City Under the Stars

About the Authors

MICHAEL SWANWICK published his first story in 1980, making him one of a generation of new writers that included Pat Cadigan, William Gibson, Connie Willis, and Kim Stanley Robinson. In the third of a century since, he has been honored with the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards and received a Hugo Award for fiction in an unprecedented five out of six years. He also has the pleasant distinction of having lost more major awards than any other science fiction writer.

Roughly one hundred fifty stories have appeared in Amazing, Analog, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, High Times, New Dimensions, Eclipse, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, The Infinite Matrix, Omni, Penthouse, Postscripts, Realms of Fantasy, Tor.com, Triquarterly, Universe, and elsewhere. Many have been reprinted in Best of the Year anthologies, and translated into Japanese, Croatian, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Chinese, Czech, and French. Several hundred works of flash fiction have been published as well.

A prolific writer of nonfiction, Swanwick has published book-length studies of Hope Mirrlees and James Branch Cabell as well as a book-length interview with Gardner Dozois. He has taught at Clarion, Clarion West, and Clarion South. He was guest of honor at MidAmeriCon II, the 2016 World Science Fiction Convention.

Swanwick is the author of ten novels, including In the Drift (an Ace Special), Vacuum Flowers, Stations of the Tide, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, Jack Faust, Bones of the Earth, The Dragons of Babel, Dancing with Bears, and Chasing the Phoenix. His short fiction has been collected in Gravity’s Angels, A Geography of Imaginary Lands, Moon Dogs, Tales of Old Earth, Cigar Box Faust and Other Miniatures, The Dog Said Bow Wow, The Best of Michael Swanwick, and Not So Much, Said the Cat. His most recent novel, The Iron Dragon’s Mother, completes a fantasy trilogy begun almost twenty-five years ago.

He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter.

GARDNER DOZOIS is widely regarded as one of the most important editors in the history of science fiction. His editorial work earned more than forty Hugo Awards, forty Nebula Awards, and thirty Locus Awards, and he was awarded the Hugo for Best Professional Editor fifteen times between 1988 and his retirement from Asimov’s in 2004, having edited the magazine for almost twenty years! He also served as the editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies and coeditor of the Warrior anthologies, Songs of the Dying Earth, and many others. As a writer, Dozois twice won the Nebula Award for best short story. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2011 and received the Skylark Award for Lifetime Achievement. Gardner was actively writing and editing when he died in the spring of 2018. Recent publications include two nonfiction collections, Sense of Wonder and On the Road with Gardner Dozois (with an introduction by Michael Swanwick), three anthologies, The Year’s Best Science Fiction: 35th Annual Collection, The Book of Magic, and The Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction, several short stories in Asimov’s and F&SF, and a podcast of “A Special Kind of Morning” on LeVar Burton Reads.

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