Gideon grew up in the Scottish Borders, where he attended elementary and high school and spent many hours trying to feel the force like Luke, wield the one ring like Frodo, writing bad derivative fiction, and otherwise nerding out on runequest, dungeons and dragons, and programming his ZX81. He went on to the Royal College of Science in London, as a physics major, leading him to leave behind the RPGs and video games, but this did not lessen the general nerdiness.
He then spent six months on a Royal Geographic Society sponsored expedition to map uncharted caves in the limestone mountains of the Dominican Republic before doing a PhD in geophysics at Leeds University, where he was able to sate his need for travel and more nerdiness living and doing fieldwork in the southern fjords and geothermal springs of New Zealand. There, he spent far too much time hiking, drinking tea, and talking about writing, but not doing much, with his equally unproductive writer-friends.
After that, he went to Harvard University to work as a researcher in Earth and Planetary Sciences. During that time, he also worked on government projects for the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Following that, he worked at Washington University in St Louis where he continued scientific expeditions in places such as the Kingdom of Tonga, Fiji, Antarctica, and onboard Chilean Naval vessels. During that time, he wrote articles for the WashU student newspaper. He also wrote a few flash fiction stories for commercial outlets, some of which were even published, and for which he received checks in payment made out for literally thousands (of pennies).
He then attended Cornell Medical School in New York City, where, amid dissecting cadavers and learning to deliver babies, he finally completed his first novel. It was abysmal. After finishing residency training at NYU he returned to Boston to work at Mass General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where he once again started writing in his spare time, completing his first (decent) novel in 2021. None of the opinions stated here have anything to do with those fine institutions. They are entirely his own. (I think I am legally required to say that)
Gideon Smith 