Michael McCollum

[excerpted from author's website]
Michael McCollum was born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1946, and is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he majored in aerospace propulsion and minored in nuclear engineering. He retired after 45 years with Honeywell in Tempe, Arizona, where he was Chief Engineer in the valve product line.

In his career, Mr. McCollum worked on the precursor to the Space Shuttle Main Engine, a nuclear valve to replace the one that failed at Three Mile Island, several guided missiles, the Space Station, and virtually every aircraft in production today. He was involved in an effort to create a joint venture company with a major Russian aerospace engine manufacturer and has traveled extensively to Russia. In 2017, he was at the Boeing Factory, standing under the first Boeing 737 Max, looking at several of his products on the aircraft (not the ones that caused the crashes).

In addition to his engineering, Mr. McCollum is a successful professional writer in the field of science fiction. He is the author of a dozen pieces of short fiction and has appeared in magazines such as Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Amazing, and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. His novels (all published by Ballantine, Del Rey) include A Greater Infinity, Life Probe, Procyon's Promise, Antares Dawn, and Antares Passage. His novel, Thunderstrike!, was optioned by a Hollywood production company for a possible movie. His other Del Rey books include The Clouds of Saturn and The Sails of Tau Cet i. Several of his books have subsequently been translated into Japanese, German, Russian, and English (as opposed to American).

Mr. McCollum is the proprietor of Sci Fi - Arizona, possibly the oldest author-owned-and-operated virtual bookstore on the Internet. He is also the operator of Third Millennium Publishing, a web site dedicated to providing publication services to author/publishers on the Internet. His latest books, Gibraltar Earth, Gibraltar Sun, Gibraltar Stars, Antares Victory, Euclid's Wall, and Lost Earth were published for the first time anywhere at Sci Fi - Arizona.