Dex Harlan

Dex Harlan grew up in coastal Virginia, the son of a machinist, and spent his teenage summers at his uncle's salvage yard, pulling parts out of wrecks and reading paperback space opera in the cab of a dead tow truck. He went on to spend twenty-odd years as a diesel and marine-engine mechanic, first on trucks and then on fishing boats.

A winter laid up with a back injury changed that. With nothing to do but re-read old favorites and fly space sims, he kept noticing the same thing: the mechanic was always the guy left behind on the ship. So he wrote the story where the ship chooses the mechanic, and the crew chooses him too.

These days Dex writes full time from a small harbor town on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, where the fog does half his worldbuilding. When he isn't writing, he's building ships in engineering sims just to see what breaks first, patching a 1970s sailboat that has been "nearly seaworthy" for six years, or out back with a homemade telescope. His one-eared rescue dog, Ballast, sleeps under the desk and snores through every battle scene.

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