Gregory Benford is a science fiction author and astrophysicist. He is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine and a contributing editor of Reason magazine.Benford has published more than 200 scientific papers on theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics. He also has published two dozen novels and many more short stories. His first novel, "Deeper Than the Darkness" (also published as "The Stars in Shroud") was published in 1970.Benford received his BSc in Physics from the University of Oklahoma and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego.