About the Author George Pinneo, an army brat, lived in 4 states and 8 different locations during WWII. He grew up in NW Ohio, graduating from Case Institute of Technology with a B.S.Ch.E. in 1959. His technical career spans 55 years of experience: front-end wafer fab microelectronics, diode laser and hybrid packaging with a focus on fully hermetic package design and manufacture. Along the way he was the fourth founder in a successful article surveillance startup in Hollywood Florida. This entrepreneur loves to hear the phrase: "you can't do that!" - and then to do it, of course! One of his specialties is fluxless, fully hermetic, hard soldering for microelectronic packages. Family vacations have taken the Pinneos through Canada to Alaska, to Hawaii, into Mexico and the Caribbean with sojourns to Western Europe and to New Zealand and parts of Australia. A recent trip took them through Baltic Europe to see some of the cities of the Hanse. So far, they've visited 18 Caribbean islands, 7 Canadian provinces, 49 of the 50 States and 11 Mexican estados. Another took them through Andalucía where they stood on top of the Rock and gazed across the Med at the mountains rising in Morocco some 8 miles south just beyond the coast of Africa! And then they visited the ancient city Tangiers, of course! He has no intention of visiting North Dakota. The family lives up on the Mogollon Rim of Arizona near the White Mountains. At the age of 55, he earned a private pilot's license and then built an all-metal, 2-seat 'experimental homebuilt' airplane, which he has spent 22 years 'refining'. He has twice flown cross-country to the annual EAA fly-in in Oshkosh WI. Other hobbies include woodturning, sailing, canoeing, black powder cannons, hiking and jewelry making, especially Delft-Clay casting of silver and bronze. A glimpse into his notions of what constitutes good fiction includes solid, realistic engineering principles based on hard scientific fact, extended in a linear manner to anticipate ongoing work. Philosophically, good fiction should teach not only new words, but also new concepts. It should be uplifting, positive and enlightening; Bujold has shown SF can also be romantic in her novel: "A Civil Affair".