Harry Max Harrison was born in Stamford, Connecticut, and grew up in New York City. After serving in the army from 1943 to 1946, he began a career as a commercial artist and editor. During the 1950s he was the editor of several magazines at various times, including Science Fiction Adventures,Fantasy Fiction,Impulse, Amazing Stories, and Fantastic. His first story, "Rock Diver," appeared in Worlds Beyond in February 1951, but he did not have work published regularly until the late 1950s. Finding New York increasingly unattractive, he moved his family, by way of Mexico, England, and Europe, to Ireland, where he now resides. His more than thirty books offer action, technological wonders, and various degrees of violence.

Harrison's first novel, Deathworld (1960), begins a trilogy dealing with Jason dinAlt, a gambler, and the natives of the planet Pyrrhus, where the flora and fauna are rendered increasingly deadly by their psychic sensitivity...