Hard Science Fiction Worldbuilding: A Complete Guide to Building Plausible Universes

Gretchen Frost is a speculative fiction author and worldbuilding consultant with fifteen years of experience developing scientifically grounded fictional universes for novels, tabletop roleplaying games, and video game studios. Her published works include the Voidwarden trilogy (Orbit Books, 2019–2022), a hard science fiction series set in a meticulously modeled binary star system, and the Belters' Republic series (2023–present), a near-future political thriller about asteroid mining and solar system colonization. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and Asimov's Science Fiction.

Before turning to fiction full time, Frost worked as a systems engineer on satellite propulsion systems at Lockheed Martin Space, where she contributed to the GPS III and Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite programs. She holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine.

Frost is the creator and host of The Orbital Workshop, a monthly podcast that interviews scientists and engineers about the real-world technologies that could form the basis of tomorrow's science fiction. She lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her wife and two cats, and maintains an active presence on the Worldbuilding Stack Exchange where she answers questions on spacecraft design, planetary science, and the physics of zero-gravity combat. Her website is gretchenfrost.com.