Neal Stephenson is primarily a fiction author and has received several awards for his works in speculative fiction. His more popular books include Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, and Anathem. He is a co-founding author of the Foreworld universe and co-author of The Mongoliad trilogy. He resides in Seattle with his family. Charles C. Mann is the author of 1493, a New York Times bestseller, and 1491, which received the Keck Award from the National Academy of Science. The co-author of five additional books, including a young readers' version of 1491 called Before Columbus, Charles is a regular contributor to the Atlantic, Science, and Wired. He has covered science, technology, and commerce for publications such as National Geographic, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and the Washington Post. Charles has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award four times, and has won writing awards from the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Physics, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Margaret Sanger Foundation. Mark Teppo is the author of the Codex of Souls urban fantasy series, the hypertext dream narrative The Potemkin Mosaic, and the vampire eco-thriller Earth Thirst. He is a co-founding author of the Foreworld universe and co-author of The Mongoliad trilogy, along with many other tales in the universe. A bibliophile whose interests include historical martial arts and esoteric traditions, he lives in the Pacific Northwest. Ellis Amdur is a well-known practitioner and researcher of classical Japanese martial arts. He has written three books on the subject, including Dueling with O-sensei, Old School, and Hidden in Plain Sight. Ellis also works as a crisis intervention specialist and has authored and published nine books on the de-escalation of aggressive, emotionally disturbed individuals. His first novel, The Girl with the Face of the Moon, published in Fall 2014.