Robots through the Ages : A Science Fiction Anthology

Seanan McGuire is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex and Locus Award-winning Wayward Children series, the October Daye series, the InCryptid series, and other works. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person to appear five times on the same ballot for the Hugo Award. In 2022, she managed the same feat again.

Robert Silverberg’s first published story appeared in 1954 when he was a sophomore at Columbia University. Since then, he has won the prestigious Nebula Award five times and the Hugo Award five times. He has been nominated for both awards more times than any other writer. In 1999 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and in 2004 the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America gave him their Grand Master Award for career achievement. He remains one of the most imaginative and versatile writers in science fiction.

Ken Scholes is the award-winning, critically-acclaimed author of five novels and over sixty short stories. His work has appeared in print since 2000. He is also a singer-songwriter who has written nearly a hundred songs over thirty years of performing. Occasionally, in his spare time, Ken consults individuals and organizations on maximizing their effectiveness.

Ken’s eclectic background includes time spent as a label gun repairman, a sailor who never sailed, a soldier who commanded a desk, a fundamentalist preacher (he got better), a nonprofit executive and community organizer, and a government procurement analyst. He has a degree in history from Western Washington University. 

Ken is a native of the Pacific Northwest and makes his home in Cornelius, Oregon, where he lives with his twin daughters. You can learn more about Ken by visiting www.KenScholes.com.

Suzanne Palmer has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Eugie M. Foster Award. Her short fiction has won reader’s awards for Asimov’s, Analog, and Interzone magazines, and was listed in Locus magazine’s Recommended Reading. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, including the 35th Annual Year’s Best Science Fiction and volumes two and three of The Best Science Fiction of the Year.

Brenda Cooper is the author of the Silver Ship series: The Silver Ship and the Sea, Reading the Wind, and Wings of Creation. She has also published many short stories, including a collaboration with Larry Niven, “Ice and Mirrors,” in Scatterbrain.

Connie Willis has won six Nebula and nine Hugo Awards—more than any other science fiction writer—and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for her first novel, Lincoln’s Dreams. Her novel Doomsday Book won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards, and her first short-story collection, Fire Watch, was a New York Times Notable Book.

Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as many short stories. Known for including both mythological characters of different origins as well as elements from real history, Zelazny is perhaps best known for The Chronicles of Amber series. He was awarded the Nebula award three times and the Hugo award six times.

Avram Davidson (1923–1993) was author of nineteen published novels and more than two hundred short stories and essays collected in more than a dozen books. Davidson won the Hugo Award in science fiction, the Queen’s Award and Edgar Award in the mystery genre, and the World Fantasy Award (three times).

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) published thirty-six science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned toward deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and in 2007 the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) was equally adept at writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His works were honored with the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy awards, and he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He also received the Gandalf Grand Master Award for fantasy writing.

Jack Williamson (1908–2006) published his first short story in 1928 and produced entertaining, thought-provoking science fiction from then on. The second person named Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, he was always in the forefront of the field, being the first to write fiction about genetic engineering (he invented the term), antimatter, and other cutting-edge science. A Renaissance man, he was a master of fantasy and horror as well as science fiction.

Ambrose Bierce (1842–ca. 1914) was an American journalist, short-story writer, and poet. Born in Ohio, he served in the Civil War and then settled in San Francisco. He wrote for Hearst’s Examiner, his wit and satire making him the literary dictator of the Pacific coast and strongly influencing many writers. He disappeared into war-torn Mexico in 1913.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt is an author and Hugo-nominated editor of adult and children’s speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince, received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies, and online and include stories in The X-Files and Decipher’s WARS. As an editor he has edited books by such luminaries as Alan Dean Foster, Tracy Hickman, Frank Herbert, Mike Resnick, Jean Rabe, and more. He was also the first editor on Andy Weir’s bestseller The Martian.

Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.

Peter Ganim, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an American actor who has appeared on stage, on television, and in film. He has performed voice-over work since 1994.

Leonard Simon Nimoy (1931–2015) was an American actor, film director, poet, musician, and photographer. His most famous role was that of Spock in the original Star Trek series, as well as in multiple film, television, and video game sequels. He began his career in his early twenties, teaching acting classes in Hollywood and making minor film and television appearances through the 1950s, as well as playing the title role in Kid Monk Baroni. He made his first appearance in the rejected Star Trek pilot, “The Cage,” in 1965 and went on to play Spock until 1969. Spock had a significant cultural impact and garnered Nimoy three Emmy Award nominations. TV Guide named Spock one of the fifty greatest television characters.

Dan Bittner is an actor and voice talent and winner of several AudioFile Earphones Awards for audio narration. He has starred on stage and on the screen, in movies such as Men in Black, Adventureland, and the Producers: The Movie Musical. He has also appeared onstage as Macbeth and Sherlock Holmes in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.

Scott Aiello has narrated over a dozen audiobooks and is a 2013 Audie Award finalist for his nonfiction narration of Sex and God at Yale by author Nathan Harden. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School drama division and has since performed and directed various New York plays and has been seen on television shows such as Person of Interest and Elementary. Before Juilliard, he was a regular in the Chicago theater circuit.

Tim Campbell, winner of AudioFile Earphones Awards, is a narrator and actor based in Los Angeles, California. He studied at the University of California and earned a BA in music and theater and a certification from the prestigious Great Books program at Pepperdine University, where he graduated magna cum laude. He is also a classically trained singer and performs regularly with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Los Angeles Opera Chorus, as well as on studio soundtracks for film and television.

Jim Meskimen is a stage, film, and television actor who has appeared in many well-known movies and television shows. He acted in Apollo 13 and Frost/Nixon for director Ron Howard, both of which were nominated for Best Picture Oscars. His television appearances include The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Friends, Lie to Me, Criminal Minds, and Parks and Recreation. He is also a painter, award-winning audiobook narrator, and audiobook director for Galaxy Audio.

Natasha Soudek was raised in the South, speaks native German, lived in Berlin and Vienna, and finally settled in the Lower East Side of New York City. After honing her stage presence by studying acting and playing hundreds of live music shows (singing and playing bass), she moved to LA to record with Channel/DreamWorks and act on TV. Her voice is as distinct and memorable as the range of characters she’s played on-screen.

Neil Hellegers grew up in New Jersey and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a BA in theater arts and a minor in psychology before getting an MFA in acting from the Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. He moved to New York City in 2003 and, since then, has made a career of theatrical performance, percussion, theater education, and audiobook narration. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.

Steven Jay Cohen has been telling stories his whole life, and has worked professionally as a storyteller since 1991. A classically trained actor, he has worked both on stage and behind the microphone for most of his career. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Steven now resides in scenic western Massachusetts.

James Anderson Foster, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, has narrated audiobooks for a variety of publishers, across nearly all genres, both fiction and nonfiction. In 2015, he was a finalist in three categories for the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences Voice Arts Awards—mystery, science fiction, and fantasy.

Jesse Vilinsky is a classically trained actress and voice actor, having graduated from the USC School of Dramatic Arts and BADA in London. She has lent her voice to numerous film and television projects and has worked on various video games, animation, and commercial projects as well. As a narrator, Jesse has garnered recognition in AudioFile magazine for her expertly voiced characters and ability to bring forth the strength and truth of their stories.