Rich Horton is a software engineer, originally from the Chicago area, resident in the St. Louis area for over 40 years. He spent 20 years as a short fiction columnist for Locus Magazine, and has edited some two dozen anthologies, including a long-running Best of the Year anthology for Prime Books, and an upcoming anthology of Philosophical SF for MIT Press. He is a regular contributor to Black Gate, and also contributes occasional pieces to F&SF, Journey Planet, and other places. He maintains a blog, Strange at Ecbatan, at rrhorton.blogspot.com.