Stephen Reiss

Stephen Reiss was an engineer and geologist who proposed such new water is regularly formed within the Earth by the elemental combination of hydrogen and oxygen, generated in magma. That a cubic kilometer of granite, subjected to the right pressures and temperatures, has the capability of yielding eight billion gallons of water. And that such reservoirs of magmatic or Earth-generated waters are abundant under the crust, interconnected in a vast aquifer system, circling the globe. Reiss, up until he died in 1985, had over fifty years of success finding water at sites other geologists flatly predicted were impossible. Including the Eilat Wells in Israel that continue to produce enough water for a city of a hundred thousand. He did the same in Saudia Arabia and Egypt.

He does not appear in Sandstorm, but he is mentioned by Coral Novak in the book when the team is sailing on a dhor to Ubar.