Charles Ardai's writing has appeared in mystery magazines such as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, gaming magazines such as Computer Gaming World and Electronic Games, and anthologies such as Best Mysteries of the Year and The Year's Best Horror Stories. Ardai has also edited numerous short story collections such as The Return of the Black Widowers, Great Tales of Madness and the Macabre, and Futurecrime.

His first novel, Little Girl Lost, was published in 2004 and was nominated for both the Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America and the Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America; his second, Songs of Innocence, was called "an instant classic" by The Washington Post, selected as one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly, and won the Shamus Award.

Both books were written under the alias Richard Aleas and were optioned for the movies by Universal Pictures. Ardai previously received a Shamus nomination for the short story "Nobody Wins" and he received the Edgar Award in 2007 for the short story "The Home Front". In 2015, he received the Ellery Queen Award for his work on Hard Case Crime. Ardai's third novel, Fifty-to-One, was published in November 2008. It was the fiftieth book in the Hard Case Crime series and the first to be published under Ardai's real name.

In 2010, he began working as a writer and producer on the SyFy television series Haven, inspired by the Hard Case Crime novel The Colorado Kid by Stephen King. The first episode of Haven aired on July 9, 2010 and the last aired on December 17, 2015. In 2016, he wrote a novel based on the Shane Black movie The Nice Guys. In addition to his writing and publishing activities, Ardai serves as a managing director of the D. E. Shaw group.

Harlan Ellison (1934-2018) is a legend of the SFF, horror and speculative fiction genres. His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media.

Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars. Many of Ellison’s short stories have been adapted into a variety of formats, including television episodes of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek.

Isaac Asimov, world maestro of science fiction, was born in Russia near Smolensk in 1920 and was brought to the United States by his parents three years later. He grew up in Brooklyn where he went to grammar school and at the age of eight he gained his citizen papers. A remarkable memory helped him finish high school before he was sixteen. He then went on to Columbia University and resolved to become a chemist rather than follow the medical career his father had in mind for him.

He graduated in chemistry and after a short spell in the Army he gained his doctorate in 1949 and qualified as an instructor in biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine where he became Associate Professor in 1955, doing research in nucleic acid. Increasingly, however, the pressures of chemical research conflicted with his aspirations in the literary field, and in 1958 he retired to full-time authorship while retaining his connection with the University. Asimov's fantastic career as a science fiction writer began in 1939 with the appearance of a short story, `Marooned Off Vesta', in Amazing Stories.

Thereafter he became a regular contributor to the leading SF magazines of the day including Astounding, Astonishing Stories, Super Science Stories and Galaxy. He won the Hugo Award four times and the Nebula Award once. With nearly five hundred books to his credit and several hundred articles, Asimov's output was prolific by any standards.

Apart from his many world-famous science fiction works, Asimov also wrote highly successful detective mystery stories, a four-volume History of North America, a two-volume Guide to the Bible, a biographical dictionary, encyclopaedias, textbooks and an impressive list of books on many aspects of science, as well as two volumes of autobiography. Isaac Asimov died in 1992 at the age of 72.