Guy Consolmagno
Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ is the Director of the Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation. A native of Detroit, Michigan, he earned undergraduate and masters degrees from MIT (where he served as “Skinner” of the MIT Science Fiction Society,) and a Ph. D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard and MIT, served in the US Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics at Lafayette College before entering the Jesuits in 1989.
At the Vatican Observatory since 1993, Dr. Consolmagno’s research explores connections between meteorites, asteroids, and the evolution of small solar system bodies, observing Kuiper Belt objects with the Vatican’s 1.8 meter telescope in Arizona, and applying his measure of meteorite physical properties to understanding asteroid origins and structure. Along with more than 200 scientific publications, Dr. Consolmagno is the author of a number of popular books including Turn Left at Orion (with Dan Davis), and Would You Baptize an Extraterrestial? (with Paul Mueller). He also has hosted science programs for BBC Radio 4, been interviewed in numerous documentary films, appeared on The Colbert Report, and for more than a dozen years he has written a monthly science column for the British Catholic magazine, The Tablet.
Dr. Consolmagno’s work has taken him to every continent on Earth and in 1996 he spent six weeks collecting meteorites with a NASA team on the blue ice regions of East Antarctica. He has served on the governing boards of the Meteoritical Society; the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences (of which he was chair in 2006-2007); and the International Astronomical Union (IAU). He currently serves as the chair of the Mars Task Group on the IAU’s Working Group on Planetary System Nomenclature. In 2000, the small bodies nomenclature committee of the IAU named an asteroid, 4597 Consolmagno, in recognition of his work. In 2014 he received the Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences for excellence in public communication in planetary sciences.
Learn more about Guy Consolmagno on the Vatican Observatory website, and follow him on Facebook and on Twitter as @specolations.
Peter David
Peter David is a prolific New York Times best selling author and self-proclaimed “Writer of Stuff”. His career, and continued popularity, spans nearly two decades. He has worked in every conceivable media: Television, film, books (fiction, non-fiction, and audio), short stories, video games, and comic books.
In the literary field, Peter has had over a hundred novels published, including numerous appearances on the New York Times Bestsellers List. His novels include Tigerheart, Sir Apropos of Nothing and the sequel The Woad to Wuin, Knight Life, Howling Mad, the Hidden Earth Trilogy and the Psi-Man adventure series. He is the co-creator and author of the bestselling Star Trek: New Frontierseries for Pocket Books, and has also written such Trek novels as Q-Squared, The Siege, Q-in-Law, Vendetta, I, Q (with John deLancie), A Rock and a Hard Placeand Imzadi. He produced the three Babylon 5 Centauri Prime novels, and has also had his short fiction published in such collections as Shock Rock, Shock Rock II, and Otherwere, as well as Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Peter’s comic book resume includes an award-winning twelve-year run on The Incredible Hulk, and he has also worked on such varied and popular titles as Supergirl, Young Justice, Soulsearchers and Company, Aquaman, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, X-Factor, Star Trek, Wolverine, The Phantom, Sachs & Violens, The Dark Tower, and many others. He has also written comic book related novels, such as The Incredible Hulk: What Savage Beast, and co-edited The Ultimate Hulkshort story collection. Furthermore, his opinion column, “But I Digress…,” ran in the industry trade newspaper The Comic Buyers’s Guide for nearly two decades.
Peter is also the writer for several popular video games: Shadow Complex, Spider-Man: Edge of Time, and Marvel Future Fight.
Peter is the co-creator, with popular science fiction icon Bill Mumy (of Lost in Space and Babylon 5 fame) of the Cable Ace Award-nominated science fiction series Space Cases, which ran for two seasons on Nickelodeon. He has written several scripts for the Hugo Award winning TV series Babylon 5, and the sequel series, Crusade. He has also written several films for Full Moon Entertainment and co-produced two of them, including two installments in the popular Trancersseries, as well as the science fiction western spoof Oblivion, which won the Gold Award at the 1994 Houston International Film Festival for best Theatrical Feature Film, Fantasy/Horror category.
Peter’s awards and citations include: the Haxtur Award 1996 (Spain), Best Comic script; OZCon 1995 award (Australia), Favorite International Writer; Comic Buyers Guide 1995 Fan Awards, Favorite writer; Wizard Fan Award Winner 1993; Golden Duck Award for Young Adult Series (Starfleet Academy), 1994; UK Comic Art Award, 1993; Will Eisner Comic Industry Award, 1993; Julie Award 2007; SDCC Inkpot 2016.
Peter lives in New York with his wife, Kathleen, and his four children, Shana, Gwen, Ariel, and Caroline. He is the proud father of four daughters and proud Grandfather of two grandsons.
Learn more about Peter David on his website, www.peterdavid.net, and follow him on Facebook and on Twitter as @PeterDavid_PAD.
Bridget Landry
Bridget Landry was educated as a chemist and planetary scientist, trained as an engineer, and has worked in spacecraft operations for 30 years. She has worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, the joint US-French oceanographic Earth-orbiter Topex, the Mars Pathfinder project, the Cassini mission to Saturn, the Dawn mission at the asteroid Vesta, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and the Spitzer space telescope. Currently, she is in science sequencing development for Mars 2020, the Curiosity follow-on Mars rover mission.
Ms. Landry takes great interest in the advancement of women in technical fields, especially mitigating the barriers to their progress, as well as strategies and ideas for sparking and maintaining early interest in STEM fields for all girls. Wearing her technical hat, she has been on science-related panels at several WorldCons, as well as local and large regional science fiction and fantasy conventions. She been a Science Guest of Honor at several regional conventions, and has participated in many science and STEM outreach activities outside the fannish community.
A Master-level costumer with a twisted sense of humor—ask her about the Strauss Waltz Assault Team—and a fondness for Star Trek: The Original Series, Ms. Landry has been an active fan since the age of 13 when she volunteered for four hours at her first science fiction convention before ever getting her badge. She is a skilled corsetiere and a frequent panelist on a range of costuming topics from “Herding Cats” (large masquerade group entries) and movement in costuming, to proper historical undergarments and “From the Page to the Stage” (bringing 2D images or text descriptions into a 3D world.) Throughout her costuming career, Ms. Landry has participated in many, many masquerades as a participant, a judge, and a show runner.
Chuck Tingle
Two-time Hugo Award finalist Dr. Chuck Tingle is an erotic author and Tae Kwon Do grandmaster (almost black belt) from Billings, Montana. His extremely prolific works often fall into the category of speculative fiction by incorporating elements of science fiction, fantasy, pop culture, and anthropomorphization.
After receiving his Ph. D. in holistic massage, at DeVry University, Chuck found himself fascinated by all things sensual, leading to his creation of the “tingler”, a story so blissfully erotic that it cannot be experienced without eliciting a sharp tingle down the spine. Chuck’s hobbies include backpacking, checkers, and sport, and he has recently teamed up with Nightvale Presents for a new podcast titled, Pounded In The Butt By My Own Podcast.
Dr. Tingle’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Huffington Post, LitReactor, GQ, The New Yorker, WIRED, Vox, Kotaku, Destructoid, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Inverse, Salon, Newsweek, Boing Boing, The Guardian, NPR, Missoula Independent, Comedy Central, Paper Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Cosmopolitan.
In 2016 Tingle was nominated for a Hugo Award for his short story, Space Raptor Butt Invasion. As a response to an alt-right fan group conspiring to politicize his works, Tingle announced video game designer and anti-harassment activist Zoë Quinn would accept the award on his behalf if he won. His story did not win and Tingle subsequently published Pounded in the Butt by My Hugo Award Loss, which went viral on social media.
Billings newspaper The New York Times says, “By creating an online community in which his particular outlook—what he calls his ‘unique way’—is not just accepted but celebrated, Mr. Tingle has delivered a strong rebuke to the intolerant forces that used him as a prop in attacking diverse voices in the sci-fi world.”
For the past several years, Tingle’s work has been a staple at CONvergence’s very popular Sci-Fi Erotica Read-Aloud.
Regarding Dr. Tingle, notoriously handsome bad boy Jeff Goldblum adds, “we obviously have a very magical connection. I love all your ideas, and I would say that the handsomest dinosaur is Handsome Doctor.”
Learn more about Chuck Tingle on his website, www.chucktingle.com, and follow him on Facebook and on Twitter as @ChuckTingle.
Allen Turner
Allen Turner is a Black/Lakota/Irish game designer, storyteller, artist, dancer, author, and performer who believes in the power of play and story as fundamental, powerful medicines which shape our sense of self, our relationships, and our connection to the cosmos. A 20 year veteran of the video games industry, he has worked on projects at Bungie Software including Myth, Myth II, and Oni; at Day 1 Studios including MechAssault; at Wideload Games including Stubbs the Zombie and Hail to the Chimp; and at Marvel Comics and Disney Interactive Studios including Disney’s Guilty Party and Marvel XP.
As a storyteller, Allen often focuses on myths and legends within the Native American community in Chicago, and has provided cultural performances for the Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Public Library, the Illinois Teachers Conference, Newberry Library, Chicago Historical Society, and most recently the Adler Planetarium. Through his studio, Council Of Fools, Allen created and published the table-top RPG Ehdrigohr: The Roleplaying Game. Using a dark fantasy setting that pulls from the myths and folklore of Native American peoples and tribal peoples from all over the world, Ehdrigohr provides the player a gaming experience that explores tribal themes and allegorical battles with depression, solitude, identity, and erasure.
Currently Allen is working on a number of gaming projects which include Arboretum Imaginarium, a deck of cards featuring artist Stacey Taheny intended to be used for exploring personal and social narratives and lenses; DreamWalk, a board game/tool for group storytelling and myth making and the exploration of the meaning behind those myths; The DePaul Game Studio, a studio space within DePaul where students can participate in long-term game development projects; When Rivers Were Trails, an adventure game designed with with Elizabeth LaPensée and the Indian Land Tenure Foundation to provide a historical context to the plight of Natives forced to travel west due to the Dawes Act of 1890 and freelance writing for role-playing game properties by Onyx Path Publishing, White Wolf, and Khepera Publishing.
Additionally, Allen has recently been working with Stacey Taheny on Revel8her, a two-person band experimenting with synthesizers and spoken word.
Learn more about Allen Turner on his website, www.council-of-fools.com, and follow him on Twitter as @CouncilOfFools.
Bryan Thao Worra
Bryan Thao Worra is the Lao Minnesotan Poet Laureate and holds over 20 awards for his writing and community leadership including a 2009 NEA Fellowship in Literature in Poetry and a 2019 Joyce Award. Born in Vientiane, Laos in 1973, his work is most typically classified as speculative poetry, with roots in punk rock and industrial music, cosmicism, Theater of the Absurd, Intermedia, and Fluxus. The author of ten books, his work appears internationally in over 100 publications in Australia, Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland, Germany, France, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, China, Korea, and Pakistan.
Bryan is the President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, a network of 400+ members in 19 nations what recently marked 40 years of promoting poetry with science fiction, fantasy, and horror elements. His speculative literature work has appeared in Uncanny Magazine; Strange Horizons; Innsmouth Free Press; Expanded Horizons; Mithila Review; G-Fan; the Book of Dark Wisdom; Tales of the Unanticipated; Apex; and the Mexican-Jewish Literary Review. He is featured in the anthologies Cthulhusattva: Tales of the Black Gnosis; Future Lovecraft; Historical Lovecraft; The Book of Starry Wisdom; How To Live On Other Planets; Bamboo Among the Oaks; and Sunspot Jungle: The Ever Expanding Universe of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Throughout his career, Bryan has played a key role in helping to popularize an understanding of Southeast Asian mythology and legends, presenting at events such as the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival; San Diego Comic Con; Diversicon; G-Fest: the International Godzilla Convention, and more. He was a Cultural Olympian representing Laos during the 2012 London Summer Games. He has been a consultant to the NEA, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and is cited in over 9 college textbooks. In 2018, Bryan was appointed to the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans by Governor Mark Dayton to advise the Minnesota legislature as the representative of Lao Minnesotans. He is the first Lao American to hold professional membership in the Horror Writers Association.
Today, Bryan continues to support and assist the efforts of numerous other Southeast Asian and Asian American literary journals. In 2019 a 20-year retrospective of his work and other artists in the Laomagination tradition will be convened in North Minneapolis, probing key artistic questions around how refugees reconnect with inner memories and dreams in diaspora, and how they can express a future in which they see themselves.
Bryan is a playable character in the reissue of the Horror on the Orient Express campaign for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. He has been a member of the International Carnivorous Plant Society and holds scholar status with the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. His 2013 book, DEMONSTRA, was selected as Book of the Year by the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
Learn more about Bryan Thao Worra at his blog, thaoworra.blogspot.com, and follow him on Facebook and on Twitter as @thaoworra.
The Doubleclicks
The Doubleclicks, whose members are Laser Malena-Webber and Aubrey Turner, are a nationally-touring, Billboard-charting nerd band with a cello, a meowing cat keyboard, and songs about dinosaurs, cats and Netflix, space, and Dungeons and Dragons. Their YouTube videos boast over 3 million views and have been featured on BoingBoing, Kotaku, the Huffington Post, and on NPR shows Live Wire, All Things Acoustic, and State of Wonder.
Since debuting with a weekly YouTube songwriting project in 2011, the Doubleclicks have carved out a space in geek and songwriting communities with their message of empowerment and their penchant for involving their community of listeners in the creation of their music and videos. The Doubleclicks’ albums Lasers and Feelings (2012), President Snakes (2015), and Love Problems (2017) all hit the Billboard charts in comedy.
The Doubleclicks have written theme songs and created commercials for popular game brands Cards Against Humanity and Fluxx; for a Nerdist partnership with Totinos; and for many podcasts and web series. Sometimes called “nerd music” or “kids music,” the Doubleclicks reach beyond these labels to create meaningful music making audiences laugh and cry.
The band’s loyal fan base frequently participates in their music videos and has elevated the band by funding two albums via Kickstarter projects raising a total of more than $135,000.
The Doubleclicks produce a touring variety show called #NerdNightOut, which features comedy and music for a geek audience, and has included guests such as Jackie Kashian, Mike Drucker, and Bill Corbett. The band has toured the country, playing everywhere from music venues to comedy clubs, game stores, and at events like San Diego Comic-Con, PAX, JoCoCruise and more.
Learn more about The Doubleclicks on their website, www.thedoubleclicks.com, and follow them on Facebook and on Twitter as @theDoubleClicks.
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