Steve Jackson

Steve Jackson graduated from Rice University in Houston. While there, he spent most of his time playing war games and working on the student paper, the Thresher. He became a writer and game publisher, proving that college can be very valuable if you don't let classes get in your way. He has survived involvements with the Republican Party (alternate delegate to the 1972 convention, but he got better - he now considers himself a Libertarian), the SCA (former landed baron and National Chronicler) and law school (escaping before the bar exam; game design was more fun).

Steve's first professional design work was for Metagaming, which published his Ogre, G.E.V., Melee, Wizard, and several other games. In 1980, Steve bought The Space Gamer magazine from Metagaming and started his own company. One of his first games, Raid on Iran, was a critical and sales success. The next year, Steve Jackson Games released its first big hit, Car Wars . . . followed shortly by Illuminati, and later by GURPS, the "Generic Universal Roleplaying System."

In 1983, Steve was elected to the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame - the youngest person ever so honoured. He now spends far too much time helping to manage Steve Jackson Games Incorporated, which at the moment employs 15 people. The company made national news in 1990 after the disastrous Secret Service intrusion, which nearly forced the company out of business by seizing hardware and data files. SJ Games filed suit against the Secret Service and the US government, and won more than $50,000 in damages. He still writes, when he finds the time. In the 1980s, he tried his hand at interactive books or "game novels" (his first, Scorpion Swamp, was published by Penguin and spent six months on the British children's bestseller list). In 1994, he reworked the old faithful Illuminati to jump on the trading-card bandwagon. INWO (Illuminati: New World Order) became the company's biggest hit yet, and its first million-dollar ship.

In addition to gaming, Steve is a dedicated SF reader and fan, and enjoys attending both gaming and SF conventions. He writes filksongs (adequately) and sings (very badly). He still claims to be working on an interactive computer game about running the Worldcon; the beta-test version has been due Real Soon Now for several years. He is a confirmed computerphile and net addict. His other interests include gardening (especially water gardening), bee-keeping, dinosaurs and tropical fish. In his copious free time, he reads, eats and sleeps.

Joan Vinge

Joan was born in 1948 in Baltimore, Maryland. She has been reading science fiction since junior high school, and has been writing professionally since 1973. She now lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, editor Jim Frenkel, and two children. She also has four cats, a guinea pig, a gerbil, two hamsters, plus rats and fish whose numbers vary.

She studied art in college, but eventually changed to a major in anthropology, and received a BA degree from San Diego State University, with highest honours. She has worked as a salvage archaeologist, and finds her background in anthropology very useful in writing science fiction. Her first story, "Tin Soldier", a novelette, appeared in Orbit 14 in 1974. Her stories have appeared in Analog, Millennial Women, Isaac Asimov's Sf Magazine, Omni, and other magazines and anthologies, including several "Best of the Year" anthologies.

Her novel The Snow Queen won the 1981 Hugo Award for Best SF Novel. She has been nominated for several other Hugo and Nebula Awards, as well as for the John W. Campbell New Writer Award. Her novel Psion was named a "Best Book for Young Adults" by the American Library Association. Her Return Of The Jedi Storybook was the #1 Bestseller on the New York Times Book Review List for two months.

Her most recent novels are the third book in the "Snow Queen Cycle", The Summer Queen, her longest novel; and Dreamfall, her third novel about the character Cat, the protagonist of Psion and Catspaw. She also recently finished a novelisation of the new movie, Lost In Space. She is currently at work on Ladysmith, the first in a series of "prehistorical" novels set in Europe.

Jim Frenkel

Jim has edited all sorts of books including several hundred science fiction and fantasy novels, dozens of film and TV tie-ins, mysteries, Westerns, thrillers, historical novels, comic-strip books, crossword puzzle books, and various non-fiction works. He packages the award-winning Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and was until recently a literary agent for a select group of talented writers. He is an editor for Tor Books where he has edited a number of well-known Science Fiction authors.

Kevin Maclean (Fan-GoH)

New Zealand fandom waited for Kevin to leave before organising itself. In Australia, he found out about AussieCon 1 the day after it finished. Figuring that the best way to find out what was going was to be one of the people behind it, he became part of the team running SynCon, the Sydney regional SF convention, for eight years, including two NatCons, and two WorldCon bids. He has led an "interesting" life, including being a straight barman at Les Girls, technically supporting a Royal Commission into a corrupt mental hospital, forming (in partnership with his brother) what is now one of Auckland's largest computer businesses, and entirely too many other things. He was the first elected President of Stella-Nova in its current form, and has recently made his first professional fiction sale. He already has one Sir Julius Vogel Award, and is after more... The man is insane, I tell you, insane, muawahahaha....

Russell Kirkpatrick

Russell Kirkpatrick is a writer, atlas maker and university lecturer. His atlas making business, Mediamerge Mapping, has led to his involvement in projects such as the New Zealand Historical Atlas (1997), Contemporary Atlas New Zealand (1999, 2004), Degrees of Deprivation (2000, 2004) and the Atlas of Bahrain (forthcoming).

Since 2000 he has lectured part-time in Geography at the University of Waikato. His speciality is social cartography; that is, mapping the human dimensions of spatial relationships. This includes such things as post-modernist and feminist cartography.

He has been writing 'epic' fantasy since 1986, and the first book in his 'Fire of Heaven' series was published by Harper-Collins in 2004. The books are to be published this year in the UK by Orbit. He is currently at work on a new series.

Prof. Faye Ringel (International FanGoH)

My name is Faye Ringel, and you probably won't have heard of me, but I have been on the program at INTERACTION, Noreascon IV, several World Fantasy conventions and numerous regional cons in the US.

I'm a professor of Humanities at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and a life-long sf fan; I've published widely in the areas of the Gothic, modern horror, fantasy, and medievalism. I'll be a Visiting Fellow at the University of Canberra this May, doing lectures on the Gothic and on Tolkien.

In the past year I have performed "Bawdy Tavern Songs" as well as "Family-friendly Filk and Traditional Music" at BOSKONE in Boston, Mass., READERCON (also in Mass.); ArmadilloCon in Austin, Texas; NOREASCON; ICFA (the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts) and INTERACTION. I play the piano and have a CD available called "Hot Chestnuts: Old Songs, Endearing Charms." Many of the above convention performances were in collaboration with Australia's Sean McMullen.

I have been active in fandom since the early 1970s, having worked on the early World Fantasy Conventions, and the 1974, 1976, and 1977 WorldCons. Since the 1980s, however, I've mainly been a program participant and performer.

I am the author of New England's Gothic Literature: History and Folklore of the Supernatural; my other publications are in journals or edited collections. I'll be speaking at the University of Canberra on "Nostalgia for Imperialism in American Gothic Culture" and "Defending the West: Tolkien after 9/11".