Question: What former fighter pilot wrote a series of 16 short stories that were released as a collection in 1979?

Context articles: Mai Al-Nakib
Twisted (book)
Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology
Frederick Hauck
Richard H. Truly
Young Petrella
Yadollah Sharifirad
Roald Dahl
Tales of the Unexpected (short story collection)
Convergent Series (short story collection)

Mai Al-Nakib is author of "The Hidden Light of Objects", a collection of linked short stories published by Bloomsbury in 2014.
 The collection won the Edinburgh International Book Festival's 2014 First Book Award, the first collection of short stories to win.
 Her short stories have appeared in "Ninth Letter""," "The First Line", and the anthology "Novel of the World""."
 Two of her stories received honorable mention in "Glimmer Train" competitions.
 "The Hidden Light of Objects" is her first collection of short stories.
Twisted (ISBN  ) is a 2003 collection of short stories by crime writer Jeffery Deaver.
 The book was published by Simon & Schuster in 2003 and features 16 short stories, including one featuring Deaver's fictional detective Lincoln Rhyme.
Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology (ISBN  , 2007) is a collection of postcyberpunk short stories, published by Tachyon Publications and edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel.
 It features 16 short stories which fall into the loose categorisation of postcyberpunk, intercut with excerpts from a series of letters exchanged by Kessel and fellow science fiction author Bruce Sterling in which they discuss and debate the nature of cyberpunk, the implication being that the issues which they raise have led to the formation of the postcyberpunk trend.
Frederick Hamilton "Rick" Hauck (pronounced "Howk"; born April 11, 1941) is a retired Captain in the United States Navy, a former fighter pilot and NASA astronaut.
 He piloted Space Shuttle mission STS-7 and commanded STS-51-A and STS-26.
Richard Harrison Truly (born November 12, 1937) is a retired Vice Admiral in the United States Navy, a former fighter pilot, former astronaut for both the United States Air Force and NASA, and was the eighth Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from 1989 to 1992.
 He was the first former astronaut to head the space agency.
Young Petrella is a collection of 16 short stories about the British policeman Patrick Petrella by the British writer Michael Gilbert published in the United Kingdom by Hodder and Stoughton in 1987 and in the United States by Harper & Row the same year.
 All of the stories except one had previously appeared in the British magazine "Argosy".
 In addition to the stories themselves, there is an introduction by Gilbert written especially for this book.
 The first story in the book, "The Conspirators", concerns an 11-year old Petrella; the rest are about his early career as a policeman in London, first as a detective constable, then as a detective sergeant.
 An earlier collection of stories, Petrella at Q, had been published ten years before, in 1977, but consisted of stories about Petrella's later years on the force, when he was first a detective inspector and then a deputy chief inspector.
 As usual with Gilbert, in spite of his smooth, urbane style, some of the stories take an unexpectedly grim turn, "Lost Leader", in particular, which begins with a group of teen-aged boys playing Robin Hood and comes to a harsh conclusion.
 "Michael was an exceptionally fine storyteller, but he's hard to classify," said one of his British publishers after his death.
 "He's not a hard-boiled writer in the classic sense, but there is a hard edge to him, a feeling within his work that not all of society is rational, that virtue is not always rewarded."
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Yadollah Sharifirad (Persian: ‎ ‎ ) (born 24 March 1946 in Taleqan) is an Iranian former fighter pilot, former military attaché and writer.
 In 1978, he was a member of Golden Crown aerobatic team.
 Sharifirad was one of the most successful Iranian Northrop F-5 pilots during the Iran-Iraq war.
 He shot down 5 Iraqi Fighter aircraft (3 confirmed and 2 possible victories).
 The victories include one Su-22 and four MiG-21s.
 In an air raid on an Iraqi power station, he was attacked by 3 Iraqi fighters and he was shot down.
 He ejected and could be saved and transferred to Iran by Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas.
 A movie called "Eagles" was made about this event.
Roald Dahl ( , ] ; 13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and fighter pilot.
 His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide.
Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected is a collection of sixteen short stories written by British author Roald Dahl and first published in 1979.
 All of the stories were earlier published in various magazines, and then in the collections "Someone Like You" and "Kiss Kiss".
Convergent Series is a collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories by American writer Larry Niven, published in 1979.
 It is also the name of one of the short stories in the collection.
 The collection reprints the stories originally appearing in the 1969 collection "The Shape of Space" that were not part of the Known Space series (The Known Space stories were previously reprinted in 1975's "Tales of Known Space" and 1976's "The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton").
 The collection includes newer stories, both fantasy and science fiction, some of which are in the Draco's Tavern series, none of which are in the Known Space series.