Matthew Stover

Matthew Woodring Stover (born January 29, 1962) is an American fantasy and science fiction novelist.

He is most well known for his four Star Wars novels, including the novelization of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.

He has also written several fantasy novels, including Iron Dawn and Jericho Moon.

Stover attended Danville High School in Danville, Illinois, and graduated in 1979.

He then graduated in 1983 from Drake University, and settled in Chicago for many years, before relocating to St. Petersburg, Florida.

He is an avid martial artist and a student of the Degerberg Blend, a Jeet Kune Do concept that mixes approximately twenty-five different fighting arts from around the world.

This combat style influences the way Stover writes his fight scenes, for which he has won considerable acclaim.

He is also the founder and self-described "international grandmaster" of a parodic self-defense system he calls Huàn Dao ("Way of the Hedgehog"), which he has described as "self-defense for people too lazy to train and too smart to fight."

He says the system was inspired by a passage from the ancient Greek soldier-poet Archilochus: "The fox is swift and clever and knows many tricks, yet still he is taken by the hounds. The hedgehog is slow and dull, and knows only one trick -- but it is a very good trick."

He sometimes refers to Huan Dao as "Fatmattjitsu."

His non-Star Wars novels have garnered a smaller but loyal audience, primarily for the Acts of Caine cycle.

As for future Star Wars novels, Stover has said that he would be interested in writing the final adventure of the heroic trio of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia.

In January 2011, fsand.com released e-book versions of both novels.

The e-books were slightly revised by Stover to restore some material cut by the original publisher.

He has written four science-fiction/fantasy hybrid stories featuring a hero named Caine: Heroes Die, Blade of Tyshalle, and Caine Black Knife, with the most recent, Caine's Law, released April 4, 2012.