Les Johnson is a physicist, author, and NASA technologist. He is an elected member of the International Academy of Astronautics, a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the National Space Society, and MENSA.
Publisher’s Weekly noted that “The spirit of Arthur C. Clarke and his contemporaries is alive and well…” when describing Les’s novel, Mission to Methone. His non- fiction book, A Traveler's Guide to the Stars (Princeton University Press) was positively reviewed in Scientific American, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, and others. The book is being translated and published in Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Italian, and Polish.
In his day job, Les is the Chief Technologist at the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. During his career at NASA, Les served as the Manager for the Space Science Programs and Projects Office, the In-Space Propulsion Technology Project, and the Interstellar Propulsion Research Project.