Jason M. Hough

Jason M. Hough is an American science fiction author and former video game designer born in Illinois. He is best known for the Dire Earth Cycle, a trilogy launched with The Darwin Elevator (2013) and continued in The Exodus Towers and The Plague Forge, imagining a near-future Earth reshaped by an alien-built space elevator and a mysterious plague. He followed it with further Dire Earth novellas and the standalone thriller Zero World (2015) and its sequel Injection Burn, blending espionage with interstellar science fiction. Hough has also written licensed tie-in novels for the Gears of War and Mass Effect: Andromeda franchises. His fiction favors fast-paced, accessible storytelling over hard-SF density, citing Firefly and John Scalzi's Old Man's War as key influences on his approach to the genre.