Mike Dolan was born in 1945. “Hitler was still alive when I was born,” he says. He grew up in the downtown Los Angeles neighborhood he writes about in many of his stories. He has worked as a door-to-door salesman, journeyman typesetter, cartoonist, publicity manager, map maker, amateur architect and house builder, newspaper reporter and prizewinning humor columnist. For the past 35 years, the largest part of his life, he has lived in the mountains of central Colorado. “When I first moved here in 1974, my adopted hometown, Buena Vista, didn’t even have paved streets,” he quips. “The place has grown a little bit since then.” His favorite fiction has always been fantasy and science fiction. “I cut my eye teeth on Rod Serling’s ‘The Twilight Zone.’ I never suspected that that show would be the only one of its kind, and would never be equalled.”