Following a first-class honours degree in Physics from the University of Bristol and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Manchester Stephen Webb has worked at a number of UK universities. In addition to shorter works, he has published nine books - one of which won the SETI League award and was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize (now Royal Society Winton Prize) for best science book. He is active in outreach activities, having spoken at numerous international conferences, podcasts and radio shows, and his 2018 TED Talk has been viewed over 6 million times. He has published an undergraduate textbook Measuring the Universe - The Cosmological Distance Ladder (1999) as well as several popular science books, among them Out of this World - Colliding Universes, Branes, Strings, and Other Wild Ideas of Modern Physics in 2004, New Eyes on the Universe - Twelve Cosmic Mysteries and the Tools We Need to Solve Them in 2012, the second edition of If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY? Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life in 2015, All the Wonder that Would Be - Exploring Past Notions of the Future in 2017, and New Light Through Old Windows: Exploring Contemporary Science Through 12 Classic Science Fiction Tales in 2019 also published as part of Springer's Science and Fiction series, as well as recently, Clash of Symbols - A ride through the riches of glyphs.