Charles Pellegrino

Charles Pellegrino is a scientist who spent more than thirty years helping to develop the field of forensic archaeology. James Cameron has acquired a film option on Pellegrino's To Hell and Back: The Last Train From Hiroshima and Ghosts of Hiroshima. Pellegrino continues research work in Japan and at various A-bomb test sites.  As a forensic archaeologist, Pellegrino has worked at sites ranging from the Titanic and the flash-fossilized cities of Vesuvius to the World Trade Center, Hiroshima, and ancient tombs in Israel. Pellegrino is an explorer who has traveled in submersibles to deep-ocean hydrothermal vents and (twice) to the Titanic.  Pellegrino is a science advisor to James Cameron for the Avatar Series and also served as a science advisor to Cameron for his film, Titanic.

Pellegrino’s 30 books include three New York Times bestsellers,  Her Name, Titanic (selling over one million copies), The Jesus Family Tomb (Co-authored with Simcha Jacobovici), and The Last Train From Hiroshima, since republished as To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).  His other books, include Ghosts of the Titanic (James Cameron/Disney/IMAX 3-D documentary: Ghosts of the Abyss, 2003), Return to Sodom and Gomorrah (made into the documentary Exodus Decoded, 2005, by James Cameron/Simcha Jacobovici), Ghosts of Vesuvius (National Geographic/History Channel documentary, American Vesuvius, 2006), and Unearthing Atlantis: An Archaeological Odyssey (excavations at the islands of Thera and Crete, filmed as James Cameron/Simcha Jacobovici’s documentary, Atlantis Rising, 2016).

Pellegrino’s books Darwin’s Universe and Time Gate introduced the Jurassic Park recipe — which became the science behind the fiction for Michael Crichton’s novel and the Spielberg film. His SF novel Flying to Valhalla informed James Cameron’s Avatar series, on which Pellegrino serves as a scientific consultant. The Killing Star (co-authored with George Zebrowski), informed the Battlestar Galactica reboot and The Three Body Problem.

The author’s books and papers continue to range widely, from the mathematics-laden Brookhaven/NASA StarTram reports (detailing inexpensive magnetic rail gun launch of solar towers and other industrial equipment to orbit, from which Earth can be powered cheaply by mid-century) and thought experiments in string theory (published in the British science journal Nature) – to popular fiction, including a trilogy written under a pen name, and DUST, an eco-thriller forecasting what would happen to the world if the insect biomass started dying off.

DUST was optioned in 2019 by Village Roadshow Pictures with Dan Berk and Robert Olsen adapting it for screen (most recent films, Villains 2019] and Significant Other [2022]) adapting it for the screen.  Veteran producer Sean Daniel (The Expanse) has been onboarded by Village Roadshow Pictures to produce the film via his Hivemind shingle. Casting has started for the film.