L. Ron Hubbard was born in Tilden, Nebraska on March 13, 1911. He attended George Washington University and Princeton University. He began his career as a writer for pulp magazines and later as a science fiction writer. His science fiction works include the Buckskin Brigades, Final Blackout, Fear, The Kingslayer, and Black Towers to Danger. His book, Dianetics, was published in 1950. He spent the next 30 years devoting himself to the development of Dianetics and Scientology. In 1954, he founded the Church of Scientology. In the 1980s, he published his final fiction works Battlefield Earth and the Mission Earth series, which won the Cosmos 2000 Award from French readers and the Nova Science Fiction Award from Italy's Perseo Libri. He died on January 24, 1986.
Kevin J. Anderson was born on March 27, 1962. Before becoming a full-time author, he worked in California for twelve years as a technical writer and editor at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His science fiction books include Resurrection, Inc., the Star Wars Jedi Academy Trilogy, the Young Jedi Knights series, Ground Zero, Ruins, Climbing Olympus, Blindfold, and The Dark Between the Stars. He has also written several books with Doug Beason including Ignition, Virtual Destruction, Fallout, and Ill Wind.