Vernor Vinge sold his first science fiction story in 1964. During the late 1960s and early 1970s he was active in science fiction short fiction, selling stories to Analog,if, New Worlds, and Damon Knight's Orbit series. He is best known for True Names, The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime (which were nominated for Hugos), A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky and Rainbows End(which won Hugos). Vinge holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, San Diego. From 1972 to 2000, he taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University. He has now retired from that position to write science fiction full-time. His current interest is in distributed and embedded computer systems.