The Great Silence: What Science Fiction Reveals About the Fermi Paradox

About the Author

Michael Smith is a science writer, literary critic, and author of four previous books exploring the intersection of speculative fiction and the natural sciences. His work has appeared in *Nature*, *The New York Review of Books*, *The Guardian*, and *Lightspeed Magazine*, where he writes the regular column "The Hard Science of the Impossible." He holds a Master's degree in Astrophysics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Cambridge, a dual background that informs his unique approach to analyzing science fiction through both scientific and literary lenses.

Smith's first book, *The Logic of the Impossible: Speculative Fiction as Thought Experiment*, was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work. His subsequent volumes—*Counting the Stars: The Mathematics of Wonder*, *Futures Past: A History of the Year 2000 as Imagined in 1900*, and *Mapping the Multiverse: The Science of Alternate History*—have been translated into twelve languages and are used as course texts in science fiction programs at universities including MIT, Stanford, and the University of California. His work has been recognized with the Isaac Asimov Award for Science Writing and the Philip K. Dick Society's Distinguished Scholarship Prize.

Smith has served as a consultant for SETI Institute public education programs and has been a featured speaker at the World Science Fiction Convention, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Bauman Symposium on Astrobiology and Culture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Associate of the British Interplanetary Society. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he is at work on a novel about the first human mission to an interstellar asteroid.

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