Rip Gerber

Robert “Rip” Benthall Gerber, Jr. (Born December 27, 1962), best known as Rip Gerber, is an American author, business executive and entrepreneur, best known for his work in the science fiction and thriller genres. His literary works are usually based on the action genre and heavily feature technology. Published by Random House under the Heyne imprint, his books are sold almost exclusively as German language techno-thrillers in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic.

Gerber born in Washington, DC, to Robert Benthall Gerber, a plumber, and Carolyn Wyser Gerber, a State Department employee, on December 27, 1962. He was raised in Falls Church, Virginia and had three siblings.

At age ten he started a business designing and selling greeting cards, raising enough money and winning a scholarship to attend the University of Virginia beginning in 1981. In college he studied Biophysics and Chemical Engineering, and supported himself by designing campus posters, T-shirts, and greeting cards, working as a staff political cartoonist for the Cavalier Daily and University Journal, and working summer jobs at the Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He also served on the University of Virginia’s Honor Council and as an officer for the Virginia chapter of Delta Upsilon fraternity. During his undergraduate study, an engineering professor criticized his excessive doodling and unnecessary language in his lab notes, promptly Gerber to enroll in a fiction writing class in his final year, his only A+ grade of his entire college career. For his writing class he produced his first short story, A Fishing Day Correspondence, later published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, in 1985. Gerber did not write another work of fiction again until twenty years later.

Gerber applied for and was rejected by Harvard Business School in 1987. Upon his second attempt at admission he did not complete the required personal essays in the application forms but instead constructed a large painted wooden puzzle of a pictogram detailing his life and accomplishments and shipped it to Harvard Admissions in a Zip-Loc bag. Gerber was accepted in Harvard University’s School of Business and graduated in 1992. He was a political cartoonist and journalist with the HARBUS school paper and co-wrote the Harvard show, Vulgarians at the Gate, with Don Sull and Jay O’Connor.

Gerber co-authored "Pilots to Profits: Getting in Sync with the Mobile Mandate", published in 2005 by Hudson House.

"The Journeyman" was Gerber’s first novel, published by iUniverse in 2007. Gerber self-published his first techno-thriller "Pharma" in 2007. Random House later published it via imprint Heyne Verlag, briefly reached best-seller status in Germany in mid-2007.

In 2010 Gerber wrote the sequel Killer Virus, published only in German under the Heyne imprint. Gerber wrote his anthology, "First Thrills: High-Octane Stories from the Hottest Thriller Authors" which was published internationally by Forge, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers. The second short story, "Last Supper", was selected to be included in an anthology from new authors by the New York Times.