Steven Popkes was born in 1952, in Santa Monica, California. His father was an aeronautical engineer. Consequently, Steve moved all over the country from California to Alabama, Seattle, Missouri, and, finally, Massachusetts. He now resides on two acres in Hopkinton along with his wife, son, cat and thirty-five pound tortoise named Ibn Battuta.

Generally, he regards himself as from Missouri since that's where his family is from.

In the tradition of most writers, his day job has been what comes immediately to hand: house restorer to morgue tech to software engineer to white water rafting guide. Currently he writes the software for avionics systems.

He's had two novels published, Caliban Landing (Congdon and Weed, 1987) and Slow Lightning (Tor, 1991) and nearly thirty pieces of short fiction. He is a founding member of the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop and was one of the contributors to CSFW's Future Boston. This year he is running the Readercon Writing Workshop.

He shares his birthday with John Lennon and was married on the ten-year anniversary of his death. Both were coincidences and discovered after the fact.