W.H. Hilf

W.H. Hilf writes hard science fiction that treats technology as a force of nature. Powerful, elegant, and dangerous when misunderstood.

He helped build some of the world’s largest scientific computing systems at IBM, played a founding role in launching Microsoft Azure, and pushed open source forward inside two of the most closed environments on Earth. As CEO of Vale Group, formerly Vulcan Inc., he oversaw Paul Allen’s portfolio spanning aerospace, artificial intelligence, conservation science, film, museums, and frontier investments.

Today, he serves as Board Chair of the Allen Institute for AI, where researchers build fully open large language models and apply AI to climate modeling, wildlife tracking, and ocean intelligence. He also chairs American Prairie, a nonprofit creating one of the largest nature reserves in the United States. A permanent refuge for people and wildlife.

Those experiences shape his fiction. Hilf’s stories follow the science where it leads, explore the collision between progress and preservation, and refuse to hand-wave consequences. Breakthroughs matter. Tradeoffs hurt. Nature always keeps score. For him, science fiction does what it does best: test-drive our possible futures before we commit.

His debut novel, The Disruption, launches a science fiction thriller trilogy in 2026.