print issue.

Aleksandar Žiljak (b. 1963, Zagreb) earned a master of computer sciences degree from the Electrotechnical Faculty in Zagreb. However, he makes his living as a freelance illustrating artist, doing primarily wildlife art. He has been writing SF/F/H stories since 1991. Some of them were collected in the book Slijepe ptice (2003; Blind birds). He wrote a popular-science book, Cryptozoology: The World of Mysterious Animals, using the pseudonym Karl S. McEwan. He publishes worldwide. He is also a science-fiction editor. Žiljak won six SFERA Awards: three for stories, two for science-fiction art, and one - with Tomislav Šakić - for editing the Ad Astra anthology.

Žiljak contributed the essay, Science Fiction in Croatia.