Born in New York City in 1946, Foster was raised in Los Angeles. After receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema from UCLA (1968, 1969) he spent two years as a copywriter for a small Studio City, CA advertising firm.
His fiction career began in 1968 when August Derleth bought a long Lovecraftian letter of Foster’s and published it as a short story. Sales of short fiction to other magazines followed. His first attempt at a novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, was bought by Betty Ballantine and published by Ballantine Books in 1972.
Since then, his published oeuvre includes excursions into hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He has produced the novel versions of many films, including Star Wars, the first three Alien films, Alien Nation, The Chronicles of Riddick, Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation, and both Transformers films. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages and has won awards in Spain and Russia.
Besides traveling he enjoys listening to both classical music and heavy metal. Other pastimes include basketball, hiking, body surfing, scuba diving, and weight lifting. He and his wife reside in Prescott in a house built of brick salvaged from a turn-of-the-century miners’ brothel, along with assorted dogs, cats, fish, several hundred houseplants, and the ensorcelled chair of the nefarious Dr. John Dee.