Lewis Shiner

Lewis Shiner (born 1950) is an American writer who emerged in the 1980s as part of the cyberpunk movement before moving into mainstream and magical-realist fiction. He created the tantric-powered character Fortunato for George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards shared-world series, contributing to its debut volume Jokers Wild. His novel Glimpses (1993), in which a disillusioned repairman is mysteriously able to complete unfinished albums by rock musicians including the Doors and Jimi Hendrix, won the World Fantasy Award. Other novels include Frontera, an early science fiction work set on a colonized Mars, Slam, centered on skateboarding and anarchist subculture, and Say Goodbye: The Laurie Moss Story, about a fictional female musician's rise in the music industry. Shiner later founded the Fiction Liberation Front, releasing short stories under Creative Commons licenses, and has written comics journalism for a North Carolina newspaper.