Science Fiction and Beyond

Simon's interest in computers and technology was accidental. The original thinking was to become a journalist, working at a broadsheet newspaper in London. However, at the age of 15, Simon discovered computers, thanks to a new dial-up connection from his school to the mainframe at Hatfield Polytechnic in Hertfordshire (UK).

He started programming almost immediately and wrote a text-based version of the game of Monopoly, winning an award from the local educational authority. Importantly it had a computer player that often beat the human players because of the strategies it employed. That was in the 1970s.

Captivated by this world of IT, he stayed in the industry for over 40 years. For the first half of this time, he worked almost exclusively in the aerospace industry in the UK, Netherlands and Germany. For the second half, he worked in Silicon Valley in California. As an employee of large and small corporations throughout his career, he saw, first-hand, the peculiar and dysfunctional characteristics of the IT workplace. He was immersed in the work ethics, politics and personal motivations of his colleagues. He found the common management failures of many corporations that impeded the progress of teams and their objectives. As a Vice President in several companies, he strove to correct as much of this dysfunction as possible. The challenges of human nature he faced led to the publication of his first book, Silicon Valley Job Hunting.

His true passion, though, is science fiction. The exploration of what mankind is going to do in the future and the man-made challenges that it has to overcome. Much of the sci-fi that we see on TV or at the movies is sensationalist and shallow; most usually a parody of past human history or terrestrial literature simply set in the stars. As for the science, very few movies get it right and few people seem to notice. 

As a writer, Simon strives for a tangible exploration of what might really happen and the issues that we will most certainly face.

Tomorrow is nearly here, so we had better start preparing for it.

Simon lives in Florida with his wife, tries to play golf and bikes a lot.