Gateshead-based Dr Simon Morden trained as a planetary geologist, realised he was never going to get into space, and decided to write about it instead. His publishing career includes an eclectic mix of stories which blend science fiction, fantasy and horror, and a five-year stint as an editor for the British Science Fiction Association. A Greenbelt regular, his now infamous 2005 Greenbelt talk 'Sex, Death and Christian fiction' has become a touchstone for the criticism of the genre, while 2006's 'What makes a good story?' is used the world over by students for essay material. Simon’s first novel, Heart, was published in 2002. The wonderfully tentacly novella, Another War (2005), was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award, and 2007 saw the publication of The Lost Art. Just out in paperback and variously described as ‘brilliant’, ‘wonderful’, and ‘the yardstick by which all books should be measured’, it saw him sharing a publisher with Philip Pullman and Mark Haddon and being compared with Iain M Banks. Next year will see the publication of the frequently violent, often sweary and always thrilling Equations of Life: set in a future London packed with refugees, it boasts armoured nuns, Stalin-lookalikes, and seriously hard-core science. Physics will never be cooler.