<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Wil McCarthy, born September 16, 1966, in Princeton, New Jersey, has heard all the "you don't have to be a rocket scientist" jokes and then some. Formerly at the Lockheed Martin Corporation in Denver, Colorado, where he contributed to three interplanetary spacecraft and designed satellite orbits for flight systems, McCarthy is both a full-time science fiction writer and co-owner and Chief Technology Officer of aerospace corporation Galileo Shipyards LLC.

McCarthy's first published novel is Aggressor Six, a thrill-packed space adventure released as an original paperback by Roc/Penguin in 1994. A sequel, called The Fall of Sirius, was published in 1996.

The Collapsium (2000), The Wellstone (2003), Lost in Transmission (2004), and To Crush the Moon (2005) comprise The Queendom of Sol saga, which deals with immortality and its unexpected and perhaps sometimes unpleasant consequences. His other novels include Bloom (1998), about the destruction of Earth and the inner solar system by a deadly, self-replicating organism; space adventure Flies from the Amber (1995); and Murder in the Solid State (1996), which combines hard science fiction with murder mystery.

McCarthy writes a science column, Lab Notes, for The SCI FI Channel's online magazine, Science Fiction Weekly. His articles and short fiction have appeared in such magazines as Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Analog, Wired, Nature, and other major publications, as well as in numerous anthologies.

Wil McCarthy has made a number of his books, including his acclaimed nonfiction book Hacking Matter, available as free downloads. Hacking Matter explores edgy concepts such as "quantum dots" and "artificial atoms" (designer electron bundles), and the idea of programmable matter.