Alec Nevala-Lee was born in Castro Valley, California, and graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in classics. He is the author of three novels, including The Icon Thief, and his stories have been published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Lightspeed Magazine, and The Year's Best Science Fiction. His nonfiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, Salon, Longreads, The Rumpus, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He lives with his wife and daughter in Oak Park, Illinois.
Novelist, biographer, and science-fiction writer Nevala-Lee draws on abundant archival material to fashion a thoroughly researched, comprehensive biography of architect, inventor, and serial entrepreneur R. Buckminster Fuller....A perceptive and cleareyed biography of a unique figure. - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) This probing biography of Buckminster Fuller distinguishes man from myth while giving the iconic designer and futurist due credit for influencing generations of big thinkers...Nevala-Lee diligently emphasizes Fuller's contradictions...but he also persuasively demonstrates that, in the end, none of Fuller's epic shortcomings would matter. Fuller's most enduring creation was his own ethos, that of the free-thinking futurist whose design solutions would solve the planet's problems. Such ideas would take deep root, especially in Silicon Valley, even if the math never quite worked out. - Booklist (starred review) Nevala-Lee draws a revealing portrait of the Buckminster Fuller behind the legend. It encompasses both Fuller's passions and his foibles. Placing Fuller where he belongs in the pantheon of America's inventors, Inventor of the Future is the first complete portrait of both the man and the myth. - John Markoff, author of Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand This is a deceptively artful book of circuitous tensions and great circles (which the author uses as beautiful chapter titles and section headings) where, finally, all the loops and time-bends of Buckminster Fuller's improbable life come close to merging into one. - Paul Hendrickson, author of Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright Nevala-Lee brings back to life one of the most influential American minds of the twentieth century-revealing both the brilliance and the flaws that are contributing to the bold and radical technological reimagining of how we think and live. - David Edwards, author of Creating Things That Matter: The Art and Science of Innovations That Last