Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859 and died in 1930. Within those years was crowded a variety of activity and creative work that made him an international figure and inspired the French to give him the epithet 'the good giant'.

He was the nephew of 'Dickie Doyle' the artist, and was educated at Stonyhurst, and later studied medicine at Edinburgh University, where the methods of diagnosis of one of the professors provided the idea for the methods of deduction used by Sherlock Holmes. He set up as a doctor at Southsea and it was while waiting for patients that he began to write.

His growing success as an author enabled him to give up his practice and turn his attention to other subjects. His greatest achievement was, of course, his creation of Sherlock Holmes, who soon attained international status and constantly distracted him from his other work; at one time Conan Doyle killed him but was obliged by public protest to restore him to life.

And in his creation of Dr Watson, Holmes's companion in adventure and chronicler, Conan Doyle produced not only a perfect foil for Holmes but also one of the most famous narrators in fiction.

Murray Leinster (1896-1975) "Murray Leinster" was the pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins - an author whose career spanned the first six decades of the 20th Century. From mystery and adventure stories in the earliest years to science fiction in his later years, he worked steadily and at a highly professional level of craftsmanship longer than most writers of his generation. He won a Hugo Award in 1956 for his novella "Exploration Team," and in 1995 the Sidewise Award for Alternate History took its name from his classic story, "Sidewise in Time." His last original work appeared in 1967.

Henry Kuttner was born in Los Angeles, in 1915. As a young man he worked for the literary agency of his uncle, Laurence D'Orsay, before selling his first story, 'The Graveyard Rats', to Weird Tales in early 1936. In 1940 Kuttner married fellow writer C. L. Moore, whom he met through the 'Lovecraft Circle'", a group of writers and fans who corresponded with H. P. Lovecraft.

During the Second World War, they were regular contributors to John W. Campbell's Astounding Science-Fiction, and collaborated for most of the 40's and 50's, publishing primarily under the pseudonyms Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell. In 1950 he began studying at the University of Southern California, graduating in 1954. He was working towards his masters degree but died of a heart attack in 1958, before it was completed.