Michael Layne Heath is a longtime freelance music writer, put on the path by mags like CREEM and then the first wave of Punk fanzines, thus inspiring him to start what became Washington DC’s first zine to cover that exploding scene. More recently, he has written for ezines such as Perfect Sound Forever and Tangents UK (r.i.p.), in addition to the recently reconvened British music magazine Ptolemaic Terrascope (of Terrastock Festival fame). Mike has also contributed liner notes to a number of CD and vinyl reissues released on Bay Area record label Water Recordings/4 Men With Beards. If all that weren’t enough, he is a musician, a published poet, and has been involved in SF/F fandom for the past decade. Which is how he ended up in an auditorium in San Jose one humid night in ’02, amazed and amused by Tad Williams’ Hugo Awards toastmaster speech… and the rest is not quite history.