Gentry Lee

Gentry Lee (born 1942) is an American engineer and science fiction author who spent much of his career at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, serving as director of science analysis for the Viking Mars missions in the 1970s and chief engineer for the Galileo mission to Jupiter, and later contributing to the Mars Exploration Rovers and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter programs; he also worked as project manager on Carl Sagan's Cosmos television series. In fiction, Lee is best known for extending Arthur C. Clarke's Rama universe, co-writing Rama II, The Garden of Rama, and Rama Revealed after collaborating with Clarke on the story concepts, with Lee handling the actual prose. He also wrote the standalone novel Cradle with Clarke and later expanded the Rama mythos on his own in Bright Messengers and other novels. His engineering honors include the Samuel P. Langley Medal-adjacent Masursky Award and membership in the National Academy of Engineering.