Frank Herbert was born in 1920. His colourful and varied career included stints as a radio news commentator and jungle survival instructor. He is best known for creating the world of DUNE, which became the bestselling science fiction novel of all time. It won great acclaim, as well as the Hugo and Nebula awards, establishing Frank Herbert as a master of modern science fiction. He died in 1986. His son, Brian Herbert, has now begun a new series of Dune novels, Prelude to Dune in collaboration with Kevin J. Anderson . The first novel to appear in the new series is House Atreides, published by Hodder & Stoughton. www.dunenovels.com

HARRY HARRISON was the Hugo Award-nominated, Nebula Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of the Stainless Steel Rat, Deathworld, and West of Eden series, as well as Make Room! Make Room!which was turned into the cult classic movie, Soylent Green starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson. In 2009 Harrison was awarded the Damon Knight SF Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. He died in 2012.

Ben Bova is the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction, including Able One, Leviathans of Jupiter and the Grand Tour novels, including Titan, winner of John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and in 2008 he won the Robert A. Heinlein Award "for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature." He is President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science Fiction Writers of America, and a former editor of Analog and former fiction editor of Omni. As an editor, he won science fiction's Hugo Award six times. Dr. Bova's writings have predicted the Space Race of the 1960s, virtual reality, human cloning, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), electronic book publishing, and much more. He lives in Florida.

Poul Anderson, Gran Maestro Nebula y el autor que más premios Hugo ha obtenido en toda la historia de la ciencia ficción, domina el saber histórico como pocos en el género. En La patrulla del tiempo vuelve a maravillarnos con una visión inteligente de la historia que fue, la que pudo ser y, tal vez, la que será. Un tour de force que nos demuestra cómo todas las ciencias (y no solo las duras...) proporcionan buen material para la mejor ciencia ficción.