Professional Bio

Kevin J. Anderson is the author of more than ninety novels, 43 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists. He has over 20 million books in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for numerous prestigious awards, including the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, the SFX Reader’s Choice Award, the American Physics Society’s Forum Award, and New York Times Notable Book. By any measure, he is one of the most popular writers currently working in the science fiction genre.

Anderson has coauthored ten books in Frank Herbert’s classic DUNE universe with Herbert’s son Brian. The initial deal with Bantam Books was the largest single science fiction contract in publishing history. The first novel, DUNE: HOUSE ATREIDES became a #1 international bestseller and was voted “Book of the Year” by the members of the Science Fiction Book Club by the largest margin in the history of the award. All of the subsequent DUNE novels have also been bestsellers, each one peaking even higher on the lists; the most recent, SANDWORMS OF DUNE, hit #4 on the New York Times bestseller list. Anderson’s blog running on the official “Dune” site, www.dunenovels.com, received 2.9 million hits per month.

His epic science fiction series, The Saga of Seven Suns, is his most ambitious work, comprised of HIDDEN EMPIRE, A FOREST OF STARS, HORIZON STORMS, SCATTERED SUNS, OF FIRE AND NIGHT, METAL SWARM and the forthcoming grand finale, THE ASHES OF WORLDS. He has spent nearly eight years of his life writing the Saga. On a recent tour of New Zealand and Australia, METAL SWARM became the #1 best-selling science fiction novel on the continent. The international popularity of the series continues to grow with each volume.

His STAR WARS “Jedi Academy” books were the three top-selling SF novels of 1994. His three original STAR WARS anthologies—TALES FROM THE MOS EISLEY CANTINA, TALES FROM JABBA’S PALACE, and TALES OF THE BOUNTY HUNTERS are the best-selling science fiction anthologies of all time. He has also completed numerous other projects for Lucasfilm, including the 14-volumes in the bestselling and award-winning YOUNG JEDI KNIGHTS series (cowritten with his wife Rebecca Moesta). Anderson is the author of three hardcover novels based on the X-FILES; all became international bestsellers, the first of which reached #1 on the London Sunday Times.

He has also coauthored a major bestseller with Dean Koontz, PRODIGAL SON, which sold more than a million copies in a single year. He has written original novels SLAN HUNTER (a completion of SF grand-master A.E. van Vogt’s last novel), HOPSCOTCH, CAPTAIN NEMO, THE MARTIAN WAR, BLINDFOLD, RESURRECTION, INC., and with Doug Beason, the thrillers ILL WIND and IGNITION (both with Doug Beason). In 1997, during a promotional tour for his comedy/adventure novel AI! PEDRITO!, Anderson set the Guinness World Record for “Largest Single-Author Book Signing.”

Anderson recently worked with DC Comics to publish THE LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON, an epic science fiction novel that reveals the never-before-told story of the end of Superman’s planet. He is currently writing another novel for DC, ENCOUNTER, telling the first meeting between Superman and Batman in the 1950s during the Cold War. Anderson has scripted numerous bestselling comics and graphic novels, including Justice Society of America for DC, Star-Jammers for Marvel, Star Wars and Predator for Dark Horse, X-Files for Topps, and Star Trek for Wildstorm.

Anderson’s research has taken him to the top of Mount Whitney and the bottom of the Grand Canyon, inside the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD complex, into the Andes Mountains and the Amazon River, inside a Minuteman III missile silo and its underground control bunker, onto the deck of the aircraft carrier Nimitz, to Maya and Inca temple ruins in South and Central America, inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, onto the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange, inside a plutonium plant at Los Alamos, and behind the scenes at FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC. He also, occasionally, stays home and writes.

Personal Bio

Kevin J. Anderson was born March 27, 1962, and raised in small town Oregon, Wisconsin, south of Madison—an environment that was a cross between a Ray Bradbury short story and a Norman Rockwell painting.

He first knew he wanted to create fiction when he was five years old, before he even knew how to write: he had seen the film of War of the Worlds on TV and was so moved that he took a notepad the next day and drew pictures of scenes from the film, spread them out on the floor, and told the story out loud (perhaps this is what led him into writing comics nearly three decades later!)

At eight years old, Kevin wrote his first "novel" (three pages long on pink scrap paper) on the typewriter in his father's den—The Injection, a story about a mad scientist who invents a formula that can bring anything to life . . . and when his colleagues scoff, he proceeds to bring a bunch of wax museum monsters and dinosaur skeletons to life so they can go on the rampage.

At the age of ten, he had saved up enough money from mowing lawns and doing odd jobs that he could either buy his own bicycle or his own typewriter. Kevin chose the typewriter . . . and has been writing ever since.

He submitted his first short story to a magazine when he was a freshman in high school, and managed to collect 80 rejection slips for various manuscripts before he actually had a story accepted two years later (for a magazine that paid only in copies). When he was a senior, he sold his first story for actual money (a whopping $12.50), but he never slowed down. He sold his first novel, RESURRECTION, INC., by the time he turned 25.

Kevin worked in California for twelve years as a technical writer and editor at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the nation's largest research facilities. At the Livermore Lab, he met his wife Rebecca Moesta and also his frequent coauthor, Doug Beason.

After he had published ten of his own science fiction novels to wide critical acclaim, he came to the attention of Lucasfilm, and was offered the chance at writing Star Wars novels.

Along the way he also collected over 750 rejection slips, and a trophy as "The Writer with No Future" because he could produce more rejection slips by weight than any other writer at an entire conference. When asked for advice about how to be a successful writer, he answers quickly: PERSISTENCE!

After living in California for 15 years, he and his wife moved to Colorado where they have spent the past decade. He is an avid hiker and camper, doing much of his writing with a hand-held tape recorder while on long walks in Death Valley, the redwoods, or the Rocky Mountains. In 2001 he finished climbing all 54 of Colorado’s “Fourteeners,” peaks over 14,000 ft elevation, and he has hiked more than 300 miles of the Colorado Trail. He is also a great fan of fine microbrews.