I was literally born a Science-Fiction fan and a Thunderbirds fan in particular. As a child in the late 1960's I watched all the Gerry Anderson shows with my older brothers, but Thunderbirds was my favorite. And boy, did I hanker for the 'Dinky' toy Thunderbird 2 and any other models that were in the toy shops! Sadly, I was eventually only given a hand-me-down TB-2 with broken stilts and engine nozzles. Gerry Anderson-based toys were terribly expensive in New Zealand, especially for lower middle class families.

At the age of 6, I was taken to see '2001: A Space Odyssey' which to this day I love. Try taking a young kid of today to a movie like that and see what happens! It wasn't until the mid-1970s that New Zealand television finally got round to repeating Thunderbirds and Stingray for the first time. I like to think it was partly because of the barrage of letters I sent to T.V.N.Z. nagging them to bring the Anderson shows back that they finally relented and did so!

Then came the 1980s: After sliced bread, the greatest invention was the video recorder. Firstly in BETA then VHS, I built up a library of Gerry Anderson and Star Trek tapes that surely drove my family mad, until I got my own TV in my bedroom, paid for by an after school cleaning job.

All my life, the real space programs of the United States and other countries have captivated me even more than Science-Fiction, though I regret to say that the progress of manned spaceflight has been disappointingly slow in recent history. In part, Political interference and ignorance has resulted in a multi-generational, budget-strangled mediocrity. Although I'm confident that private space investors will eventually do something worthwhile, it will often be too slow for my liking. The future sure aint what it used to be!!

Hand-in hand with my love for media Sci-Fi, I was an avid reader. Arthur C. Clarke, Alan E. Nourse and Alan Dean Foster became firm favorites, along with many others. But it was the many wonderful Gerry Anderson-based novels and stories by John W Jennison (AKA: John Theydon) and Angus P Allan that inspired me to become a writer. And it is to these gentlemen that I dedicate all my fan-fiction, which I try very hard to make worthy of the inspiration they have given me.

I am only at the start of a writing career, which I hope will take me to many worlds of my own creation. But I will never forget 'Where I came from', inspiration-wise.