Mark L. Van Name

Mark L. Van Name (born 14 March 1955) is an American science fiction writer and technology consultant. As of 2009, Van Name lives in North Carolina.

With John Kessel, Van Name co-founded the Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop in 1985, and in 1996 he, Kessel, and Richard Butner edited an anthology of stories written there, called Intersections: The Sycamore Hill Anthology, including one of his own stories.

Van Name's first professionally published science fiction short story was "My Sister, My Self", in 1984, in the anthology Isaac Asimov's Tomorrow's Voices. His first novel, One Jump Ahead, was published by Baen Books in 2007, and won the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel in the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror genres in 2008. It is the first book in the Jon and Lobo series, of which he published other four books until 2012.

In 2009, he premiered a stand-up comedy routine at Balticon, the Baltimore Science Fiction Convention.

Van Name has worked in the information technology field for over 30 years, at one time serving as Vice President of Product Testing for Ziff-Davis, and has written many technical articles for print and on-line publications including Computer Shopper and PC Week. He currently is CEO of a technology assessment company, Principled Technologies, in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina.