Herbert Highstone was born in Santa Rosa, California, where he spent his early years on a small farm run by his father, a writer whose output ranged from science fiction to instructional books such as Practical Farming For Beginners. After an education at the University of California at Berkeley and a period of military service in the U.S. Navy, Mr. Highstone worked in the technical communications departments of defense-related organizations such as the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Mr. Highstone now lives and writes in Oakland, California.