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Note: Except as otherwise indicated, the information in these captions is current as of the opening of Noreascon 4, September 2004.
Forrest J Ackerman has been one of fandom’s leading personalities for roughly 70 years.  In fact, he received a Hugo Award as “Number One Fan Personality” in 1953 at the very first Hugo ceremony.  In 1929, at age 13, he won a newspaper writing contest for teenagers with a story entitled “A Trip to Mars”.  Three years later, he became associate editor of the pioneer fanzine The Time Traveller.  In addition to typical fanac, such as zines and cons, he was one of fandom’s premier collectors.  At its peak, his accumulation of books, pulp magazines, artwork, movie props and other memorabilia filled 17 rooms of his house and numbered over 300,000 items.  For 50 years, until ill health forced him to cut back his activities, he opened the “Ackermansion” for tours on weekends.  The professional side of his SF life centered on Hollywood and the preservation of the pulp traditions of the pre-World War II era.  He edited Famous Monsters of Filmland from 1958 through 1982, had bit parts in nearly 100 movies and edited several anthologies, including The Frankenscience Monster (1969), Best Science Fiction for 1973 (1973), Gosh! Wow! (Sense of Wonder) Stories (1982), Mr. Monster's Movie Gold (1982) and The Gernsback Awards, Vol 1: 1926 (1982).  He also was American editor and translator of the Perry Rhodan novels (1969-77) and agent for more than 200 authors.  Some of his own writing is included in Science Fiction Worlds of Forrest J. Ackerman and Friends (1969).  He was Fan Guest of Honor at the 1964 World Science Fiction Convention.
Robert Adams (1932–1990) was a career soldier whose Horseclans series drew on his military background to lend verisimilitude to the exploits of 26th Century of immortal mutant warriors in a balkanized North America.  The Coming of the Horseclans (1975) was the first of 18 novels in the sequence, which ended, with The Clan of the Cats (1988), only on account of the author’s death.  His non-Horseclans work included two other series.  Castaways in Time (1980) and its five sequels were a mix of alternate history and time travel.  The Stairway to Forever and Monsters and Magicians (both 1988) were the only volumes to appear of a projected fantasy series.  He also co-edited several anthologies, among them Barbarians (1985, with Martin H. Greenberg and Charles H. Waugh), four Magic in Ithkar volumes (1985-87, with Andre Norton), Robert Adams’ Book of Alternate Worlds (1987, with Pamela Crippen Adams and Martin H. Greenberg) and Robert Adams’ Book of Soldiers (1988, same co-editors).
Wanda June Alexander lives in Montana and was once a consulting editor to Tor Books.  For all we know, she may be one yet.
Roger MacBride Allen published his first novel, The Torch of Honor, in 1985.  He has since written about 20 more novels, including Orphan of Creation (1988, a Philip K. Dick Award nominee), Supernova (1991, with Eric Kotani; a “science procedural” in which astronomers detect a potentially lethal stellar explosion), The Ring of Charon (1991) and its sequel The Shattered Sphere (1994; Earth falls through a wormhole into a part of the universe dominated by the builders of a Dyson Sphere), The Game of Worlds (1999; winner of the Hal Clement Award for Young Adult SF), and several Star Wars and Isaac Asimov’s Robots tie-ins.  His latest work is a trilogy, The Chronicles of Solace, set in a universe in which interstellar travel is possible, if not easy, terraforming is commonplace and both are encountering unforeseen hazards. Individual titles are The Depths of Time (2000), The Ocean of Years (2002) and The Shores of Tomorrow (2003).
Susan Allison worked for Pocket Books and Grosset & Dunlap and was editorial assistant to Jim Baen and David Hartwell before joining Ace Books in 1982.  She is editor-in-chief of Ace Science Fiction and Fantasy and associate editorial director of the Berkeley Publishing Group.
Karen Anderson met her husband Poul through SF fandom and worked with him for almost fifty years.  They were co-authors of The Last Viking (1980; three-volume historical novel depicting the life of Harald HardrDde, the other would-be conqueror of England in 1066) and The King of Ys tetralogy (Roma Mater (1986), Gallicenae (1987), Dahut (1988), The Dog and the Wolf (1988); fantasy set in a Greco-Punic enclave in ancient Gaul).  On her own, she writes short fiction and verse, some of which is collected in The Unicorn Trade (1984).  She edited The Night Fantastic (1991, with Poul Anderson) and Spectacular Babies: New Writing (2001, with Bill Manhire).  Her fannish activity includes apazines, convention running, costuming, theatricals and filk singing.
Kevin J. Anderson is in the Guiness Book of Records for “Largest Single-Author Book Signing”.  When he was ten years old, he saved enough money from mowing lawns to buy either a bicycle or a typewriter.  He chose the typewriter and has never looked back.  His first published story (after 80 rejection slips) appeared in 1982 (“Luck of the Draw”, Space & Time #63).  His first novel, Resurrection, Inc. (1988), blended traditional horror elements with a near-future dystopia and was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel.  His has written more than 50 novels in all, divided between the SF and suspense genres.  These include many tie-ins: about a dozen Star Wars novels, 14 Star Wars juveniles (with Rebecca Moesta), three X-Files novels and the novelization of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  Much of his other work has been in collaboration with Doug Beason (including Lifeline (1990), The Trinity Paradox (1991) and Assemblers of Infinity (1993)) and Brian Herbert, with whom he has co-authored six prequels to Frank Herbert’s Dune; the latest is The Battle of Corrin (2004).  He edited the highly regarded anthology War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches (1996), which “reported” H. G. Wells’ Martian invasion in the distinctive voices of famous writers.  His most recent solo work is the Saga of the Seven Suns series, which began with Hidden Empire (2002) and continued in A Forest of Stars (2003).
Poul Anderson (1926–2001) perhaps combined quantity and quality of more successfully than any other SF writer of the Twentieth Century.  His oeuvre comprised more than 100 novels and story collections.  His first published story, “Tomorrow’s Children” (with F. N. Waldrop), appeared in Astounding in 1947, and he began to write prolifically in the early 1950’s.  His first novel, the juvenile Vault of the Ages (1952), was rapidly followed by the magazine versions of Brain Wave (1954; showing the downside of a sudden increase in intelligence), War of Two Worlds (1959) and Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961; a member of the Danish resistance to the Nazis is plunged into the world of Charlemagne).  He was nominated 15 times for the Hugo Award and 12 times for the Nebula, winning with “The Longest Voyage” (Best Short Fiction Hugo, 1961), “No Truce With Kings” (Best Short Fiction Hugo, 1964), “The Sharing of Flesh” (Best Novelette Hugo, 1969), “The Queen of Air and Darkness” (Best Novella Hugo and Best Novelette Nebula, 1972), “Goat Song” (Best Novelette Hugo and Nebula, 1973), “Hunter’s Moon” (Best Novelette Hugo, 1979) and “The Saturn Game” (Best Novella Hugo and Nebula, 1982).  His personal selections for his best novels were Brain Wave, Three Hearts and Three Lions, The Enemy Stars (1959), Tau Zero (1970; often considered the ultimate “hard SF” novel), A Midsummer Tempest (1974; Shakespeare as “the Great Historian” and a happy ending the English Civil War) and The Boat of a Million Years (1989).  He will also be remembered for two great fictional creations: the shrewd, hedonistic merchant prince Nicholas van Rijn (Trader to the Stars (1964) and many other volumes) and his descendant, the disillusioned, duty-bound imperial secret agent Sir Dominic Flandry (introduced in We Claim These Stars (1959)).  He received the SFWA Grand Master Award in 1998.  He was Author Guest of Honor at the 1959 World Science Fiction Convention.
Piers Anthony published his first story, “Possible to Rue”, in 1963 and has been writing vigorously ever since, reaching a total of about 100 solo books and 30 collaborations.  Two of his first novels were Cthon (1967) and Macroscope (1969), both highly ambitious SF novels that are still widely regarded as his best work.  His longest running series is Xanth, which has extended to over 25 volumes since it began with A Spell for Chameleon (1977).  The latest is Currant Events (2004).  It is set in a magical enclave, surrounded on all sides by “Mundania” and rife with puns.  Among his many other books, a few noteworthy specimens are the Omnivore series (Omnivore (1969), Orn (1971), Ox (1976)), God of Tarot (1979), Split Infinity (1980), Blue Adept (1981), On a Pale Horse (1983) and Being a Green Mother (1987).  Two collections of his short fiction have appeared: Anthonology (1986) and Alien Plot (1993).  He recounted his life and career in Bio of an Ogre (1988).
Michael Armstrong sold his first story to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1981.  His first novel, After the Zap (1987), was written as his Master of Fine Arts in Writing thesis at the University of Alaska.  It is set in a Peoples Republic of Alaska established after the “zap” of the book’s title has fried organic and computer brains to the south.  His second novel, AGVIQ: The Whale (1990), was inspired by two summers of work on Alaskan archeological digs.  He wrote one other SF novel, The Hidden War (1994), but has since confined his work in the genre to shorter forms.
Ellen Asher started reading science fiction when she was 12 years old, got a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Tudor-Stuart History, spent two years with the Peace Corps in Thailand, and entered the world of publishing.  For the past 30 years, she has been the editorial mainstay of the Science Fiction Book Club, where she is now Senior Editor.  Hence, while she doesn’t write our books, she has a lot to do with deciding which ones we read.  She is proud of having lived in California for years without learning to drive a car.
Nancy Atherton writes mystery novels that would not be fantasy at all except for the fact that her detective, Aunt Dimity, is dead.  The series commenced with Aunt Dimity’s Death (1992).  The seventh volume, Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday, was published in 2003.  She was also a contributor to Naked Came the Farmer (1998), a round robin mystery/romance novel.
Alicia Austin was nominated four times for the Best Fan Artist Hugo Award, winning in 1971, before she turned to professional work.  Her paintings are reminiscent of the Golden Age of Illustration, with a fine sense of line and decorative effect.  Also noteworthy are her anthropomorphized animal portraits and use of elements drawn from American Indian artistic traditions.  Examples of her work are available in Age of Dreams: The Illustrations of Alicia Austin (1978), which won the Balrog Award for Best Professional Publication.  She was Artist Guest of Honor at the 1993 World Science Fiction Convention.
Jim Baen (1943–2006) ran away from home at age 17, joined the Army as a better option than starving, and went to college on the G.I. Bill.  His first publishing job was in the complaints department at Ace Books.  In 1973 he became managing editor, and soon after editor, of Galaxy, a venerable but financially troubled magazine that he revived, publishing such authors as Frank Herbert, Larry Niven, Roger Zelazny and Frederik Pohl, and adding popular columns by Jerry Pournelle (science), Spider Robinson (book reviews) and Richard E. Geis (general commentary).  He returned to Ace in 1977 and was promoted to executive editor and vice president before leaving in 1980 to become editorial director of newly established Tor Books.  While at Tor, he founded Destinies, a quarterly paperback magazine that ran for ten “issues” from 1979 through 1981.  He later tried the same concept again with Far Frontiers (7 “issues”, 1985–86) and New Destinies (10 “issues”, 1987–92).  In 1984 he founded Baen Books, which grew into one of the leading SF publishers.  He was nominated eight times for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor and three times for the Chesley Award for Best Art Direction.  In 2000 he was Editor Guest of Honor at the World Science Fiction Convention.  About his business philosophy, David Drake wrote, “The most important thing of all which Jim brought to his company was a personal vision.  Baen Books didn’t try to be for everybody, but it was always true to itself.  In that as in so many other ways, the company mirrored Jim himself.”  In addition to his editorial and publishing work, he wrote one novel his own, The Taking of Satcom Station (1982, with Barney Cohen).  His last venture, reflecting his long-time enthusiasm for electronic publishing, was the e-magazine Jim Baen’s Universe, launched just weeks before his death. [Updated, 7/8/06]
Ian and Betty Ballantine (Ian: 1916-1995) married in 1939 and moved to New York City, where they went into business importing Penguin paperbacks from Great Britain, using a $500 wedding gift from Betty’s father as capital.  Paperbacks had previously had virtually no presence in the American market, so they can be credited with playing a role in a revolution in national reading habits.  They helped found Bantam Books in 1945, then left in 1952 to start up Ballantine Books.  Their first SF title was The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth (1953).  Also in 1953, they published Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon and Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore.  (The first three are nominees for this year’s Best Novel Retro-Hugo.)  Over the years, their authors included James Blish, Fritz Leiber, Larry Niven, Anne McCaffrey and many others.  They also published the first authorized U.S. edition of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, brought past fantasy masterpieces back into print, were the first company to publish original SF paperbacks and pioneered a new style of cover art with more than 100 semi-abstract paintings by Richard Powers.  In 1973 the Ballantines sold the company to Random House.  From 1974 on, they were freelance consulting editors and publishers.  They received World Fantasy Special Awards jointly in 1974 and 1984.  Betty received a SFWA President’s Special Award in 2002.  Ian and Betty were Editor Guests of Honor at the 1989 World Science Fiction Convention.
Clive Barker began writing plays and stories in his teens.  At age 21, he moved to London and struggled for eight years as an aspiring writer and painter before gaining sudden success with the first three Books of Blood.  Published simultaneously in 1984, they won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection.  He has gone on to become one of the most popular authors of supernatural fantasy (“fantastique”, as he calls it), producing such best sellers as Weaveworld (1987), Cabal (1988), The Great and Secret Show (1989), Imajica (1991), the juvenile fantasy The Thief of Always (1992), Galilee (1998) and Coldheart Canyon (2001).  He has also been a successful screenwriter, playwright, director and artist.  He co-edits New Theatre Quarterly, and a selection of his drawings and oil paintings is available in Visions of Heaven and Hell (2005).  He is currently at work on a fantasy series for young adults.  The first volume was Abarat (2002) and the second, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War (2004).  Two more parts are projected.  He received the World Horror Grandmaster Award in 1995 and the International Horror Guild Living Legend Award in 1996. [Updated, 3/11/06]
Wayne Barlowe is a science fiction and fantasy artist best known for his series of lavishly illustrated “non-fact” nonfiction books: Barlowe’s Guide the Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature (1979; nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Nonfiction Book), Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV (1990; nominated for a Chesley Award), The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe (1996), Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy (1996), Barlowe’s Inferno (1999) and Brushfire: Illuminations from the Inferno (2001).  He has also painted more than 200 book and magazine covers and writes and illustrates children’s books.
Lisa Barnett is an editor specializing in drama, music, and African and Caribbean literature.  She is the author of Teaching Young Playwrights (1990).  She has written three fantasy novels, all with Melissa Scott: The Armor of Light (1988; set in Elizabethan England) and the fantasy/mysteries Point of Hopes (1995) and Point of Dreams (2001).
Lee Barwood has been writing fantasy, horror, mysteries and poetry since the late 1970’s.  She was nominated for the Balrog Award for Best Poet in 1983 and has won two Gryphon Awards (established by Andre Norton for unpublished fantasy novels by women).  “The Skin and Knife Game”, co-authored with Charles de Lint, appears in the de Lint collection A Handful of Coppers (2003).
Jill Bauman has painted covers for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, two of which have been nominated for Chesley Awards, and for books by Stephen King, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison and many other authors.  The Fiction Writer dubbed her the “Queen of the Poisonous Palette” for her horror work.  She has been nominated five times for the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist and five times for Chesley Awards.
John Baxter is an Australian-born mainstream novelist and screenwriter whose output includes works of and about science fiction.  His first SF story was published in 1962 (“Vendetta”, Science Fiction Adventures), and he was a regular contributor to New Worlds for the next several years.  He has published two SF novels (The Off-Worlders (1966), The Hermes Fall (1978)) and three alternate histories (The Alternate Luftwaffe (1999), Tragerflotten: The Kriegsmarine's Carrier Fleet and Their Aircraft in World War Two (2000), Tragerflotten Data Book (2002)), plus collaborative horror novels written under a pseudonym.  He edited The Pacific Book of Australian Science Fiction (1968) and The Second Pacific Book of Australian Science Fiction (1971) and wrote Science Fiction in the Cinema (1970), which won a Ditmar (Australian Hugo) Special Award.  Also of stfnal interest is The Fire Came By: The Riddle of the Great Siberian Explosion (1976, with Thomas A. Atkins), which purports to prove that the famous 1908 cataclysm was caused by a thermonuclear bomb dropped by an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
Stephen Baxter has degrees in mathematics and engineering.  Before becoming a full-time writer, he taught school and aspired to become an astronaut.  His first published story, “The Xeelee Flower” (Interzone, April 1987), inaugurated his Xeelee Sequence, about a millennia long war between the human race and vastly advanced antagonists, recounted in four novels (Raft (1991), Timelike Infinity (1992), Flux (1993) and Ring (1994)) and a story collection, Vacuum Diagrams (1997).  Like most of his works, these combine hard science with fantastical speculation, often spanning huge stretches of space-time.  The Time Ships (1995), winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, is a far future “alternate history” springing from H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine.  The Manifold trilogy (Manifold: Time (1999), Manifold: Space (1992), Manifold: Origin (1993)) careens wildly between mankind’s end and its beginning.  Evolution (2003) is a Stapledon-like novelization of the history of the human race, beginning with the first primates 65 million years ago and ending a billion or so years hence with the death of our last parasitic descendants.  He has also written near-future novels about strange twists in the space program (Voyage (1996), Titan (1997), Moonseed (1998)), two tales of Internet catastrophe (Gulliverzone (1997), Webcrash (1998)), a collaboration with Sir Arthur C. Clarke (The Light of Other Days (2000)), a juvenile series tracing the fortunes of mammoths surviving into modern times and beyond (Silverhair (1998), Longtusk (2000), Icebones (2001)) and the nonfiction Deep Future (2001).  His nearly 100 stories include four Hugo Award nominees.  His latest novels are Coalescent (2003), the first of his Destiny’s Children trilogy, and Time’s Eye (2004, his second collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke).
Peter S. Beagle won his reputation as one of the great modern fantasy authors with A Fine and Private Place (1960), published before his 21st birthday, and The Last Unicorn (1968).  Both are classics, finding new approaches to the ghost story and the high fantasy quest.  After a novella, “Lila, the Werewolf” (1969), he showed no further interest in fantasy for almost 20 years, instead pursuing a career as a screenwriter and mainstream novelist.  In 1986 he returned with The Folk of the Air, followed by The Innkeeper’s Song (1993), The Unicorn Sonata (1996; no relationship to The Last Unicorn) and Tamsin (1999).  His short fiction has been collected in The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle (1978), Giant Bones (1997; six novellas related to The Innkeeper’s Song), The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances (1997) and The Magician of Karakosk and Other Stories (1999).
Deborah Beale was a science fiction editor for two British publishing houses before marrying, moving to California and starting a family.  She was executive producer of Tad Williams’s experiment in on-line fantasy, Shadowmarch (2001-02).
Greg Bear is one of the seminal “hard science fiction” authors of the past two decades, noteworthy for giving as much attention to biology as to astrophysics.  He sold his first story, “Destroyers” (Famous Science Fiction, 1967), while still in his teens and became a full-time writer in 1975.  His debut novel, Hegira (1979), takes place inside a hollow artificial world constructed to survive the death of the universe.  Blood Music (1985) began a run of novels that secured his reputation in the hard SF subgenre.  It tells of the takeover of the world by nanotech machines, with utopian rather than disastrous consequences.  Following it came Eon (1985; an “epic of cosmology” that has inspired many imitators) and its sequel Eternity (1988), The Forge of God (1987; one of the most relentless disaster novels of all time), Queen of Angels (1990; showing a world in which nanotechnology has been incorporated into the fabric of life), Moving Mars (1993; the title is not figurative) and Darwin’s Radio (1999; evolution leaves Homo sapiens behind).  His work has been nominated for eight Hugo and eight Nebula Awards, winning with “Blood Music” (1983, later expanded into the novel; Hugo and Nebula Best Novelette), “Hardfought” (1983; Nebula Best Novella), “Tangents” (1986; Hugo and Nebula Best Short Story), Moving Mars (1993; Nebula Best Novel), Darwin’s Radio (1999; Nebula Best Novel).  His short fiction is collected in Early Harvest (1988), Bear’s Fantasies (1992), The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (2000) and Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies of Greg Bear (2004).  Among his recent novels are Vitals (2002; a bioengineering techo-thriller), Darwin’s Children (2003; sequel to Darwin’s Radio) and the high-tech ghost story Dead Lines: A Novel of Life . . . After Death (2004).  He was Author Guest of Honor at the 2001 World Science Fiction Convention. [Updated, 8/1/05]
Doug Beason is a career Air Force officer with a Ph.D. in Physics.  He has served as the director of plasma physics research at the Phillips Laboratory and as special assistant to the President’s science advisor.  He is now associate director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  His nonfiction works include DOD Science and Technology: Strategy for the Post-Cold War Era (1988) and The E-bomb (2005), an analysis of the potential military use of lasers and other directed energy weapons.  His science fiction activity began with “The Man I’ll Never Be” (Amazing, 1987).  He then wrote three techno-thrillers (Return to Honor (1989), Assault on Alpha Base (1990), Strike Eagle (1991)) before teaming up with Kevin J. Anderson, with whom he has collaborated on eight novels.  Among the most noteworthy are Lifeline (1990; orbital habitats cut off from contact with Earth must improvise the tools for survival), The Trinity Paradox (1991) and Assemblers of Infinity (1993; a Nebula nominee), both of which explore the implications of time travel and nanotechnology.  Their latest was Lethal Exposure (1998), which one reviewer likened to combining The X-Files with Tom Clancy. [Updated, 3/11/06]
Den Beauvais is an artist and illustrator who is probably best known for his covers for volumes in Gordon R. Dickson’s Dragon series.  Those for The Dragon at War (1992) and The Dragon, the Earl, and the Troll (1994) gained Chesley Award nominations.  He also dabbles in comics.  Among his credits in that field is a four-part Aliens mini-series for Dark Horse Comics.
Stephanie Bedwell-Grime has published five novels and more than 50 short stories.  Her first story was “Bio Hazard” (1993).  Her debut novel, The Bleeding Sun, a vampire romance with an usual overlay of realism, was published in electronic form in 1999, two years before it appeared in old-fashioned print.  The book gained a following among readers of paranormal love stories.  Her subsequent novels in a similar vein include The Deadwalk (2002) and Guardian Angel (2003).  She also writes more conventional romance, her latest being Fair Game, Inc. (2004).  She has been nominated four times for the Aurora Award, the Canadian version of the Hugo.
Hilari Bell holds the traditional SF job of librarian and writes science fiction and fantasy for young adults.  After four unpublished novels, she sold Songs of Power (2000), about an Inuit girl who tries to repair a worldwide catastrophe by the use of magic learned from her grandmother.  She has since published three juveniles (SF: A Matter of Profit (2001); fantasies: The Goblin Wood (2003) and Flame (2003; first in the Book of Sohrab series) and one adult SF novel, Navohar (2000).  Forthcoming are two more young adult novels: The Wizard Test and Rise of a Hero.
Gregory Benford is Professor of Plasma Physics and Astrophysics at the University of California, Irvine.  His scientific work received the Lord Prize in 1995.  This hobby has not prevented him from pursuing a successful career as an SF fan and writer.  He first became known as editor (with various co-editors, including Terry Carr and Ted White) of the fanzine Void and sold his first story, “Stand In”, to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1965.  His debut novel was Deeper Than the Darkness (1970; better known as The Stars in Shroud).  Like all of his later work, it is “hard science fiction”, though a degree of lyricism overlies the nuts and bolts.  In the Ocean of Night (1977) initiated the “Galactice Center” series (continued for half a dozen novels, through Sailing Bright Eternity (1995)) portraying a galaxy-wide war between organic life and self-replicating machines, which mankind escapes by fleeing to a refuge near the galactic core.  Timescape (1980), which won the Nebula and John W. Campbell Awards, tells of an experiment in communication with the past and is notable for its realistic portrayal of scientists at work.  Among his later novels are Against Infinity (1983), Artifact (1985), At the Heart of the Comet (1986, with David Brin), Cosm (1998), The Martian Race (1999), Eater (2000) and Beyond Infinity (2004).  His latest is The Sunborn (2005), in which life is found on Pluto.  His work has been nominated for four Hugo and 12 Nebula Awards.  He won Nebulas for Timescape and the novelette “If the Stars Are Gods” (1974, with Gordon Eklund).  Collections of his short fiction include In Alien Flesh (1986), Matters End (1994), Worlds Vast and Various (2000) and Immersion and Other Short Novels (2002).  He has also written two nonfiction books for nontechnical audiences: Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia (1999) and Beyond Human: The New World of Cyborgs and Androids (2003).  He was Author Guest of Honor at the 1999 World Science Fiction Convention. [Updated, 8/1/05]
Elaine Bergstrom writes contemporary and historical horror fiction under her own name and as “Marie Kiraly”.  Her first novel was Shatter Glass (1989).  She has written about a dozen more, notably The Door Through Washington Square (1998; time travel fantasy in which occultist Aleister Crowley plays a major role,) Blood to Blood: The Dracula Story Continues (2000; winner of the Lord Ruthven Award for Best Vampire Novel) and the Austra Family series, whose fifth volume, Nocturne, was published in 2003.
Judith Berman is an anthropologist specializing in Pacific Northwest Amerindian cultures, as well as a budding science fiction writer.  Her first story was “The Year of Storms” (Realms of Fantasy, 1995), which has been followed by about a dozen more, several of them collected in Lord Stink and Other Stories (2002).  Her essay “Science Fiction Without the Future” received the Science Fiction Research Association’s 2002 Pioneer Award for best critical essay.  Her first novel, The Bear’s Daughter, is scheduled for publication next year.
Rick Berry is an artist who works in oils and pixels.  He created the first digital painting ever used as a trade book cover (for William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)).  His other cover credits include books by Jack Williamson, Michael Moorcock, Christopher Priest and Michael Swanwick.  He was a co-founder of Braid Media Arts, which creates and sells prints and custom-made art.  He has been nominated four times for Chesley Awards and won the award in 2000 for Best Unpublished Monchrome Work.  He was Artist Guest of Honor at the 1996 World Fantasy Convention.  Samples of his work can be found in Double Memory: Art and Collaborations by Rick Berry and Phil Hale (1992).
John Gregory Betancourt started selling SF while still in his teens.  His first published story was “Vernon’s Dragon” (100 Great Fantasy Short-Short Stories, 1984 – the author had just turned 16).  His first novels were Rogue Pirate (1987) and The Blind Archer (1988).  A large portion of his subsequent work has consisted of tie-ins and juveniles.  Of independent interest are Johnny Zed (1988), Rememory (1990) and the collection Slab’s Tavern and Other Uncanny Places (1991).  His major role has been as a publisher.  He worked for many years as an editor, agent and packager, helping to refound Weird Tales in 1988.  In 1989 he founded Wildside Press, which has grown into a major source of backlist science fiction and fantasy, as well as occasional new titles.  It maintains an inventory of over 500 titles and has been nominated three times for the World Fantasy Award.
Michael Bishop received an M.A. in English from the University of Georgia, writing his thesis on Dylan Thomas.  It is not surprising that the American South has been a major setting for his fiction or that he shows an idiosyncratic, modernist sensibility.  His stories in the 1970’s, beginning with “Pinon Fall” (Galaxy, 1970), earned him a prominent place among American “New Wave” writers.  His first novel, A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), was a Nebula Award nominee.  His major subsequent works included A Little Knowledge (1977; set in an Atlanta-based theocracy) and its sequel Catacomb Years (1979), Transfigurations (1979; expanded from his Hugo- and Nebula-nominated novella “Death and Designation Among the Asadi” (1973)), No Enemy But Time (1982; time travel story that won the Nebula Award), Ancient of Days (1985), The Secret Ascension (1987; an alternate-world Philip K. Dick is a major character), Unicorn Mountain (1988; the AIDS epidemic is paralleled by a plague ravaging a unicorn population) and Brittle Innings (1994; retelling of the Frankenstein story with the monster as a baseball star).  He has lately turned his long fiction energies to suspense novels but has remained active in shorter SF forms.  His work has been nominated for nine Hugo and 15 Nebula Awards.  He won Nebulas for No Enemy But Time and “The Quickening” (Best Novelette, 1982).  Several collections of his stories have appeared: Blooded on Arachne (1982), One Winter in Eden (1984), Close Encounters With the Deity (1986), At the City Limits of Fate (1996), Blue Kansas Sky (2000) and Brighten to Incandescence: 17 Stories (2002).
Stephen Bissette is primarily a comics artist, best known for DC Comics’ Saga of the Swamp Thing (1983-87), his own adult horror graphic fiction anthology Taboo (1988-95) and his graphic novel series Tyrant (1995-99; biography of a Tyrannosaurus Rex).  Outside the comics arena, he has created the artwork for illustrated limited editions of horror fiction, written numerous articles on horror films and published a small body of horror fiction.  His “Aliens: Tribes” won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novelette in 1992.  He received the International Horror Guild Artist’s Award in 1998
Terry Bisson scripted comics under pseudonyms before publishing his debut novel Wyrldmaker: A Romance (1981), in which the heroic fantasy multiverse turns out to be a giant starship.  His subsequent novels include Talking Man (1986; nominated for the World Fantasy Award), Fire on the Mountain (1988; an alternate world utopia), and the seriocomic yarns Voyage to the Red Planet (1990), Pirates of the Universe (1996) and The Pickup Artist (2001).  He also completed the late Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s manuscript of Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman (1997), a sequel to Miller’s classic A Canticle for Leibowitz.  In recent years, his longer works have consisted largely of tie-ins, but his short fiction has gained an increasing reputation.  “Bears Discover Fire” (1990) won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Short Story.  Another short story, “macs” (1999), won the Nebula and was a Hugo nominee.  His work has been nominated for a total of seven Hugo and five Nebula Awards.  Collections of his short fiction are In the Upper Room and Other Likely Stories (1986), Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories (1993) and Greetings & Other Stories (2004). [Updated, 8/1/05]
N. Taylor Blanchard has degrees in astrophysics and stage design.  As an artist, he is largely self-taught.  He started painting in 1980 and began to sell professionally in 1986.  Since then, his paintings have appeared on covers of books from Tor, Doubleday, Houghton Mifflin and other publishers in the U.S., Germany and Italy, as well as on magazines such as Analog and the Science Fiction Book Club’s Things to Come.  He has also drawn interior illustrations for Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Amazing and Aboriginal SF.  In addition to SF work, he is a nature and wildlife illustrator, with a special fondness for wolves.
Robert Bloch (1917–1994) was active for sixty years as both a professional and a fan.  As a teenager, he received encouragement and guidance from H. P. Lovecraft, and his earliest work is in the Lovecraftian vein.  His first sale was “Lilies” (1934), to the semi-professional Marvel Tales.  He broke into the pro market the following year with “The Secret in the Tomb”, published by Weird Tales, which printed a large proportion of the hundred-plus stories that he wrote over the following decade.  His oeuvre can be divided into three parts: the psychological thrillers and horror tales for which he is best known, humorous fantasy in the style of Thorne Smith, and a small body of science fiction.  Alfred Hitchcock’s movie version of his novel Psycho (1959) made him famous and led to a great deal of Hollywood work over the rest of his career.  There are many collections of his stories.  The most comprehensive is the three-volume Selected Stories of Robert Bloch (1988).  More specialized are Atoms and Evil (1962; science fiction), The Eighth Stage of Fandom (1962; fannish writings), The Mysteries of the Worm: All the Cthulhu Mythos Stories (1981; Lovecraft pastiches) and Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep (1987; comic, pun-filled SF).  He received the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1975 and a Special Award from the 1984 World Science Fiction Convention for his body of work.  He was Author Guest of Honor at the 1948 and 1973 World Science Fiction Conventions, Toastmaster of the 1954, 1956, 1959 and 1972 Worldcons, and GoHst of Honor at the 2003 Worldcon.
Margaret Wander Bonanno began her career as a mainstream author, writing four novels and a biography of Angela Lansbury.  Her first venture into SF was Dwellers in the Crucible (1985), a Star Trek tie-in.  She has since written two SF series, one about extraterrestrials seeking to hide from humanity (The Others (1990), Otherwhere (1991), Otherwise (1993)), the other a comic, experimental, recursive sequence about a harried midlist novelist (autobiographically inspired): Preternatural (1996), Preternatural Too: Gyre (2000) and Preternatural 3 (2002).  She also co-authored Saturn’s Child (1995) with Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols and has written several books in the Young Astronauts juvenile series under the house name Rick North.  Her most recent novel is Catalyst of Sorrows (2004), set in “The Lost Era” of Star Trek.
Ben Bova worked as a science writer, selling science fiction on the side, until he was named editor of Analog in 1972 as successor to the legendary John W. Campbell, Jr.  His first SF appearance was The Star Conquerors (1959), which, like all but one of his pre-Analog novels, was a juvenile.  He also wrote a great number of short stories, one of which, “Brillo” (1970, with Harlan Ellison), was nominated for the Best Short Story Hugo Award.  These stories fill several collections: Forward in Time (1973), Viewpoint (1977), Maxwell's Demons (1979), Escape Plus (1984), The Astral Mirror (1985; includes nonfiction), Prometheans (coll 1986) and Battle Station (1987).  Best remembered are the adventures, largely political, of late 20th Century astronaut Chet Kinsman, gathered in Kinsman (1979) and continued in Millennium (1976), often cited as his best novel.  Bova’s scientifically oriented, technologically optimistic point of view was well suited to Analog,  though some veteran readers grumbled at the magazine’s departures from Campbell’s sexual puritanism and staunchly conservative politics.  The new editor won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor six times during his tenure.  In 1978 he left Analog to become the editor of Omni, where he remained through 1982.  He then resumed full-time writing, publishing approximately forty novels and short fiction collections.  His major themes are the importance of expanding human settlement beyond the home world, the prospects for human immortality and the anti-scientific obscurantism that threatens our species’ progress and survival.  All are emphasized in fictional guise in his Grand Tour series, beginning with Mars (1992).  The latest volume is a short fiction collection, Tales of the Grand Tour (2004).  The next, Titan, will be published next year.  His most recent book in the nonfictional Faint Echoes, Distant Stars: The Science and Politics of Finding Life Beyond Earth (2005).  He was Author Guest of Honor at the 2000 World Science Fiction Convention. [Updated, 8/1/05]
Steven R. Boyett has published three novels (Ariel (1983; fantasy), The Architect of Sleep (1986; set on a planet inhabited by sapient raccoons), The Gnole (1991)), Treks Not Taken (1996: parodies of Star Trek: The Next Generation done in the manner of famous authors) and Orphans (2001; story collection).  He has also written for comics and had a hand in the screenplay for Toy Story 2.
Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930-1999) became an SF fan in her teens.  She won a prize in a story contest sponsored by Amazing and Fantastic in 1949 and made her first professional sales (“Women Only” and “Keyhole”, Vortex Science Fiction #2) in 1952.  Her first novel, The Door Through Space (1961), was a space opera.  A 1958 story, “The Planet Savers”, was the germ from which grew the series, Darkover, that was to be central to her career.  The human settlers of the eponymous planet have developed psychic powers that enable them to resist the efforts of a galactic empire to assert its dominance.  The Sword of Aldones (1962) was the first book in the series, to which the author continued to add for the rest of her life, eventually allowing other writers to make use of what became a shared universe.  The original SF concepts veered into fantasy over the years and were affected by the creator’s sometimes eccentric social and political ideas, but the construct was unquestionably one of the most popular and successful in the history of the genre.  She also wrote a large quantity of non-Darkover fiction, primarily sword-and-sorcery.  Her generally acknowledged masterpiece is The Mists of Avalon (1982), a retelling of the Arthurian legend from the viewpoint of Morgan le Fay, who is here the heroine rather than the villainess of the tale.  Other noteworthy novels include The House Between the Worlds (1980), Night’s Daughter (1985; based on the libretto to Mozart’s The Magic Flute), The Firebrand (1987), The Forest House (1993; a prequel to The Mists of Avalon, anachronistically portraying the worship of the hypothetical Bronze Age “Great Goddess” as a living faith in the First Century A.D.) and Ghostlight (1995).  In 1988 she founded Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, which became an important outlet for fostering new writers in the field.
Marilyn Mattie Brahen works as a legal secretary to support her writing and a cat named “Lovecraft”.  She published her first novel, Claiming Her, about a psychic whose troubled marriage is further disturbed by 35,000-year-old love affair, last year.  Her other work includes SF and fantasy stories and poems.
R. V. Branham writes primarily for small press magazines.  His first SF work was “In the Sickbay” (Writers of the Future 3, 1987), and he has published about a dozen stories in the genre, almost all in the early 1990’s.  He is the former editor of Paperback Jukebox, a literary magazine, and now edits the multilingual Gobshite Quarterly, which he founded in 2003.
David Brin holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics and held teaching and research positions, including a consultancy to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, before he became a full-time writer.  His first novel (also his first fiction sale), Sundiver (1980), established him as a rising star of “hard science fiction”.  The book initiated a series that now includes Startide Rising (1983), The Uplift War (1987), Brightness Reef (1995), Infinity’s Shore (1996) and Heaven’s Reach (1998).  These stories, whose premise is that sapience is transmitted from species to species through a process of “uplift”, pit humanity, along with its chimpanzee and dolphin upliftees, against the corrupt rulers of our galaxy.  Startide Rising won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, The Uplift War won the Hugo and was a Nebula nominee, and Brightness Reef was nominated for the Hugo.  Those who find the Uplift universe bewildering can now consult Contacting Aliens: The Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe (2002, with Kevin Lenaugh).  His non-Uplift novels include The Postman (1985; made into a movie much inferior to the book), Earth (1990; our planet narrowly escapes annihilation in the near future), Glory Season (1993; set in a matriarchal society delineated without sentimentalism) and Kiln People (2002; a Hugo nominee in which cloning meets the hard-boiled detective story).  His writings have been nominated for 11 Hugo and three Nebula Awards.  In addition to his victories in the Best Novel category, he received the Best Short Story Hugo for “Crystal Spheres” (1984).  Some of his short fiction and essays are collected in The River of Time (1986), Otherness (1994) and Tomorrow Happens (2003).  He will be Author Guest of Honor at the 2007 World Science Fiction Convention. [Updated, 8/1/05]
Kristen Britain published her first book, a collection of cartoons, at age 13.  She then pursued other interests, earning a degree in Film Production and becoming a National Park ranger.  Her vocational experience is reflected in her novels about a fantasy variation on the Pony Express: Green Rider (1998) and First Rider’s Call (2003).
Poppy Z. Brite told stories to a tape recorder before she could write, submitted them “to wildly inappropriate markets like Redbook” when she was twelve, made her first sale at 18, and dropped out of college to work on her first novel, Lost Souls (1992), which was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel.  She won the British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer in 1994.  Her later novels include Drawing Blood (1993; nominated for the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards), Exquisite Corpse (1995; nominated for the Bram Stoker Award) and The Lazarus Heart (1998).  Her lushly written short fiction is collected in Swamp Foetus (1993), His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood and Other Stories (1995), Are You Loathsome Tonight? (1998) and The Devil You Know (2003).  She co-edited two anthologies of “vampiric erotica”, Love in Vein (1994) and Love in Vein II (1996).  She has also published a biography of rock diva Courtney Love and an essay collection, Guilty But Insane (2001).  Her latest novels are Triads (2004, with Christa Faust) and the mainstream but weird Liquor: A Novel (2004) and its sequel Prime: A Novel (2005), set in the world of upscale restaurants. [Updated, 8/1/05]
Charles N. Brown founded the monthly magazine Locus, the most widely read source of news about the science fiction field, in 1968.  Under his tutelage, Locus has received 25 Hugo Awards for Best Fanzine and Best Semiprozine and is, inevitably, on the ballot again this year.  He has also done other things.  He was the first book reviewer for Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, edited the anthologies Far Travellers and Alien Worlds (both 1976), and co-edited Science Fiction in Print, 1985 (Hugo nominee for Best Nonfiction Book) and the annual Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror anthology series from 1985 through 1992; two volumes were Hugo Award nominees.  His most recent book is another anthology, The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy (2004, with Jonathan Strahan).
Jim Brunet is a freelance technical writer whose first SF sale was “A Pennant from the Gremlin” (Fantasy Book, 1984).  Since then, he has published intermittently in the genre.  In 1992 and 1993, he chaired the Nebula Awards jury for the short fiction categories.
Steven Brust has set almost all of his twenty-plus novels in a parallel universe dominated by the genetically engineered Dragaerans, among whom live the descendants of humans wafted from our world.  The opening volume, Jhereg (1983), introduces the antihero Vlad Taltos – assassin, tavern keeper and pimp – who works for the Dragaeran equivalent of the mafia.  Half a dozen novels follow Taltos’s adventures.  A second sequence, The Khaavren Romances (The Phoenix Guard (1991), Five Hundred Years After (1994), etc.), takes the form of “historical novels” penned by an indigenous counterpart to Alexander Dumas.  Brust has also written a handful of non-series books, including To Reign in Hell (1984; a variation on the theme of Anatole France’s anti-theist polemic The Revolt of the Angels), and Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille (1990; about a time traveling saloon).  One of his rare short stories, “When the Bow Breaks”, was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1998.  His latest novel is Sethra Lavode (2004), a Khaavren book that concludes a three-decker novel, The Viscount Of Adrilankha.
Edward Bryant is one of those rare SF authors who works almost entirely in the shorter forms (though he did collaborate with Harlan Ellison on Phoenix Without Ashes (1975), the novelization of the Hollywood-wrecked TV show The Starlost).  He began his career with “They Come Only in Dreams” (Adam, 1970).  His first short fiction collection, Among the Dead and Other Events Leading up to the Apocalypse (1973), was praised for its versatility of subject matter and technique.  Later collections include Cinnabar (1976; linked stories set in a dying city millions of years in the future), Wyoming Sun (1980), Particle Theory (1981), Trilobite (1987), Neon Twilight (1990) and Flirting with Death (1995).  He has been nominated three Hugo and seven Nebula Awards, winning Nebulas for “Stone” (Best Short Story, 1978) and “giANTS” (Best Short Story, 1979).  He was Toastmaster of the 1981 World Science Fiction Convention.
Ginjer Buchanan was a Founding Mother of the Western Pennsylvania Science Fiction Association in the late 1960’s.  In the early 1970’s, she moved to New York City, where she varied her job as a social worker with freelance editing.  Among other projects, she was consulting editor for the Pocket Books Star Trek line and an outside reader for the Science Fiction Book Club.  In 1984 she accepted a position as a full-time editor at Ace Books and has remained there ever since.  Since 1996 she has been Senior Executive Editor and Marketing Director.  She has written a novel, the Highlander tie-in White Silence (1999), and several short stories.
Tobias S. Buckell was born in Grenada but now lives in less sun-drenched, less hurricane-prone Ohio.  He began publishing science fiction professionally in 2000 with “The Fish Merchant” (Science Fiction Age, March 2000) and was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002.  His first novel, Crystal Rain, and a story collection, Tides from the New Worlds, are scheduled for publication in 2005.
Algis Budrys was born in Lithuania to a family that fled to the United States to escape communist rule.  His father was Consul General for the government-in-exile, and Algis remained “the world’s youngest Lithuanian citizen” until he took out U.S. citizenship in the 1980’s.  His first story, “The High Purpose”, appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1952.  He became identified with the post-war generation who leavened SF’s pulp origins with a more modern sensibility and style.  Much of his best work is short fiction, collected in The Unexpected Dimension (1960), Budrys’s Inferno (1963), Blood and Burning (1978) and Entertainments (1997).  His first novel, A False Night (1954), came out in a badly cut version, restored several years later under the title Some Will Not Die (1961).  His best known book is Rogue Moon (1960), a classic tale of attempts to navigate a deadly lunar labyrinth.  His other novels include Who? (1958; made into a movie in 1974), The Falling Torch (1959; set on an alien-occupied Earth and drawing on his own experiences as an exile), Michaelmas (1977) and Hard Landing (1993; extraterrestrials try to blend into human society after their spaceship crashes on Earth).  Rogue Moon and Who? were nominated for Hugo Awards, as was the novella “The Silent Eyes of Time” (1975).  Hard Landing and “A Scraping at the Bones” (Best Short Story, 1975) were Nebula nominees.  In 1965 he became the regular book reviewer for Galaxy and later for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.  A selection of his Galaxy reviews was published as Benchmarks: Galaxy Bookshelf (1985), which was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Nonfiction Book.  In the 1990’s, he edited Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, which was twice nominated for the Best Semiprozine Hugo Award.  He has also done much to nurture new authors: teaching at workshops, offering advice in Writing to the Point: A Complete Guide to Selling Fiction (1994) and playing an active role in the annual Writers of the Future Contest.  He was Author Guest of Honor at the 1997 World Science Fiction Convention.
Lois McMaster Bujold was introduced to science fiction by her father, an avid reader of Astounding/Analog, and wrote fan fiction throughout her teen years.  Her literary interests lay fallow, however, while she raised a family.  In the early 1980’s, she plunged into serious SF writing.  Her first sale was to Twilight Zone Magazine (“Barter”, 1985).  That remained her lone evidence of “professional” status until three novels that had been slowly working their way through the publishing queue appeared within months of each other in 1986.  Shards of Honor, The Warrior’s Apprentice and Ethan of Athos introduced the Vorkosigan family and its most famous member, the charismatic, witty, relentlessly driven military genius Miles Vorkosigan, who is an unsoldierly 4’9” tall with brittle bones that render him a near-cripple.  With just a few exceptions, Bujold’s fiction until recently remained in that universe, a mixture of semi-feudal mores and futuristic technology that is saved from space operatic silliness by deft psychology and quiet humor.  The fourth volume, Falling Free (1988), set two centuries before the Vorkosigans and featuring legless humans bioengineered to live in a gravity-free environment, won the Nebula Award for Best Novel.  A novella in the series, “The Mountains of Mourning” (1989), won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, while The Vor Game (1990), Barrayar (1991) and Mirror Dance (1994) took Hugos.  Memory (1996) and A Civil Campaign (1999) were nominated for both awards.  The most recent Vorkosigan novel, Diplomatic Immunity (2002), was nominated for the Nebula, and a novella in the series, “Winterfair Gifts” (2004) was a Hugo nominee.  In 2001 she wrote her second non-Vorkosigan novel, The Curse of Chalion, which is remarkable for devising a plausible, consistent theology for an imaginary polytheistic religion.  It was nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.  Its sequel, Paladin of Souls (2003), won both the Hugo and the Nebula.  The Hallowed Hunt (2005) is set in another locale on the same fictional world. [Updated, 8/1/05]
Emma Bull sold a lone short story (“Rending Dark”, 1984) before publishing War for the Oaks (1987), widely recognized as an important influence on urban fantasy.  It made Minneapolis into a popular fantasy venue and introduced elf rockers into the subgenre.  Her novels since then include Falcon (1989; sophisticated space opera), Bone Dance: A Fantasy for Technophiles (1991; nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards), The Princess and the Lord of Night (1994; a pictorial fantasy for children), and Freedom and Necessity (1997, with Steven Brust).  She has written very little short fiction, but her novella “Silver and Gold” (1992) was a Nebula Award nominee.  Some of her stories appear in Double Feature (1994, also including stories by Will Shetterly).  In her non-writing life, she sings and plays guitar with the goth-folk duo Spice Girls, which has released three albums.  A new novel, Territory, a historical fantasy set in 1880’s Arizona, is forthcoming.
Jim Burns is a Welsh artist who was the first non-American winner of the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist (1987).  He has been nominated a total of twelve times, winning again in 1995 and 2005.  He also has eleven Chesley Award nominations.  A selection of his work can be found in Lightship: Jim Burns, Master of SF Illustration (2000).  He was Artist Guest of Honor at the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention. [Updated, 9/1/05]
Michael A. Burstein gained a Hugo Award nomination for his first published short story, “TeleAbsence” (Analog, July 1995), and won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1997.  He has since received five more Hugo and two Nebula Award nominations, for the novella “Reality Check” (1999, Nebula nominee), novelette “Broken Symmetry” (1997, Hugo nominee) and short stories “Cosmic Corkscrew” (1998, Hugo nominee), “Kaddish for the Last Survivor” (2000, Hugo and Nebula nominee), “Spaceships” (2001, Hugo nominee) and “Paying It Forward” (2003, another Hugo nominee).  He also served as secretary of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1998 to 2000.
F. M. Busby (1921–2005) was a veteran SF fan who sold an occasional short story (his first was “A Gun for Grandfather” in Future Science Fiction, 1957) but did not make a serious effort to write fiction until he was past age 50.  In the meantime, he was active in Seattle’s Nameless group, which hosted the 1961 World Science Fiction Convention, and co-edited Cry of the Nameless, which won the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine in 1960.  In 1972 he attended the Clarion Workshop, then published his first novel, Cage a Man, in 1974.  He wrote about 20 novels in all.  His best known are Rissa Kerguelen (1976), whose heroine flees a bureaucratized Earth for the stars, and The Breeds of Man (1988).  His short fiction is collected in Getting Home (1987).  He served as vice president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (1974–76) and was Toastmaster of the 1978 World Science Fiction Convention. [Updated, 8/1/05]
Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) published her first story, “Crossover”, in the 1971 Clarion Workshop anthology.  Her debut novel, Patternmaster (1976), was the first of several related books, not published in order of internal chronology, centering on mutation, selective breeding and biological transformation in humanity’s past and future.  The tale begins in 17th Century Africa (Wild Seed, 1980), where the first humans with psi powers (the eponymous “patternmasters”) have their origin, and concludes with the first-published novel, set during an ages-long conflict between the patternmasters and a rival subspecies transformed by an alien virus.  The other books in the series are Mind of My Mind (1977), Survivor (1978) and Clay’s Ark (1984).  The Xenogenesis series (Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1987), Imago (1989)) also has biological themes, as an extraterrestrial breeding program revives a nearly extinct human race.  Kindred (1979) is a time travel tale in which a black woman of our era is transported to the ante bellum South. Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) featured the creation of a new religion in a dystopian near future.  The former was nominated for, and the latter won, the Nebula Award for Best Novel.  Her last novel was Fledgling (2005), which discovered new twists on the seemingly exhausted vampire theme.  She won the Best Short Story Hugo Award for “Speech Sounds” (1983) and both the Hugo and the Nebula Best Novelette Awards for “Bloodchild” (1984).  “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” (1987) was a Nebula nominee for Best Novelette.  Her short fiction is collected in Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995; 2nd ed., 2005).  She was the only science fiction writer ever to receive a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant”. [Updated, 3/11/06]
Richard Butner is a computer consultant who writes books like Windows Performance Secrets (1998).  He has been publishing SF short stories occasionally since 1988, at an average rate of about one a year.  He is active in running the Sycamore Hill Writers’ Conference and was co-editor (with John Kessel and Mark L. Van Name) of Intersections: The Sycamore Hill Anthology (1996).  Some of his stories are collected in Horses Blow Up Dog City & Other Stories (2004).
Pat Cadigan once wrote Hallmark greeting cards but has moved on to cyberpunk.  After discovering SF fandom in 1975 and volunteering to work on the 1976 World Science Fiction Convention in her home town of Kansas City, she co-founded (with Arnie Fenner) the semiprozine Shayol in 1977.  It ran until 1985 and won a World Fantasy Special Award for Non-Professional Work in 1981.  Her early fiction appeared in Shayol; a selection was republished in Patterns (1989), which was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Collection.  In the 1980’s, she began selling to pro magazines.  Her first novel, Mindplayers, was published in 1987, followed by two complex near-future novels, Synners (1991), a Nebula Best Novel nominee, and Fools (1992), involving artificial intelligence, computer viruses and the malleability of the human mind.  Both won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, which had never before been given twice to the same writer.  Her later novels include Tea from an Empty Cup (1998), Avatar (1999) and Dervish Is Digital (2000).  She has been nominated for four Hugo and five Nebula Awards.  Her short fiction is collected in Home by the Sea (1992) and Dirty Work (1993).  She edited an anthology, The Ultimate Cyperpunk (2004).
Lisa W. Cantrell won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel with The Manse (1987).  Her other novels, all in the horror genre, are The Ridge (1989), Torments (1990; sequel to The Manse) and Boneman (1992).  She has published stories in horror anthologies and in mystery and children’s magazines.  She is a past secretary of the Horror Writers of America.
Michael Capobianco has written one solo novel, Burster (1990), and four collaborations with William Barton (Iris (1990), Fellow Traveler (1991), Alpha Centauri (1997), White Light (1998)) centering primarily on space colonization.  He is also an amateur astronomer, whose observations are credited with a key role in fixing the size and shape of the asteroid 102 Miriam.  He served as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1996 through 1998.
Orson Scott Card became an instant star with “Ender’s Game” (Analog, 1977), his first published story (a Best Novelette Hugo Award nominee), and “Mikal’s Songbird” (1978) (Hugo and the Nebula Best Novelette nominee).  He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1978.  Two novels that grew out of “Ender’s Game”, Ender’s Game (1985) and Speaker for the Dead (1986), each won the Hugo and Nebula Best Novel Awards, the only time that any author has won both honors two years running.  The Ender series continued through half a dozen further books, tracing the after-effects of the alien invasion that was thwarted in the first volume.  The latest is Shadow Puppets (2003).  Most of his non-Ender novels fall into four main groups: The Worthing Saga (definitive edition, 1990), the generations-spanning history of a colony planet; the Alvin Maker series (Seventh Son (1987), Red Prophet (1988), Prentice Alvin (1989), Alvin Journeyman (1995), Heartfire (1998), The Crystal City (2003)), set in a fantasy alternate world in which a fragmented America is a stronghold of magical crafts; the Homecoming series (The Memory of Earth (1992), The Call of Earth (1993), The Ships of Earth (1994), Earthfall (1995), Earthborn (1995)); and contemporary ghost stories, such as Lost Boys (1992) and Enchantment (1999).  Outside the SF field, he writes plays and religious fiction, and his political commentary has attracted a national audience in the aftermath of 9/11.  His work has received 13 Hugo and nine Nebula Award nominations.  Besides the awards to the two Ender novels, he won Hugos for “Eye for Eye” (Best Novella, 1988) and How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (Best Nonfiction Book, 1991).  His short fiction is collected in Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories (1981), Maps in a Mirror (1990), The Elephants of Posnan and Other Stories (2001) and Angles and Other Stories (2002).  His latest novel is Magic Street (2005), an urban fantasy about a foundling with faery powers. [Updated, 8/1/05]
Lillian Stewart Carl started writing at age 12, when she exchanged fan fiction with her best friend Lois McMaster (later Bujold), but she did not sell any stories until quite a few years later.  Her first published story, “The Borders of Sabazel”, appeared in the anthology Amazons II in 1982.  It was the kernel of her Sabazel fantasy series (Sabazel (1985), The Winter King (1986), Shadow Dancers (1987), Wings of Power (1989)), which she labels “gonzo fantasy”, mixing heroes and myths from diverse, not necessarily compatible traditions.  Her later novels blend mystery, romance and the supernatural, with themes drawn particularly from the history, archeology and folklore of the British Isles.  Her short fiction, primarily SF and mysteries, has been collected in Along the Rim of Time (2000).  Her latest novels are Lucifer’s Crown (2004), which turns St. Thomas Becket into a version of the “Wandering Jew”, and The Secret Portrait (2005), a detective story. [Updated, 8/1/05]
Jeffrey A. Carver sold his first story, “. . . Of No Return”, in 1974 but has devoted most of his attention to novels, beginning with the Star Rigger series, about the discovery, loss and revival of a unique method of interstellar travel.  Seas of Ernathe (1976), the first published, is chronologically the last volume in the sequence.  Others are Star Rigger’s Way (1978), Panglor (1980; first in the internal chronology), Dragons in the Stars (1992) and Dragon Rigger (1993).  A second series, The Chaos Chronicles (Neptune Crossing (1994), Strange Attractors (1995), The Infinite Sea (1996)) takes a human space pilot across the galaxy in the company of eons-old aliens who predict the future by use of the mathematical theory of chaos.  His other novels include From a Changeling Star (1988; a tension-ridden scientific expedition observes Betelgeuse as it goes supernova), its sequel Down the Stream of Stars (1990) and Eternity’s End (2000), nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel.  In recent years, he has devoted a large part of his time to his other career as a technical writer, but he expects eventually to complete the next of the Chaos Chronicles.
Susan Casper published her first story, “Spring-Fingered Jack”, in 1983 and has added about 25 more since then.  Slow Dancing Through Time (1990) includes a number of them.  She also co-edited Ripper! (1988), an anthology of Jack the Ripper tales, with Gardner Dozois.
Michael Cassutt sold his first SF story in 1974 (“A Second Death”, Amazing) and has written four novels: Star Country (1986; the adventures of an extraterrestrial in post-holocaust America), Dragon Season (1991) and two thrillers set against the background of the Space Race (Missing Man (1998), Red Moon (2001)).  His extensive television writing includes work as a staff writer for The Twilight Zone and story editor for Max Headroom.   He wrote Who’s Who’s in Space: The First 25 Years (1987), about the pioneers of space exploration, and collaborated on the autobiographies of astronauts Deke Slayton (Deke!: U.S. Manned Space from Mercury to the Shuttle (1994)) and Tom Stafford (We Have Capture: Tom Stafford and the Space Race (2002)).  His latest novel is Tango Midnight (2003), a near-future space thriller.
Adam-Troy Castro made his first professional sale to Spy in 1987 and has since published over 70 SF stories.  Two of his novellas, “The Funeral March of the Marionettes” (1997) and “The Astronaut from Wyoming” (1999, with Jerry Oltion) were Hugo and Nebula Award nominees, while “Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl’s” (2001) and “ Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs” (2003) were nominated for Nebulas.  He has published five short story collections: Lost in Booth Nine (1993), An Alien Darkness (2000), A Desperate, Decaying Darkness (2000), Vossoff and Nimmitz (2002) and Tangled Strings (2003).  He has also written four Spider-Man novelizations with titles like Revenge of the Sinister Six (2001).  His next book, Just a Couple of Idiots Reupholstering Space and Time, is due out early in 2005.
Hugh B. Cave (1910–2004) sold his first story while he was still in high school.  His professional career began in 1929 with two sales to the short-lived Brief Tales.  He made his living during the Great Depression as a prolific writer of adventure, mystery, horror and supernatural fiction.  His output includes more than 35 novels, five nonfiction books written as a war correspondent during World War II, two travel books (Haiti: Highroad to Adventure (1952), widely regarded as one of the best books ever written about that country, and Four Roads to Paradise (1961), about Jamaica), a memoir (Magazines I Remember (1994)), and 1,200 stories and articles for both slick and pulp magazines.  He also owned and ran a Blue Mountain coffee plantation for 15 years and lived for five years in Haiti, where he acquired the knowledge of voodoo and zombies that is central to such novels as Legion of the Dead (1979), The Evil (1981) and The Evil Returns (2001).  His most frequent fantasy theme is vampirism. “Stragella” (1932) is a classic of that subgenre.  Among the many collections of his short fiction are Murgunstruum and Others (1977; winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection), The Corpse Maker (1988), Death Stalks the Night (1995; another World Fantasy Award nominee), and Long Live the Dead: Tales from Black Mask (2000).  He was honored with the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award (1990), the International Horror Guild Grandmaster Award (1997) and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award (1999).  He continued writing into his nineties, publishing The Restless Dead in 2003 and The Mountains of Madness shortly before his death.
Paul Chafe is an infantry officer in the Canadian Forces Reserves and graduate student in computer engineering.  His first sale was “Prisoner of War” (1995), set in the Man/Kzin Wars universe.  He has written other Man/Kzin tales and a novel, Mission Critical (1996), based on the computer game of the same name.
Jack Chalker (1944–2005) was a writer and SF historian.  Before he began writing science fiction professionally, he became well known as an active member of Baltimore fandom, published the Hugo-nominated fanzine Mirage, founded Mirage Press to publish works of SF scholarship, and wrote bibliographical studies of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and other authors.  His debut novel, A Jungle of Stars, appeared in 1976.  Its conflict between deposed deities, who use human beings as pawns in their wars, established a theme that recurs throughout his later work.  His second novel, Midnight at the Well of Souls (1977), initiated the long-running Well Word series.  He published more than 60 novels, mostly linked in series such as The Four Lords of the Diamond (Lilith: A Snake in the Grass (1981), Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold (1982), Charon: A Dragon at the Gate (1982), Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail (1983)); the three-decker fantasy novel Changewinds (When the Changewinds Blow (1987), Riders of the Winds (1988), War of the Maelstrom (1988)); and G.O.D. Inc. (The Labyrinth of Dreams (1987), The Shadow Dancers (1987), The Maze in the Mirror (1989)), an alternate world detective series.  His infrequent short fiction is collected in Dance Band on the Titanic (1988).  His outpouring of fiction did not keep him from continuing his work in the history of SF publishing.  In 1991 he published The Science Fantasy Publishers: A Critical and Bibliographic History (1991; with Mark Owings).  The work’s ambitious, and very nearly realized, goal was to catalogue every publication of every science fiction and fantasy small press since the 1920’s.  In addition to bibliographic data, the volume contains lively, and occasionally controversial, historical accounts of the various presses.  It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book.  His last novel was Kasper’s Box (2003).  He was Toastmaster of the 1983 World Science Fiction Convention. [Updated 8/1/05]
Suzy McKee Charnas entered the SF field, after a career in teaching, with Walk to the End of the World (1974), about a literal “war between the sexes”.  The story continued in Motherlines (1978), The Furies (1994) and The Conqueror’s Child (1999; winner of the Tiptree Award).  Her other work has been largely in the horror and fantasy vein.  Vampire Tapestry (1980), a collection of linked stories featuring a vampire anthropologist, includes the 1980 Nebula winning “Unicorn Tapestry”.  She adapted the book into a play, Vampire Dreams, which was staged in 1990.  Dorothea Dreams (1986) is a ghost story that juxtaposes modern New Mexico and Revolutionary France.  My Father's Ghost: The Return of My Old Man and Other Second Chances (2002) is a memoir.  She has been nominated for two Hugo and three Nebula Awards and won the Best Short Story Hugo in 1989 for “Boobs”.  Selections of her short fiction are Music of the Night (2000) and Stagestruck Vampires and Other Phantasms (2004). [Updated, 8/1/05]
David A. Cherry was a successful but discontented lawyer who, after being introduced to SF conventions and art shows by his sister C. J. Cherryh, decided to shut down his law firm and learn how to be an artist.  After two years of self-study, crucially encouraged by fantasy artist James Christensen, he exhibited at a convention for the first time in 1984 and won Best of Show (for “Man of Prophecy”, whose model was sculptor Real Musgrave).  From that beginning he went on to become one of the science fiction and fantasy field’s most renowned artists, with hundreds of book, magazine and game illustrations in his portfolio.  He has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist ten times and has won eight Chesley Awards.  An admirer of Hellenistic sculpture and the British Academic tradition in painting, he says that the goal of his own works is “to examine our struggle for balance between what is mortal and material and what is infinite and spiritual”.  He was Artist Guest of Honor at the 2002 World Science Fiction Convention.
C. J. Cherryh taught school for eleven years before publishing her first novel, Gate of Ivrel, in 1976.  The following year she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.  She has since written over 40 novels, whose hallmark is the complex interaction of variegated cultures.  The majority are science fiction, sharing the background of an ongoing struggle between two galaxy-spanning dominions, the mercantile Alliance and the militaristic Union, but she brings fantasy overtones and sensibility to much of her SF.  Her first series of novels, assembled as The Book of Morgaine (1979), could be placed in either subgenre, and much of her later work in similarly eclectic.  She won Hugo Awards for Downbelow Station (1981) and Cyteen (1988) and major award nominations for The Faded Sun: Kesrith (1978), The Pride of Chanur (1981), Cuckoo’s Egg (1985), Invader (1995), Rider at the Gate (1995) and Fortress in the Eye of Time (1995).  Her most recent book is Forge of Heaven (2004), the sequel to Hammerfall (2001), set on a world embargoed to prevent the spread of its nanotechnology.  Destroyer, the seventh volume in her Foreigner series, is scheduled for publication early in 2005.  While she is best known for her novels, her first published short story, “Cassandra” (1977), won the Best Short Story Hugo and was nominated for the Nebula.  Two anthologies of her short fiction, Sunfall (1981) and Visible Light (1986), have been reissued, with additional stories, as an omnibus Collected Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh (2004). She was Author Guest of Honor at the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention.
Rob Chilson decided that he was ready to be a writer when he mastered improper fractions at age eleven.  It took him a few years, however, to make his first sale, “The Mind Reader” (Analog, 1968).  His first book, As the Curtain Falls (1974), was a far future adventure.  His subsequent novels are the space opera The Star-Crowned Kings (1975), The Shores of Kansas (1976; a time travel yarn), Refuge (1988), Men Like Rats (1989; humans live as hunted vermin), Rounded With Sleep (1990), the dark comedy Black As Blood (1998) and Isaac Asimov’s Robot City 3 (2000), which could be called a posthumous collaboration.  He has been more active as a short fiction writer than a novelist, with about 70 published stories.  Many of them form a linked series, set 60 million years in the future, and are the core of a novel-in-progress.
James C. Christensen is a painter and sculptor who taught art at Brigham Young University for over 20 years before his retirement.  His illustrations have appeared in both SF and mainstream publications, and he exhibits widely. He won Chesley Awards for Best Three-Dimensional Art (1991) and Best Magazine Cover (2002) and has received a total of nine Chesley nominations.  Examples of his work can be found in A Journey of the Imagination: The Art of James Christensen (1994), Rhymes and Reasons: An Annotated Collection of Mother Goose Rhymes (1997) and the continuing series of Personal Illuminations chapbooks.  In addition to formal teaching, he has been a mentor to young artists.  David A. Cherry credits the launching of his own art career to the instruction and inspiration that he received from Professor Christensen.
Keith Christian is a science fiction and fantasy artist, about whom the writers of these captions lack information.
Richard Chwedyk grew up in a blue collar Chicago neighborhood where authors were as exotic as dinosaurs.  There he surreptitiously read science fiction and produced one-copy fanzines with his brother.  In 1990 he sold his first story, “A Man Makes a Machine”, to Amazing Stories.  His work since then has not been prolific but has been of high quality.  Currently he is at work on a series of stories about miniature dinosaurs, mass produced for the toy market, that have lives of their own.  “Bronte’s Egg” (2002), the second in the sequence, won the Nebula Award for Best Novella and was a Hugo Award nominee.  It was preceded by “The Measure of All Things” (2001) and followed by “In Tibor’s Cardboard Castle” (2003).  He also writes SF-themed poetry, such as “A Few Kind Words for A. E. van Vogt” and “Rich and Pam Go to Fermilab and Later See a Dead Man”, a Rysling Award nominee.
Chris Claremont is editorial director of Marvel Comics and a leading comics writer, who is particularly associated with the X-Men series.  Outside the comics arena, he is the author of the Nicole Shea trilogy, whose heroine is a near future female astronaut (Firstflight (1987), Grounded (1991), Sundowner (1994)), and the Shadow War series (with George Lucas), a sequel to the movie Willow, consisting so far of Shadow Moon (1995), Shadow Dawn (1996) and Shadow Star (1999).  At least one further volume is projected.
Jo Clayton (1939–1998) taught school and sold paintings on the side before becoming a full-time writer.  She published a total of 35 novels and a smaller body of short fiction.  Her first novel, Diadem from the Stars (1977), was a science-fantasy space opera in the tradition of Leigh Brackett.  It ushered in a nine-volume series that continued through Quester’s Endgame (1986).  Many of her other books, though outside the series, shared the same background.  Her non-Diadem fiction included the Duel of Sorcery trilogy (Moongather (1982), Moonscatter (1983), Changer’s Moon (1985)); the Soul Drinker trilogy (Drinker of Souls (1986), Blue Magic (1988), A Gathering of Stones (1989)), set in a quasi-Oriental, ghost-haunted realm; and the Drum of Chaos trilogy (Drum Warning (1996), Drum Calls (1997) and the posthumously published Drums Into Silence (2002)), involving two separate worlds that become magically linked, with chaotic effects, every 700 years.
Hal Clement (1922–2003) was the pen name of Harry Stubbs, a science writer and high school teacher with degrees in astronomy, chemistry and education.  He was the paradigmatic “hard science fiction” writer, whose stories presented exotic environments grounded in solid scientific principles and whose characters assigned high value to logical thinking and competent action.  His first story, “Proof”, appeared in 1942 in Astounding Science Fiction, with which he was thereafter strongly identified.  His debut novel, Needle (1949), had a cops-and-robbers plot, except that cop and robber were intelligent parasites.  For unfathomable reasons, John W. Campbell, Jr. was initially reluctant to buy his next long story for Astounding and had to be all but tricked (by the author’s agent, Fred Pohl) into accepting it.  It turned out to be the classic hard SF novel, Mission of Gravity (1953; a nominee for the Retro-Hugo Award this year), set on a giant, fast-rotating world where gravity varies from three gees at the equator to 700 at the poles.  There were two sequels, Close to Critical (1958) and Star Light (1971).  His other major novels (excluding juveniles) were Iceworld (1953), Cycle of Fire (1957), Ocean on Top (1967), The Nitrogen Fix (1980), Intuit (1987), Still River (1987), Fossil (1993), Half Life and Noise (2003).  His short fiction is collected in Natives of Space (1965), Small Changes (1969) and The Best of Hal Clement (1979).  He was also an accomplished artist who painted under the name “George Richard”.  He was Author Guest of Honor at the 1985 NASFiC and the 1991 World Science Fiction Convention.
Brenda W. Clough began her writing career with The Crystal Crown (1984), the first volume of her Averidan tetralogy.  The subsequent volumes are The Dragon of Mishbil (1985), The Realm Beneath (1986) and The Name of the Sun (1988).  Her other published novels are The Impossumble Summer (1992; a witty children’s book about talking animals), How Like a God (1997; the hero is cursed with the power to read and alter minds) and its sequel, The Doors to Death and Life (2000).  Her novella, “May Be Some Time” (2001), a section of a novel-in-progress about a member of Scott’s fatal Antarctic expedition who is rescued by time traveling scientists and revived in an unfamiliar 21st Century, was a Hugo and Nebula Award nominee.
John Clute is a critic, poet and occasional writer of fiction.  He is the editor of three key reference works (life saving to people who, for instance, need to prepare several hundred captions for photographs of science fiction and fantasy professionals): The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993, with Peter Nicholls), Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia (1995) and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997, with John Grant).  All three won Hugo Awards for Best Nonfiction Book.  The fantasy volume also won a World Fantasy Award.  He was a founder of Interzone magazine, to which he contributed a book review column and for which he co-edited five anthologies of original fiction between 1985 and 1991.  From 1980 through 1990, he was reviews editor of Foundation: The Journal of Science Fiction.  He now writes a regular column for the on-line zine Science Fiction Weekly.  He edited the anthology Tesseracts 8 (1999) and has published three volumes of critical essays, Strokes: Essays and Reviews 1966-1986 (1988), Look at the Evidence: Essays and Reviews (1996) and Scores: Reviews 1993-2003 (2003; nominated for the Best Related Book Hugo Award) .  His fiction writing began with “A Man Must Die” (New Worlds, 1966).  His oeuvre includes infrequent short stories and two novels, The Disinheriting Party (1977) and Appleseed (2001).  He is a recipient of the Pilgrim Award for SF criticism (1994).
Nancy A. Collins won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel with Sunglasses After Dark (1989), which introduced the vampire turned vampire hunter Sonja Blue.  Sonja has since appeared in four more books: In the Blood (1992), Paint It Black (1995), A Dozen Black Roses (1996) and the short story collection Dead Roses for a Blue Lady (2002).  She (Nancy, not Sonja) has written half a dozen other novels in the horror/dark fantasy subgenre, including Tempter (1990), Wild Blood (1993), Angels on Fire (1998) and Darkest Heart (2000).  Her collection Knuckles and Tales (2002) was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Collection.  She was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1989 and 1990.  She has edited several horror anthologies, one of them with Gahan Wilson (Gahan Wilson’s The Ultimate Haunted House (1996)).  She has also written screenplays, been a writer for DC Comics’ Swamp Thing and worked as a record producer.  Her latest books are Dead Man’s Hand: Five Tales of the Weird West (2004) and two film tie-ins, Final Destination: Looks Could Kill (2005) and Final Destination II:The Movie (2006). [Updated 3/11/06]
Jeff Conner founded Scream/Press, which published limited, illustrated editions of works by Stephen King and Clive Barker.  He received a World Fantasy Special Award for this endeavor in 1987.  He has also written Stephen King Goes to Hollywood (1987; a lavishly illustrated guide to movies based on King’s fiction), The Crow: The Movie (1995) and The Crow: City of Angels: A Diary of the Film.
Rick Cook describes his novels as “light fantasy filled with bad computer jokes”.  The jokes come from more than 20 years of experience as a computer journalist covering automation and embedded systems.  His first novel, Limbo System (1989), was comic science fiction about aliens attempting to steal faster-than-light technology from a visiting Terran starship.  Wizard’s Bane (1989) began his Wizardry series, into which most of his work falls.  The latest volume is Cursed and Consulted: The Continuing Adventures of a Boy and His Dog (2001).  He also writes short fiction in a more serious vein, primarily for Analog.
Matthew J. Costello writes fantasy, gothic, mystery and suspense fiction.  He is the author of Homecoming (1992), which was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, the Time Warrior series (Time of the Fox (1990), Hour of the Scorpion (1991), Day of the Snake (1992); about secret agents who battle to change the past), Wurm (1991), Darkborn (1992), Mirage (1996, with F. Paul Wilson)), Masque (1998, also with Wilson) and other novels, as well as a number of short stories.  He wrote the scenarios for two popular interactive computer games, The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, and he has published much other game- and computer-related work, as well as a book entitled How to Write Science Fiction (1988).  His latest solo novels are Unidentified (2002) and Missing Monday (2004).
Juanita Coulson co-edited (with her husband Buck Coulson) the famous fanzine Yandro, which was nominated ten times for the Best Fanzine Hugo Award and won in 1965.  She and Buck were Fan Guests of Honor at the 1972 World Science Fiction Convention.  Her professional career began in 1963, with a pseudonymous collaboration with Marion Zimmer Bradley.  Her first novel, Crisis on Cheiron (1975), sympathizes with oppressed aliens in a human-dominated galaxy.  Her major science fiction series is Children of the Stars (beginning with Tomorrow’s Heritage (1981) and continuing through The Past of Forever (1989)), the saga of a space-exploring family.  In a less expected vein is Unto the Last Generation (1975), a pessimistic look at population control efforts.  She has also written a pair of fantasy novels (Web of Wizardry (1978) and The Death God’s Citadel (1980)) and several Gothic novels.
Arthur Byron Cover was born in Siberia and sold his first story, “Gee, Isn’t He the Cutest Little Thing?” in 1973.  His debut novel, Autumn’s Angels (1975), was a Nebula Award nominee.  He followed with Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists (1976; story collection), The Sound of Winter (1976) and An East Wind Coming (1979).  He has also written for comics and television, including scripts for Babylon 5.  Many of his recent books have been tie-ins or contributions to shared universe series, including  J. Michael Straczyski’s Rising Stars and Isaac Asimov’s Robot City.  His latest independent novel, The Red Star (2003) is a fantasy set in an alternate Russia with its own brand of communist tyranny.  In 1981 he and Lydia Marano co-founded Dangerous Visions, long one of Southern California’s preeminent SF bookstores (now converted to Web-only operation).  In 1999 they branched out by starting Babbage Press, which brings SF, fantasy and horror classics back into print.
Bruce Coville decided in sixth grade that he wanted to be a writer but had to work at a few other jobs, including toy making, grave digging, peddling cookware and teaching second through fourth grade, before he sold his first book, The Foolish Giant (with artist Katherine Dietz, his frequent collaborator over the years) in 1978.  Like virtually all of his later books, it was for younger readers.  He has since published over sixty more books.  My Teacher Glows in the Dark (1991) and I Was a Sixth Grade Alien (1999) won Golden Duck Awards for Middle Grades.
Kathryn Cramer has been associated with The New York Review of Science Fiction since its founding in 1988, writing SF criticism for both the Review and other literary periodicals.  She attracted attention with her advocacy of the use of hypertext in works of fiction.  She has edited several anthologies, mostly in collaboration with David Hartwell, including Christmas Ghosts (1987), Spirits of Christmas (1989), Walls of Fear (1990) and two massive collections that aim to redefine and reinvigorate the “hard SF” subgenre: The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard Science Fiction (1994) and The Hard SF Renaissance (2002).
A. C. Crispin writes movie and television tie-in novels and science fiction for older children.  In the former arena, her credits include Star Wars, Star Trek and “V” novels.  She collaborated with Andre Norton on two Witch World novels (Gryphon’s Eyrie (1984) and Songsmith (1999)).  In 1989 she launched the juvenile StarBridge series, whose opening volume of the same name tells of the founding of a galactic academy for brilliant teenagers.  Later books, generally with co-authors, recount the adventures of its often troubled cadets.
Lynn Cullen writes children’s books, some, such as Backyard Ghost (1993), with fantasy overtones and others, like The Mightiest Heart (1998) and Godiva (2001), based on medieval legends.
Julie Czerneda attributes her writing career to her mother. “When I didn’t like the ending of a book, Mom gave me a typewriter and suggested I write my own. I never stopped.” Trained as a biologist, she has worked as an animal researcher and has a special interest in the use of science fiction as an educational resource, which she has pursued as editor of four Tales from the Wonder Zones anthologies for elementary schools and in a nonfiction book for teachers, No Limits: Developing Scientific Literacy Using Science Fiction (1999).  She has also edited several adult anthologies, including Packing Fraction and Other Tales of Science and Imagination (1999), Revisions (2004) and the forthcoming Summoned to Destiny.  Her debut novel, A Thousand Words for Stranger (1997), about a telepath stripped of her memory, inaugurated her Trade Pact series (continued in Ties of Power (1999) and To Trade the Stars (2002)).  Her other major series, Web Shifters, features the struggle for survival of a species of shape changers.  It includes Beholder’s Eye (1998), Changing Vision (2000) and Hidden in Sight (2003).  Her non-series novel In the Company of Others (2001) won the Aurora Award, the Canadian version of the Hugo.  Her latest novel, Survival (2004), begins a new series, Species Imperative, in which the evolution of one species depends upon the extinction of others.
© 2006 by the World Science Fiction Society. All rights reserved.
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