Andreas Eschbach is one of Germany's pre-eminent science-fiction writers. Born in the city of Ulm in 1959, he studied aerospace engineering at the University of Stuttgart. The Hair Carpet Weavers (Die Haarteppichknüpfer, 1995) was his debut novel, and won the Deutscher Science Fiction Preis, the Belgian Prix Bob Morane and the French Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire for best foreign-language novel. His subsequent books have won numerous prizes in Germany and been translated into a number of languages, including English, French, Italian, Russian, Serbian, Polish, Turkish and Japanese.