Jim Baen's Universe

Authors | Mike Barretta

Mike Barretta was born a Connecticut Yankee and became a naturalized southerner. He married a girl from Pensacola, Florida and made his home in Gulf Breeze, FL with his wife Jane and his five children: Christopher, Connor, Maria, Olivia, and William.

He joined the U.S. Navy in 1987 and has served as a naval officer and naval aviator for the past twenty years. As a helicopter pilot he flew SH-60B Seahawks off of frigates, destroyers, cruisers and the occasional aircraft carrier. The navy has taken him to Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and points between. In between overseas deployments to various combat zones he earned a masters degree in Strategic Planning and International Negotiation. Currently, he is the Senior Flight Instructor with Helicopter Training Squadron EIGHT at Whiting field in Milton, Florida where he trains U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, Marine and allied flight students in helicopter flight.

As a child, he would check out a book illustrated with fabulous Robert McCall paintings of a future that never would be so often that the librarian gave it to him. Later, Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein, Niven and Silverberg helped to keep alive the dream of ten thousand people living in space by 1988.

Then the shuttles fell, the reactors melted, and not only did his car still have wheels, it needed new ones. Much to his dismay, he had to pay for those tires with dollars instead of credits. Despite the cold equations of life, he still has hope that one day doors will dilate.

He has a wildly eclectic taste in science fiction and other fantastic forms of literature and is honored to have made a modest contribution. If he can't have dilating doors, flying cars, and lunar vacations then he wants S. M. Stirling's Domination to meet the Samothracians somewhere in deep space, so someone over there at Baen had better call him up and get insistent.

New Moon Full Story From: "Neil's Dead."