Nicholas Olson is an uneducated, unshaven, possibly alcoholic writer who wrote his first book on a dare and finished it out of spite. Olson has been hailed as "The Scientific Community's Answer to Brett Lindros" and "A Safe Bet to Be Beaten in His Bid for Re-Election for the Wascana, Saskatchewan Electoral District in 2052". Casually sympathetic to Quebecois separatism, he shows his support by wearing shirts for weeks at a time. Olson found his love for reading and writing by accident, but maintains that he has been reading cereal boxes his entire life. He cites the invention of the Internet, the computer shortcuts of Copy and Paste, and penis jokes as the major influences in his writing. Olson grew up comfortably in southern prairie towns of Saskatchewan but was rescued from the clutches of his loving parents into a life of grime and shadows where he currently lives on the floors and couches of slightly more attractive but slightly less self-righteous people around the world.