Mark Roman & Corben Duke
Mark Roman
Mark Roman has been working his way through the alphabet in search of a suitable career. He's sampled architecture, accountancy, auditing and astrophysics. For a while he worked as a computer programmer before realizing he'd skipped over 'B'. So he took up bioinformatics, which is where he is now. He worries that becoming an author would put him back to 'A', with the whole alphabet still stretching out ahead of him.
He lives in London with his wife (also a scientist) and two young children, neither of whom wants to become a scientist. In his work he has published around 80 papers, reviews and book chapters - although, if you want to read them, you'll need to look under a different name.
As a lifelong soccer fan he is no stranger to the extreme emotions of elation and despair (but mainly despair - in fact, almost entirely despair), particularly from his own performances on the football field. Still, he firmly believes there's no problem that can't be solved by a nice cup of tea. Except, perhaps, global warming.
Corben Duke
Born in a Yorkshire cave after his mother became stuck during a pot-holing holiday, Corben Duke was left behind and raised by bats. Later he became a shack-dweller on Doom Beach, Bernard Island, Outer Hebrides where he now lives with his wife Mrs Duke and two dogs, Crusher and Mr Fluffy.
Three years ago Corben teamed up with Mark Roman and they wrote 'The Worst Man on Mars' and then 'Sci-Fi Shorts'.