CONvergence 2017: To Infinity and Beyond is just a few short days away—guests, panels, games, music, and space opera-themed squee are nigh. But we thought in advance of welcoming this year’s impressive slate of guests, we’d take a moment to revisit our guests from CONvergence 2016, some of whom you will even be able to reconnect with this weekend! Here’s what they’ve all been up to since last July.
Amal El-Mohtar and her colleague Max Gladwell took a . . . stab . . . at publishing movie review blog posts. Read their review of Rogue One here. Throughout the past year, Amal has written several reviews for NPR Books—most recently, she reviewed Elizabeth Wein’s The Pearl Thief. Amal is a finalist for this year’s Hugo award for Best Short Story for her work Seasons of Glass and Iron, and will attend WorldCon in Helsinki this August with other finalists. She also just passed her comprehensive written and oral exams, and should be congratulated heartily!
Amy Shira Teitel’s work continues despite the recent change in direction of Popular Science’s blog network. She continues to produce nerdy space-related YouTube videos multiple times a week, and was recently approached by the Museum of Flight in Seattle with a request to include one of her videos in their Apollo exhibits.
Cam Banks just finished a Kickstarter for his latest project, Cortex Prime. The dice-based tabletop RPG’s gaming system traces its origins back to the Sovereign Stone system in 1999, and the Serenity RPG in 2005. This system is just one of the worlds in Cam’s head—he alludes to several other ideas percolating beneath the surface on his Patreon page.
Christopher Jones and Paul Cornell at New York Comic Con
Following the culmination of CONvergence 2016, Christopher Jones provided the artwork for a 5-issue Doctor Who comic book mini-series featuring the Third Doctor, which was written by fellow CONvergence Guest of Honor alumnus Paul Cornell. Christopher went on to spend the first few months of 2017 working miscellaneous smaller projects, and is now gearing up to work on another new Doctor Who mini-series for Titan Comics.
To celebrate the recent anniversary of the start of the Star Wars franchise, Daren Dochterman has provided fans with full-length commentary on the original Star Wars films from his perspective as a career studio designer and artist. He also recently helped with the production of a two-record vinyl album soundtrack of Star Trek the Motion Picture, which can be heard here.
Joseph wants you to pretend he’s got a sword hidden down the back of his shirt.
Greg Weisman has stayed very busy. He’s partnered with Four Horseman Studios on a new graphic novel series—Mythic Legions: Book 1 propels the momentum of one of the most successful action figure Kickstarters in history to a new platform and was just released in March. He’s also worked with fellow artist Will Conrad on new DC miniseries The Rise and Fall of Captain Atom. Greg has also spent this last year diligently working on season three of Young Justice and the second novel in the World of Warcraft: Traveler series.
Joseph Scrimshaw was a guest on Dan Harmon’s live show Harmontown, which gave lots of listeners insight into Joseph’s own Obsessed podcast. He and his partners launched a successful Patreon for their ever-growing Star Wars podcast feed, ForceCenter. He’s been writing for and appearing on Screen Junkies—among other things, playing Superman in a roast of Captain America. This past year he also traveled to Vienna to help write a video game about Chuck Norris, and performed at Dragon Con, SF Sketchfest, Gallifrey One, and across Los Angeles. Joseph swears Mark Hamill followed him on Twitter and occasionally likes his jokes about politics an or Star Wars. This year he will continue his long-standing tradition of attending CONvergence and participating in a full slate of panels.
Khary Payton is fresh off the press from Walker Stalker Con San Francisco, having joined The Walking Dead in the role of “King” Ezekiel. (He actually took a break from filming The Walking Dead to join us at CONvergence 2016 but wasn’t allowed to talk about it! Can you believe that?) More recently Khary has been working with at least one other former CONvergence Guest of Honor on Young Justice season three.
Khary Payton as Ezekiel in The Walking Dead. (via AMC)
Mark Oshiro still does stuff. Namely, he reads and watches things, and then reviews them for us to enjoy. His recent review of Fantastic Beasts for Uncanny Magazine is a raw and painfully personal approach to Rowling’s recent flick Following a very recent relocation to New York City and a brief stop at WisCon, his reviews have continued unabated: check out his blog for recent reviews of Wizards at War, The Truth, and Star Trek: Voyager.
Ytasha Womack’s short film A Love Letter to the Ancestors from Chicago debuted in Bristol, England a few weeks ago. Ytasha brought Afrometropolis—her futuristic, funkadelic, inclusive city—to the Arnolfini arts centre as part of an immersive artist takeover. Earlier this year, Ytasha spoke about empowerment, the imagination, and Afrofuturism at the Sonic Acts Fest in Amsterdam.
That wraps up our overview of what the CONvergence 2016 guests have been up to since last July. We’re definitely looking forward to having Cam Banks, Christopher Jones, and Joseph Scrimshaw join us again this year!
Now that you’ve caught up with all of the CONvergence 2016 guests, why not check out our exciting slate of CONvergence 2017 guests?
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