Dafydd ab Hugh, born David Friedman in Los Angeles, is a US science fiction author who wrote several Star Trek books. He is the child of a secular Jewish father and a Welsh-descended mother who converted to Judaism on marriage. The name “Dafydd ab Hugh” is Welsh for “David son of Hugh”, and is now his legal name.

During the 1980s, he served in the United States Navy training to be a Radar Intercept Officer, hoping to eventually become an astronaut, but left the Navy sometime in the late-1980s to pursue a career of writing. Ab Hugh also co-wrote four novels associated with the game Doom, with libertarian science fiction author Brad Linaweaver and published some unrelated short fiction stories. His most notable work “The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured His Larinks, A Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk”, was nominated for the Hugo Award and Nebula Award.