Richard Jeffery Wagner has found that becoming a writer has helped him become a better reader. He was born in Carmel-by-the-Sea in California and grew up in Salinas, graduating from Salinas High School, the same high school that John Steinbeck attended. Dr. Wagner graduated with a BSME from the College of Engineering at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 1979. He earned his Ph.D. in computer science in 1997 from the University of Southern California, where he then taught computer science full time for two years before going back to industry full time.

Dr. Wagner built spacecraft with the Northrop Grumman Corporation and managed the integration and test portion of the winning proposal for the James Webb Space Telescope before managing integration and test for Project Redwood. He has mentored students in competitive robotics for over 20 years. He retired in 2010 and now lives in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, in a modest house in a middle class neighborhood with his wife, Andrea, two cats, and several bonsai. He and Andrea are active volunteers in their community.

Dr. Wagner began reading science fiction at the age of 12. He started publishing his own fiction with the novella The Zombie Philosopher (published in 2022). That was followed by the sequel and full length novel, Brent and Edward go to Mars (published in 2023). He is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (and is on the Emerging Technologies Committee), the Authors Guild, and the OLLI Writers Circle. His Erdős number is four.