Kim Topley is a freelance computer consultant, based in England. He has worked in the computer industry for thirty years, writing microcode for mainframe computers; device drivers, file systems, and security features for the UNIX operating system; communications protocol stacks for Cray supercomputers; and C and Java applications for financial institutions. He learned Java as a result of a chance encounter with the book Core Java in a bookshop in 1995 and has since written four Java books: Core JFC and Core Swing: Advanced Programming, both published by Prentice Hall, and J2ME in a Nutshell and Java Web Services in a Nutshell, published by O'Reilly Media. Topley has a keen interest in space flight and aviation and has a private pilot's license.