I was born in Birmingham, England in 1957 (Sun in Sagittarius, Moon in Aries, Virgo rising, Mercury and Venus in Capricorn, Mars in Scorpio, Jupiter in Libra and Saturn in Sagittarius). The high point of my youthful years was seeing Isaac Asimov on his visit to Birmingham in 1974.

I read Natural Sciences at Cambridge University from 1976 to 1979, where one of my teachers was Nobel-prizewinner Brian Josephson, now of the Mind-Matter Unification project, but at that time still working in the mainstream of science. After getting a PhD in theoretical astrophysics from the University of Manchester, I spent a couple of years at Groningen University in the Netherlands, where Seth Shostak was working as a radioastronomer -- long before he became Public Programs scientist at the SETI Institute. It was here, and subsequently at Oxford University, that I did most of my "real" scientific work, which resulted in eight academic papers (including one on black holes) that are still being cited to this day!

I finally left academia in 1986, and since then I've done a number of jobs for different employers, including ten years as a civil servant. Three of these years were spent in London as a scientific adviser to the Royal Air Force, with an office just round the corner from Nick Pope, "Britain's answer to Fox Mulder"!

I now live in the West Country, where the pace of life suits me better than the big city. I work in an office near Weymouth in Dorset, though sadly I've recently had to give up my sea view!