Jana Plauchová

Jana Plauchová was born on 8 September 1987 in Banská Bystrica,[1] where she was educated at the local grammar school.[2] She became interested in space and astronautics as a 15-year-old, following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.[3]

Plauchová studied biology at the Matej Bel University and obtained a master's degree in Molecular biology from the Comenius University, graduating in 2012.[4] She published her first novel Zero Kelvin right after graduation.

As of 2023, Plauchová works as a researcher at the Maximilián Hell Planetarium and Observatory in Žiar nad Hronom.[5] She lives in Kremnica.[6]

Jana Plauchová is a careful writer. She starts writing only when she has the entire story throughout.[7][8] She considers characters emotions just as important as scientific accuracy in sci fi writing.[2] Even though her novels commonly contain extraterrestrial characters, she does not believe in the existence of the life outside Earth.[9]

Plauchová completed her first manuscript as a 17 year old but did not consider it of sufficient quality for publication. Her first published novel Zero kelvin, published in 2012 was her fifth completed manuscript.[3] In spite of the book's critical and commercial success, Plauchová was not happy with the quality of the editing and published a new edition of the book in 2022.[10] Following her first novel, she followed with three additional novels - The eternity of errors (2013), The Introduction to Chaos Theory (2016), and The Second Planet (2019).[3] As of 2023, she is working on the sequel to Zero Kelvin. In addition to writing novels, Plauchová writes short stories, popular science articles and edits the Slovak language Wikipedia.[10][11]

According to the literary publicist Lucia Lackovičová, Plauchová is the only notable contemporary sci-fi writer in Slovakia.[12] Fantasy writer Alexandra Pavelková referred to Plauchová as the best hard sci-fi author in the country.[13]