Paul J. McAuley has degrees in botany and zoology and did scientific research in Britain and, for a time in the '80s, in Los Angeles, before becoming a full-time professor in the UK. At 19, he sold a story to If, but the magazine folded before it could appear; he made the first of many short fiction sales in 1984, when ''Wagon, Passing'' appeared in Asimov's. His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), was a co-winner of the 1989 Philip K. Dick Award; it began a loosely connected series which continued with Of the Fall (aka Secret Harmonies, 1989), and Eternal Light (1991). Later works include Mars novel Red Dust (1993), alternate world Renaissance work Pasquale's Angel (1994), near-future SF Fairyland (1995), which won the John W. Campbell Award, and Child of the River (1997) – first of SF trilogy The Book of Confluence, which will continue with Ancients of Days and (tentatively titled) Ship of Fools. He recently gave up teaching and is now a full-time writer. His short fiction has been collected in The King of the Hill and other stories (1991) and The Invisible Country (1996).