Leo Frankowski

Leo Frankowski was a Polish-American science fiction author and engineer, born in 1943 in Detroit and raised in Michigan. Before turning to fiction, he ran Sterling Manufacturing and Design in Utica, Michigan, designing pneumatic and hydraulic systems for Chrysler and developing an aluminum-based auto-body filler sold through Pep Boys. He is best known for the Adventures of Conrad Stargard series, beginning with The Cross-Time Engineer, in which a twentieth-century Polish engineer is thrown back to thirteenth-century Poland and sets about modernizing it ahead of the Mongol invasions. He continued the world in the New Kashubia and Two-Space series, both co-written with Dave Grossman, and wrote standalone novels including Copernick's Rebellion and The Fata Morgana. Frankowski's fiction is marked by an engineer's fascination with practical technology and pride in Polish and Kashubian heritage. He died in 2008 in Lake Elsinore, California.