Stephen Granade may not have been born a geek, but after reading books by Isaac Asimov, Greg Bear, and Arthur C. Clarke, he certainly became one. (He will not admit to having read the Xanth series through Man from Mundania.) Seeing The Black Hole and Tron at an early age didn’t help matters, though they did confirm once again that young geeks have no taste.
In college he crammed four years into five, in part by working towards two degrees. One of his professors commented that, though he’d known plenty of students who subscribed to the major-of-the-month club, Stephen was the first student he’d known to keep all of the majors. A semester studying theatre in England didn’t speed things up, either. Stephen finished college with degrees in physics, math, chemistry, and theatre arts, and the realization that he was now best
suited to be a McDonald’s employee.
Fortunately, physics grad school beckoned. He married Misty, his college sweetheart, and moved to Durham, NC, with a brief stop in Huntsville, AL to work for NASA. He thought Huntsville was okay, but didn’t figure he’d ever return there.
While in graduate school he wasted his time writing interactive fiction and running a website for About. The interactive fiction paid nothing; the website paid better than graduate school. He also cooled atoms down to nearly absolute zero by using lasers, vacuum systems, and a lot of Mountain Dew.
Eventually he finished his Ph.D., right when the telecom market crashed and jobs became scarce. Because the universe likes a good joke, he ended up working for a small R&D company in Hunstville, AL, who in turn assigned him to projects with NASA. His first NASA project involved creating laser-based sensors to measure the distance from a spacecraft to a target, so the spacecraft can dock gently with the satellite. When the sensor was tested on orbit, it guided the spacecraft right to the satellite, where the spacecraft promptly smashed into the satellite.
A friend he’d known since he was in high school convinced him to volunteer for Dragon*Con Technical Operations staff. There he met Brian Richardson, and we all know what that led to.
http://brasslantern.org/about.html
http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Stephen_Granade
http://www.bookslut.com/authors.php?author=Stephen%20Granade
