Daniel Ellrick grew up on a Missouri farm, which gifted him with mud between his toes, a talent for spotting morel mushrooms hiding among fallen oak leaves, and basic life skills like milking cows, shucking corn, and cleaning fish. Farm life teaches the value of hard work, and Dan added sales and fry cook jobs to his resume by the age of fourteen. Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Herbert, and Niven were among his faithful companions by night and by day.
A series of entirely too probable events led Dan into the Marine Corps for a twenty-year career of repairing radar jammers, telling fighter pilots where to go, and enduring meetings with defense contractors about real and vaporware systems they were intent on selling to the government. In repeated and possibly misguided attempts to make Dan smarter, Uncle Sam sent him to school often, enabling him to get, among other things, bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering (Purdue University and Naval Postgraduate School).
A highly improbable series of events led Dan to faith in Christ and eventually to Japan as a Christian missionary where he and his wife, Karen, continue to serve. Dan’s favorite things include cooking for friends, playing board games with his lovely and brilliant wife of four decades, wandering mountain paths, and diving in the sea. Not to mention making things up and writing them down.