Announcing the DucKon 21 Literary Guest of Honor, Robert J. Sawyer
Robert J. Sawyer — called "the dean of Canadian science fiction" by The Ottawa Citizen and "just about the best science-fiction writer out there these days" by The Denver Rocky Mountain News — is one of only eight writers in history (and the only Canadian) to win all three of the science-fiction field's top honors for best novel of the year:
- the World Science Fiction Society's Hugo Award, which he won in 2003 for his novel Hominids;
- the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Nebula Award, which he won in 1996 for his novel The Terminal Experiment;
- and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, which he won in 2006 for his novel Mindscan.
Rob is also the only writer in history to win the top SF awards in the United States, China, Japan, France, and Spain. In addition, he's won an Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada as well as eleven Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards ("Auroras"). The ABC TV series FlashForward is based on his novel of the same name.
Maclean's: Canada's Weekly Newsmagazine says, "By any reckoning, Sawyer is among the most successful Canadian authors ever," and Barnes and Noble calls him "the leader of SF's next-generation pack."
Rob's novels are top-ten national mainstream bestsellers in Canada, appearing on the Globe and Mail and Maclean's bestsellers' lists, and they've hit #1 on the bestsellers' list published by Locus, the U.S. trade journal of the SF field. His twenty novels include Frameshift, Factoring Humanity, Calculating God, Wake , and the popular "Neanderthal Parallax" trilogy consisting of Hominids, Humans, Hybrids.
He's often seen on TV, including such program as Rivera Live with Geraldo Rivera, Canada A.M., and Saturday Night at the Movies, and he's a frequent science commentator for Discovery Channel Canada, CBC Newsworld, and CBC Radio.
Rob — who holds an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University — has taught writing at the University of Toronto, Ryerson University, Humber College, the National University of Ireland, and the Banff Centre. He has been Writer-in-Residence at the Richmond Hill (Ontario) Public Library, the Kitchener (Ontario) Public Library, the Toronto Public Library's Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, and at the Odyssey Workshop. And he edits Robert J. Sawyer Books, the science-fiction imprint of Red Deer Press.
Rob has given talks at hundreds of venues including the Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada, and been keynote speaker at dozens of events in places as diverse as Los Angeles, Boston, Tokyo, and Barcelona. He was born in Ottawa in 1960, and now lives just west of Toronto with his wife, poet Carolyn Clink.
For much more about Rob, see his 10,000-word autobiography.
Above text courtesy of http://sfwriter.com/bio.htm
Past Literary Guests
Lee Darrow
Certified Hypnotist, Professional Magician, Mentalist and former Research Associate at the Illinois Center for Parapsychological Research attached to Northeastern Illinois University. Also licensed insurance broker/agent (but please don't hold that against me! - I got the licenses on a bet).
I'm a long time fan, one of my first cons being StarCon 2 where I got to bodyguard George Takei and am one of the original Dorsai Irregulars. My education has been wide, eclectic and varied, including actual college credit hours in parapsychological research, which included several investigations which will probably be included in one of the panels (the Popcorn Ghost being one I'm sure we'll talk about). Hobbies include puns, fandom, tech (my day job, actually), and a lot of other esoteric stuff. Ask me - I might tell...
John Everson
John Everson is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Covenant (2004), Sacrifice (2007), The 13th, (2009) and Siren (2010). All of these novels were released in paperback by Leisure Books. Limited hardcover editions were also issued from Delirium Books, Necro Publications and Bad Moon Books.
Over the past 15 years, John's short fiction has appeared in more than 50 magazines, including Space & Time, Dark Discoveries and Grue, as well as in a couple dozen anthologies, most recently in A Dark and Deadly Valley, Cold Flesh, Damned, and Kolchak: The Night Stalker Casebook. His short stories have also been translated and published in Polish and French. A wide selection of his short fiction has been collected in four short story collections - Creeptych (Delirium Books 2010), Needles & Sins (Necro Books, 2007), Vigilantes of Love (Twilight Tales, 2003) and Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions (Delirium Books, 2000).
Chris Gerrib
Chris Gerrib's (kinda-sorta) first novel, Pirates of Mars, comes out from Hadley Rille Books in November, 2011. (He released a "practice novel" called The Mars Run in 2006. Yes, he's a bit obsessed with Mars, but in a healthy way.) Chris still has a day job as the IT director at a Chicago-area bank, and holds degrees in history and business from the University of Illinois and Southern Illinois University. He also served in the US Navy during the First Gulf War, and can proudly report that not one Iraqi MiG bombed Jacksonville, Florida while he was in the service. In his copious free time, Chris is also active in his local Rotary club.
Live Journal
Kerri-Ellen Kelly
Kerri-Ellen Kelly is many things, among them: certified hypnotist; costumer (Order of the Willow in the SCA and member of group costume entry at the 2010 Costume Con that won best in class for the journeyman level); renaissance dancer; renaissance singer (member of two a capella vocal ensembles that sing medieval and renaissance music); cook of both modern & historical recipes especially sweet baked ones; crafter. She has been active in fandom since her first convention in 1982, Chicon, and has sometimes been known for extremely popular parties featuring a tang-based highly alcoholic punch known as Agent Orange. She is also very active in the Society for Creative Anachronism with an Elizabethan persona and spent years in an historical guilde at the Bristol Renaissance Faire.
Photo courtesy of Ken Beach.
Diane Ladley
Diane Ladley is the founder and president of Historic Ghost Tours of Naperville, Historic Ghost Tours of Aurora, Historic Roundhouse Ghost Tours, Historic Ghost Tours of Elgin, and the parent company, Haunted Hometowns Corporation. She is the author of HAUNTED NAPERVILLE (2009 Arcadia Publishing) and HAUNTED AURORA (2010 The History Press). Ladley is a popular public speaker and nationally award-winning storyteller, named by her peers as "America's Ghost Storyteller". She was a State of Illinois ArtsTour Artist for 2001-3 and again in 2003-5. Diane Ladley is the far west Chicago suburban field representative for the American Ghost Society, and is the first and foremost authority on the local haunted history and supernatural lore of Naperville and Aurora, Illinois.
Jeffrey Liss
Jeffrey G. Liss published science fiction has appeared in ANALOG, SCIENCE FICTION AGE and ARTEMIS. He is a Member (Active) of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and serve on its Contracts Committee. In 2005 he was Chair of SFWA's Nebula Awards weekend. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Space Society, and previously served as editor of INSIDE NSS, Chair of the 1989 International Space Development Conference and Vice Chair of the 2010 ISDC (both in Chicago), and principal co-editor of 1989 PROCEEDINGS.
In real life Jeffery Liss a general business and real estate lawyer in Chicago and have served as Chair of various Committees and Sections of the Chicago and Illinois State Bar Associations.
He have written and lectured widely on both legal and space-related subjects, and participated on panels at two Worldcons and numerous other science fiction conventions.
Curt Morley
Curt Morley is man who has had a life long passion for the strange and unusual. As a teenager he began researching the weird history of the Fox River Valley. These efforts resulted in his leading Ghost tours in Elgin Illinois and other locations. In 2006 he released Fox Valley Phantoms, an audio CD of true ghost stories from the Fox River Valley. In 2009 he released a second CD of these stories, called more Fox Valley Phantoms. These CD's will be for sale at the Convention and will soon be avalible online. Mr Morley is also an accomplished Hypnotist and has been a member of the National Guild of Hypnotists since 1991. He has published in the Journal of Hypnotism and Hypnosis today. Curt also has a passion for bad movies, and will be doing Panels on all of these topics.
Tamora Pierce Guest of Honor 2010
Tamora Pierce was drawn to books from a young age. Raised in rural Pennsylvania, the child of a "long, proud line of hillbillies," her family never had much. "We were poor, but I didn't know it then. We had a garden where my folks grew fruit and vegetables and our water came from a well," she explains. But one thing they did have was plenty of books. So Tamora read.
A self-proclaimed "geek," she devoured fantasy and science fiction novels, and by the age of 12 was mimicking her literary idols and writing her own action-packed stories. It was thanks to her father that Tamora began writing. "He overheard me telling myself stories as I did dishes, and he suggested that I try to write some of them down," Pierce says.
But Tamora's novels had one major difference: unlike the books she was reading, her stories featured teenaged girl warriors. "I couldn't understand why the writers I loved had no girl adventurers, so until I could talk them into correcting this small problem, I wrote about those girls, the fearless, bold, athletic creatures that I was not, but wanted so badly to be."
Seventeen years later, after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, a brief career in teen social work, some time spent writing for radio, and a job as assistant in a literary agency, Tamora Pierce held true to her childhood crusade, and published Alanna: The First Adventure, the first in a quartet about a valiant, young, *female* warrior. Pierce's heroine struck a chord with readers across the country and quickly earned her a loyal following.
Pierce is now a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author and has written more than two-dozen books, including her newest, TORTALL AND OTHER LANDS: A COLLECTION OF TALES. She is also co-author with her husband Timothy Liebe of White Tiger: A Hero's Compulsion from Marvel Comics. Her books are translated into over fifteen languages and available in English worldwide, which brings her wonderful fan mail. "It's a pretty good life. Struggling as a kid and through my twenties and thirties, it's the life I dreamed of but never believed I would get. Yet here I am, after a lot of work, a lot of worry, a lot of care for details, and with a massive chunk of luck, the kind that brought me such strong friends and readers. Pretty good for a hillbilly, yes? And I never take it for granted," she says.
Pierce lives in Syracuse, New York with her husband Tim, eleven tame and two semi-feral cats, two parakeets, a rotating cast of stray and feral outdoor cats, and various other freeloading wildlife.
Kathryn Sullivan
Kathryn Sullivan was born and raised in the Chicago suburb of Berkeley, Illinois. She started writing science fiction and fantasy not long after she had finished reading all of the books in her father's reading collection. Stories about girl agents defeating alien bad guys and tales of wizards' apprentices looking for forgotten treasure filled school notebooks alongside her regular homework. Her first published novel was The Crystal Throne, which won the EPPIE for Best Fantasy, and its sequel, Talking to Trees, was a finalist for a Dream Realm Award for Best Young Adult. Her short story collection, Agents & Adepts, won the Dream Realm Award for Best Anthology. A Doctor Who fan, she has short stories in two Doctor Who anthologies published by Big Finish and an essay in Chicks Dig Time Lords, published by Mad Norwegian Press. She is a proud member of Broad Universe and EPIC.
Kathryn lives in Winona, MN, where the river bluffs along the Mississippi River double as cliffsides on alien planets or the deep mysterious forests in a magical world. She is well used to dealing with alien lifeforms, as she's owned by a cockatoo who graciously allows her to write about other animals as well as birdlike aliens.
W.A. (Bill) Thomasson
Bill Thomasson is a science/medical writer with a PhD in biochemistry and broad interests in all aspects of science and likely futures. What technologies are going to drive the next 40-year long-wave economic cycle? He has been reading SF since the first appearance of Rocket Ship Galileo but didn't discover cons until 1980. It took him another decade to discover just how much fun it was being on panels. When not working or reading SF, Bill serves as volunteer Treasurer for Chicago's annual Disability Pride Parade (he has been legally blind since 2000) and tries to maintain the on-the-ground political activity in which he first became involved at age 67.
John Wardale
John W has been attending SF CONs since 1993 and teaching panels since 1995. He is a computer professional, was as an organizer for E.L.V.I.S. (The Emergency Link to Vital Internet Services) [1994-1999]
John has done these 2 panels (typically solo) for General and/or Children's Programming at several CONs over the years, including 6 such panels at Anticipation (Montreal WorldCON-67).
Michael Z. Williamson
Michael Z. Williamson is variously an immigrant from the UK and Canada, a retired veteran of the US Army and USAF with deployments for OIF and Operation Desert Fox, a bladesmith, a martial artist, a reviewer and product tester of firearms, outdoor and disaster preparedness supplies, editor-at-large of Survivalblog.com, a consultant for the Discovery and Outdoor Channels, and a best-selling author of SF, some fantasy, some contemporary and other genres, with 12 books in over 40 editions. When not doing any of the above he enjoys good Scotch and SF conventions.
http://www.SharpPointyThings.com