Michael Carroll lives in Dublin, Ireland, with his lovely wife Leonia and two extraordinarily cute kittens called Dora and Wulf.

He has written a large number of books, short stories, comic strips, articles, reviews and interviews, some of which have been quite well received despite the fact that he doesn't have much hair any more.

As well as the New Heroes / Quantum Prophecy series, his novels for younger readers include the Pelicos trilogy (The Last Starship, Reclaiming the Earth and The Dead Colony), Moonlight, She Fades Away and Renegade. More information on his books can be found on his other website.

Among his favourite authors are Harry Harrison, Michael Scott, Philip Jose Farmer, Tanith Lee, Robert Rankin, John Wagner, Alan Moore, Alan Grant, Garth Ennis, Fabian Nicieza, John Sladek, Bob Shaw, Stan Lee, Christopher Fowler, Pat Mills, Joss Whedon, J. Michael Straczynski, Gordon Rennie, Frank Miller, James Morrow, Carl Hiaasen, Brian Michael Bendis, and all the people who like his books.

Michael's favourite artists include such geniuses as John Higgins, Patrick Zircher, Dave Gibbons, Al Davison, Carlos Ezquerra, Brian Bolland, Alex Ross, Gary Erskine, Steve Dillon, Jim Burns, Jeff Smith, Mark Bagley, PJ Holden, and almost everyone who ever drew Judge Dredd.

In his spare time (of which there is very little), Mike dabbles with programming, computer graphics, website design, and a lot of other things that don't involve any physical labour.

Don't forget to check out Mike's not-very-frequently-updated Weblog! Mike can be contacted via e-mail at the address on the Questions page.

P.S.: Mike can also be booked for school and liberry library sessions.

 

Q. ... who paints those great space and dinosaur pictures?
A. Nope. I still occasionally receive e-mails from people asking me for permission to use his pictures - I'm always tempted to say "Sure! Go ahead!" but that wouldn't be fair.

Q. ... who adds a "Jason" to the start of his name and is a country-music singer?
A. Nope. I don't know much about that guy at all, but apparently he's very popular. According to Wikipedia, he has a daughter with the improbable but brilliant name of "Story Paige." This means, of course, that if I ever have a daughter I'll have to call her something music-related like "Guitar Twang" or "Drum Solo."

Q. ... who famously won the UK National Lottery and even more famously spent all the money and is now broke?
A. No, that's not me either! I don't gamble, but if I did I certainly wouldn't do the lottery. The odds of winning are so small that few people really understand how unlikely it is.
Try this experiment... You will need a nice thick phone book, a flashlight, an oven glove, a notebook, a pencil and a pin. Bring everything into a completely dark room. Put on the oven glove and flip through the phone book, stopping at a random page (the oven glove will prevent you from knowing whereabouts you are in the book). Now stick the pin into the open page, again at random. Turn on the flashlight. Write down the name and address closest to the pin. Now close the phonebook, turn off the flashlight, and do it all again.
Let's look at the odds of hitting the exact same name and address two times in a row... If the book has, say, 1000 pages with three hundred names on each page, then the odds are one in 1000 X 300, or one in three hundred thousand.
Not very likely, is it? Now, given that the chance of winning the UK National Lottery is about one in fourteen million, that's the equivalent of hitting the same name 47 times in a row.
I'd rather spend my money on something else, thank you!
(In case you're wondering, the chance of winning the EuroMillions Lottery is about one in 76 million - the same as hitting the same name in the phone book 254 times in a row.)

Q. ... who is a professional skateboarder?
A. Sadly, no. I used to have a skateboard about thirty years ago, but I wasn't much good on it. I could usually stay upright and frequently managed to get it to go around corners, but that was about all I could do. Of course, that was back in the days when skateboards were exciting colours like blue, and the skateboarders wore jeans that actually fit around the waist and didn't make them look like four-year-olds wearing their dad's trousers.

Q. ... who plays football for Limavady United F.C.?
A. Definitely not! I couldn't kick a ball in a straight line if my life depended on it. I've never followed football anyway. I've never watched a game and I honestly can't tell one team from another.
I've never been able to understand the whole "football fan" craze. How does someone pick a team and decide that it will be their favourite team for the rest of their life? I mean, the players switch teams all the time. If every player leaves, is it still the same team? Is it still the same team if only one player leaves? Doesn't that mean that the fan is actually only following the name of the team?
(This brings to mind a philosophical discussion about boats, but that's for another time...)
That said, it's always fun when the World Cup starts because everyone else stays home to watch the games, which means that the cinemas are practically empty.