Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead in 1917. During the Second World War he served as an RAF radar instructor, rising to the rank of Flight-Lieutenant.

After the war he won a BSc in physics and mathematics with first class honours from King's College, London. One of the most respected of all science-fiction writers, he also won the Kalinga Prize, the Aviation Space-Writers Prize,and the Westinghouse Science Writing Prize.

He also shared an OSCAR nomination with Stanley Kubrick for the screenplay of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was based on his story, 'The Sentinel'. He lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008.

Kim Stanley Robinson is a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy, 2312, Aurora and New York 2140. In 2008 he was named a 'Hero of the Environment' by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada research institute. He lives in Davis, California.