MarsCon 2005
"Galactic Pirates & Mercenaries"
Airport Marriott Hotel
Bloomington, MN

March 4-6, 2005

Timothy Zahn - MarsCon 2005 Author GoH

Timothy Zahn was born and raised in the Chicago area. He earned a B.S. in Physics from the University of Michigan in 1973 and an M.S. in Physics from the University of Illinois in 1975. Zahn began writing science fiction in 1975 as a hobby. As he worked towards his doctorate in physics, he began to devote more of his time to writing. In 1978, he sold his first short story to Analog. He was considering taking a year off to write after his doctorate when his thesis advisor died suddenly in mid-1979 (coincidentally, the same day he sold his second story).

In 1980, he left the university to begin his year of full-time writing. His wife Anna was working full-time to support him during this endeavor. He wrote 18 stories in that year and brought in $2,000 (doubling the goal he had set of $1,000). He knew he could earn a living at writing eventually, but it took him until 1984 to achieve that goal.

His best known work is The Thrawn Trilogy, the Star Wars novels that actually revived flagging interest in the Star Wars universe, beginning with Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command. He then went on to write the Hand of Thrawn series, Specter of the Past and Vision of the Future. He won a Hugo award in 1984 for the novella Cascade Point and has been nominated for Hugos on two other occasions. He is also the author of the novels Conquerors' Pride, Conquerors' Heritage, and Conquerors' Legacy and three collections of short fiction. He currently lives with his family on the Oregon Coast.

Zahn's books are known primarily for two things: 1) zippy, well constructed plots and 2) believable technology. His plots are very well paced. They never feel hurried, yet they never drag either. His characters are carefully thought out and compliment each other. He doesn't tend to use extraneous characters either. The characters he creates, for the most part, all contribute to the development of the main plot. The Star Wars characters he introduced in The Thrawn Trilogy are fascinating, as evidenced by their inclusion in Star Wars novels written by other authors. Obviously, his physics background helped him in creating appropriate technologies for his novels. The technologies found in his novels are plausible for the setting and explained so a layman can understand it.

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