Jacek Dukaj, born in 1974, is the most distinguished Polish science-fiction writer of today, widely considered a successor of Stanisław Lem. He has received numerous literary prizes including the European Union Prize for Literature, Koscielski Literary Award, Magnesia Litera and many Janusz A. Zajdel Awards.

Dukaj studied philosophy at the Jagiellonian University. He is known for the complexity of his books, and it is often said that a single short story of Dukaj contains more ideas than many other writers put into their books in their lifetime. Popular themes in his works include technological singularity, philosophy of history, limits of language and humanity, and thus his books often can be classified as hard science fiction.

Dukaj's books bear some resemblance to Neal Stephenson's, although his stylistic brio makes him as much a "literary" as a "hard science fiction" writer – allowing comparisons with the books of Thomas Pynchon or David Mitchell. His essays touch on subjects like "engineering the meaning of life", "art in the age of artificial intelligence", consequences of shift to non-symbolic communication and thought, relations between values and technology - drawing frequent comparisons to work of Yuval Noah Harari.

His books and stories have been translated into 19 languages. He was made known to the wider public through Tomasz Bagiński’s 2002 Academy Award-nominated Katedra / The Cathedral, a short animated film based on Dukaj’s short story. His novel Starosc aksolotla / The Old Axolotl inspired a 2020 Netflix-original TV series Into the Night.

Jacek Dukaj is also involved in business, being main shareholder and executive director of Dukaj Games, a company founded to produce video games based on his stories and original ideas.