Tom Luong
Tom Luong is a Vietnamese American born in his native country just after the Vietnam War ended and raised mainly in California. Tom was born on November 11, 1976. His parents were refugees of the war and fled Communist Vietnam in the late 70’s and was awarded sponsorship to live in Orange County in Southern California in late 1981. Like many Vietnamese that fled Communism, his Dad (Mike Manh Luong born in 1949; Mom, Nancy Ngat Thi Le born in 1954) was a POW during the war and this affected Tom in many ways. To better understand how his Dad felt during the war, Tom joined the US Army at one point and underwent basic training and was later deployed to South Korea. This helps Tom understand his Dad better but also gain a new set of skills and experiences to help Tom author military theme books. Tom later went to film school to learn to make films someday about the war. Tom met Julian Phillips, a writer, then started working on the first movie script and then expanded to authoring books. Consequently, Cobalt Migration, Mars Outpost and Jupiter Plan are the books in the trilogy which was outlined by Tom but written by Julian. Tom went to many colleges to gain a thorough understanding of the physical world and has a BS degree in Aerospace Engineering from Cal Poly Pomona in 2001. He completed film studies in 2008 and directed his first feature film “The Grounded” in 2010. Tom is a futurist and likes to make movies about the future of human existence. It is the writer’s wish to dedicate these books to his parents, Mike Manh Van Luong and Nancy Ngat Thi Le, both from Vietnam.
Julian Phillips
Michael Julian Phillips is a retired journalist-artist, a 5th generation California whose career has included many projects for film-video, stage, numerous children’s books, newspaper and magazines, and music. Julian was born in 1957, at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach, California, the son of an Army Radio Man who served in World War 2 and the Korean War, and his young German born bride, an orphan girl whose childhood included witness of Hitler’s murderous rule, and Russian military incursion into East Germany. Julian’s grandfather, Edward Julian Phillips, known as “Jules”, was a Salinas area farmer and crop scientist, who was schoolyard pals with famous California writer John Steinbeck. Julian has worked in freelance and small newspaper since about 1973, and was editor of the countrywide weekly tabloid newspaper, years 2000 to 2003, in San Luis Obispo County, California, where he spent most of his life, and grew up on ranches and farms. The writer earned a BA degree in Journalism/Communication from San Jose State University in 1981. Julian has been married since 1987 to his wife, Carol Lynn, and his son Preston Laverne Phillips is now an art student in San Francisco. Science-fiction, real science, fantasy, comic books, and community-journalism, have been the writer’s passion for many years, with special admiration for Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Arthur C. Clarke, A.E. Van Vogt, Gene Rodenberry, “X-Men” comic books, Star Trek, and the works of Russ and Cheryle Genet, (Ph.D.), of the Santa Margarita, California based Orion Institute (online), as well as Deepok Chopra, M.D. and many others. It is the writer’s wish to dedicate this novel with co-author Tom Luong, in memory of beloved friend Karen Thomason, bed ridden in the paralytic coma at a care home in Orange, California, from the turn-of-the-century, year 2000 to 2012.
