Ian J Miller

Ian Miller is a retired research scientist, a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry and of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has travelled to a number of countries, and in 1968, took his summer vacation behind the Iron Curtain, ending up with the invasion of Czechoslovakia. He worked first for the Chemistry Division of the New Zealand DSIR, then left to start up his own research company and to promote a high-temperature plastic industry based on durene, which was to be available from the Motunui Synfuels plant. This has given him unusual experience with industrial development, political intervention, and experience at what both sides think of a military intervention. Despite no academic position, he has about 100 scientific papers and eight patents, mainly in biofuels and in marine algal polysaccharide processing for skin gels

He now spends his retirement writing science fiction, doing theoretical scientific work and composing music. He has written fourteen novels that are science fiction or technothrillers, although two, covering the period from late Tiberius to the invasion of Britain are soundly-based historical, apart from the science. The series of novels are intended to entertain, but for those interested, he also tries to show how science works. There is imaginative new science, but it follows scientific principles. Fantasy is avoided. He currently has a website and he posts a weekly blog on scientific or economic matters.

He is a widower, and lives in Lower Hutt New Zealand with Horatio, his Chief Rodent Eradication Officer.