Author

Engineer/Novelist/Journalist/Entrepreneur Wil McCarthy has been a professional writer since the mid-1980s.  He is a former contributing editor for WIRED magazine and science columnist for the SyFy channel (previously SciFi channel), where his popular "Lab Notes" column ran from 1999 through 2009.  A lifetime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he is a two-time winner of the AnLab award, and has been a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, Seiun, Colorado Book,

Theodore Sturgeon, and Philip K. Dick awards, and contributed to projects that won a Webbie, an Eppie, a Game Developers' Choice Award, and a General Excellence National Magazine Award.  In addition, his imaginary world of “P2/Sorrow” was rated one of the 10 best science-fictional planets of all time by Discover magazine.  His short fiction has graced the pages of magazines like Analog, Asimov's, WIRED, and Science Fiction Age, and his 11 published novels include the New York Times Notable BLOOM, Amazon.com "Best of Y2K" THE COLLAPSIUM (an international bestseller) and, most recently, RICH MAN'S SKY (winner of the Prometheus Award).  He has also written for TV and video games, appeared on The History Channel and The Science Channel, and published nonfiction in dozens of magazines, including WIRED, Discover, GQ, Popular Mechanics, IEEE Spectrum, and the Journal of Applied Polymer Science.

Previously a flight controller for Lockheed Martin Space Launch Systems and later an engineering manager for Omnitech Robotics and founder/president/CTO of a green energy startup called RavenBrick LLC, McCarthy now writes patents for a top law firm in Denver, among many other things.  He holds patents of his own in 7 countries, including 31 issued U.S. patents in the field of nanostructured optical materials.