Gordon Zima trained as a chemical and mechanical engineer at Stanford and the California Institute of Technology. His engineering career is largely grounded in the defense laboratories of the West Coast of the USA, where he engaged materials problems in nuclear power plants, nuclear devices, and rocket and torpedo propulsion. As an Army Air Force weather officer in the Pacific during World War II, he served in Hawaii and Iwo Jima, and on Okinawa when Japan surrendered. In addition to The Red Garnet Sky, he has written Nuk-Chuk Tales for children and young readers, as well as two adult novels: Other Whispers, a partial fiction of an engineer’s life; and The Ivan Spruce, a love story of an American engineering entrepreneur who tangles with the Russian Underground after meeting a Russian aristocrat in the Yellowstone. He calls Pasadena, California his hometown and has lived for several years in Santa Fe, New Mexico.