Ben Bova wrote more than one hundred twenty futuristic novels and nonfiction books, and had been involved in science and high technology since the very beginnings of the space age. President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science Fiction Writers of America, Bova received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, “for fueling mankind’s imagination regarding the wonders of outer space.” His 2006 novel Titan received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. In 2008, he won the Robert A. Heinlein Award “for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature.” Bova was a frequent commentator on radio and television and a widely-popular lecturer. His articles, opinion pieces and reviews have appeared in Scientific American, Nature, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other newspapers and magazines. Earlier, he was an award-winning editor and an executive in the aerospace industry. His Grand Tour novels, such as Moonrise and Mars, combine romance, adventure, and the highest degree of scientific accuracy to show how the human race will expand through the solar system, and the impact this will have on individual human lives and society as a whole. Bova taught science fiction at Harvard University and at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, where he had also directed film courses. Bova passed away in 2020.

Les Johnson is a futurist, author, and retired NASA Chief Technologist at Marshall Space Flight Center. Publishers Weekly noted that “The spirit of Arthur C. Clarke and his contemporaries is alive and well . . .” when describing his novel, Mission to Methone. His most recent novel, Crisis at Proxima (with coauthor Travis S. Taylor), was published in 2024. He and Travis S. Taylor were also the authors of Back to the Moon and On to the Asteroid. In his day job at NASA, Les has worked on the development of next-generation space technologies—including solar sails, which he believes will eventually take us to the stars. He has recently appeared on Fox News and the Ingraham Report as a commentator on the latest expedition to the moon, Artemis II.