Read an Excerpt From Mary Robinette Kowal&#8217;s <i>The Martian Contingency</i>

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of The Glamourist Histories: Shades of Milk and Honey, Glamour in Glass, Without A Summer, Valour and Vanity, and Of Noble Family (Tor 2015). In 2008 she won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. In 2011, her short story "For Want of a Nail" won the Hugo Award for Short Story, and her "Lady Astronaut of Mars" won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 2014. Her work has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. Stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov's, Tor.com, and several Year's Best anthologies as well as in her collection Scenting the Dark and Other Stories from Subterranean. Mary, a professional puppeteer and voice actor, has performed for LazyTown, the Center for Puppetry Arts, Jim Henson Pictures and founded Other Hand Productions. Her designs have garnered two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence, the highest award an American puppeteer can achieve. She also records fiction for authors such as Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi. She served two terms as the Vice President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Mary lives in Chicago with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters.