Donald Kingsbury, the son of a mining engineer and school teacher, born in 1929, spent his youth in the mountains of New Guinea, traveled through the South Pacific in 1935, lived in California, New Mexico, New Hampshire, moved to Montreal, Canada in 1948 where he had two sons and taught mathematics at McGill University from 1956 to 1986 where he was a rabble rouser.  His science fiction novels are Courtship Rite 1982 (Hugo nominee, Compton Crook award), The Moon Goddess and the Son 1986, and Psychohistorical Crisis 2001 (Prometheus award). He has two novellas in Niven's Man-Kzin War series, and stories and articles in Astounding-Analog and in various anthologies and translations. He considers himself to be a world-builder of the hard sf variety.