Chris Roberson: Called one of the new writers to watch by Garner Dozois, Chris Roberson won the Sidewise Award for stories of alternate history twice, once for his short story “Oh One” and once for his novel The Dragon’s Nine Sons and a finalist for the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer on two occasions. He received three World Fantasy Award nominations: one each as a writer, editor, and publisher. Monkey Brain Books, Roberson’s publishing venture (with his wife Allison Baker), has published non-fiction, science fiction, art books, and comics.
Steven Utley: Poet, artist, and author Steven Utley co-edited (with George W. Proctor) Lone Star Universe. A prolific short story writer, collections of his works include When or Where, Ghost Seas, and The Beasts of Love. Utley returned to his native Tennessee in 1997, where he died of cancer in January 2013.
Martha Wells: Nebula finalist for the fantasy novel The Death of the Necromancer, Martha Wells writes of the fantasy world Ile-Rien. Her three science fiction novels dealing with the shape-changing Raksura began with The Cloud Roads. Wells also penned two original Stargate Atlantis novels.
Appendix C: The Essential Texas Artists
Berkeley Breathed: Bloom County and its denizens Opus the Penguin and Bill the Cat made Berke Breathed into a household name. The political content of that daily newspaper cartoon strip earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. Breathed began his cartooning career at the University of Texas newspaper The Daily Texan with his daily strip The Academia Waltz. Science fiction themes were abundant in both strips and in the Bloom County successor, Outland. Breathed retired from comic strip work in November 2008. Breathed has since concentrated on illustrated children’s books such as Mars Needs Moms.
R. Cat Conrad: Former industrial chemist R. Cat Conrad combines his love of classical art, comic art, and science fiction art into his paintings and illustrations in a style he refers to as Surreallustration. An award winning artist, he lives with his fantasy writer Rachel Caine in Ft. Worth.
Brad Foster: Earning a record Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist eight times, Foster’s iconic line art has appeared in virtually every fanzine. A publisher as well as an artist, his Jabberwocky Graphix showcases his work as well as more than 300 other artists.
Teddy Harvia: Four time Hugo winner for Best Fan Artist, Dallas area resident Teddy Harvia’s (an anagram of David Thayer) cartoons frequently feature a group of alien creatures with a weird sense of humor dubbed the Wing Nuts. His other characters include the sabertooth Chat in the U.S. fanzine Mimosa, the goddess Opuntia in the Canadian fanzine of the same name, and Enid the Echidna in the Australian fanzine Ethel the Aardvark.
Rocky Kelly: Award winning artist Rocky Kelley’s work incorporates science fiction, fantasy, surrealism, and Pre-Raphaelite influences. In 2006, he won the Art Directors Award at the World Fantasy Convention. The David Letterman Show once highlighted Kelley’s work, as have Nieman Marcus and Spiegel which used his designs in their Christmas catalogs.
Stephan Martiniere: Frenchman Stephan Martiniere moved to Texas in 2008. For his international appealing work, Martiniere won a Hugo, two Chesney’s from the Association of Science Fiction Artists, two British Science Fiction Awards, and three Spectrum Awards. His future vision achieved cinematic immortality as he provided concept art for, among others, I, Robot; Red Planet; Star Wars: Episodes II and III, and The Fifth Element. The books Velocity and Quantumscapes showcase the variety of Martiniere’s art.
Clayburn Moore: Striking action poses on anatomically precise figures are the hallmark of sculptor Clayburn Moore. His typically resin or bronze statues garnered him four Chesley Awards in the Three Dimensional category. CS Moore Studios operates in the Dallas area.
Real Musgrave: The Dallas-based Real Musgrave created his first pocket dragon character in the 1970’s and incorporated them into drawings and paintings. Musgrave, along with his wife Muff, created the pocket dragon figurine line in 1989, releasing more than 400 individual figurines. The whimsical creations even starred in their own cartoon series in 1996. A full time artist and sculptor for more than three decades, Musgrave was been honored as the official artist for the Texas Renaissance Festival for 14 years and later three years for the Scarborough Faire Festival.
John Picacio: San Antonio artist John Picacio has a shelf full of awards including a Hugo (for Best Professional artist), four Chesley Awards, one World Fantasy Award, and two International Horror Guild Awards. He is the only artist to have won all four awards. Trained as an architect, he created the comic Words and Pictures with Fernando Ramirez in 1994. In 1997, he began doing book covers starting with the 30th anniversary edition of Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man. Picacio’s beautiful Cover Story contains many comments on the creation of his art with examples of his creative process.
Don Punchatz: Based in Arlington, Don Ivan Punchatz produced numerous covers and interior illustrations for magazines such as Heavy Metal, National Geographic, Playboy, and Time. He created iconic paperback images for Asimov’s Foundation series as well as Dangerous Visions and employed the painting for Philip Jose Farmer’s A Barnstormer in Oz as the promotional poster for his studio TexOz. Judged the second greatest cover of all time by Game Spy, Punchatz’s work for the video game DOOM influenced game promotion for a generation. He died in 2009 of cardiac arrest.
Vincent Villafranca: Artist and sculptor Vincent Villafranca has won the Chesley Award for 3D art three times and has received awards three times at the World Fantasy Convention art show. He designed the base for the Hugo Awards to be presented at the 2013 World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio. Villafranca also designed the Bradbury Award given by the Science Fiction Fantasy Writers of America for the Best Screenplay.
Author Biographies
Sanford Allen, at various times, has worked as a newspaper reporter, a college journalism instructor, and a touring musician. He currently divides his creative energy between writing tales of horror/science fiction/dark fantasy and his band, Hogbitch, which wallows in the murky swamp between doom metal and space rock. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife, Tracey. Visit him at www.sanfordallen.com.
A lifelong Texan (born 1960 in Corsicana, reared all over the damned place, and settled in the Austin area), Aaron Allston is a New York Times bestselling author. Best known for novels set in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, he has also written original science fiction, fantasy, horror, nonfiction, role-playing games, and screenplays. He is a member of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design Hall of Fame. His recent work includes X-Wing: Mercy Kill (Del Rey Books), Plotting: A Novelist’s Workout Guide (ArcherRat Publishing), “Big Plush” (in Five by Five, WordFire Press), and “Epistoleros” (in Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe, Tor Books). Allston is visually impaired, ethically pedantic, and morally bankrupt. Visit his web sites at www.aaronallston.com and archerrat.com.
Neal Barrett, Jr. has published over 50 novels and numerous short stories. He has been named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Subterranean Press has recently published Barrett’s “career-spanning” short story collection, Other Seasons.
Matthew Bey is a writer and editor living in Austin, TX. He has succeeded in attaining editor-at-large status for many quality publications including RevolutionSF, The Drabblecast, and his own zine, Space Squid, which gives him plenty of padding for anthology bios but no actual responsibility. He blogs about hotdogs, fishing, and Bollywood movies at his site, MatthewBey.com.
Chris N. Brown (aka Chris Nakashima-Brown) writes short fiction and criticism from his home in Austin, Texas, where he is an active member of the Turkey City Writer’s Workshop, as well as a practicing lawyer. Brown is the co-editor, with Eduardo Jiménez, of Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic (Small Beer Press, January 2012). A complete bibliography of his work is available at chrisnbrown.net.
For more than 40 years, Scott A. Cupp has bee
n involved in the Texas science fiction scene as a writer, fan, convention goer, editor, ape fan, and all around geek. Primarily a short story and essay writer, he lives in San Antonio with his wife, two cats and many books and movies. Most recent among his works are the essay, “The Four Color Ape,” In The Apes Of Wrath and “Splash,” a round robin story written with Don Webb, Richard Lupoff, Michael Mallory, Michael Kurland, Paul DiFillipo, and James Patrick Kelley which appeared in Lore Magazine. Weekly reviews of Forgotten Books and Forgotten Movies appear at www.missionsunknown.com. Other details of his life can be seen in the memoir within this volume.
Bradley Denton and his wife, Barbara, moved from Kansas to Texas in the spring of 1988, which now makes them naturalized Texans. In the twenty-five years since that move, Brad’s novels and stories have been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, Stoker, and Edgar awards--and have won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (for Buddy Holly Is Alive And Well On Ganymede), the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (for “Sergeant Chip”), and the World Fantasy Award (for A Conflagration Artist And The Calvin Coolidge Home For Dead Comedians). And now, after a decade in development, it looks as if the motion picture version of Buddy Holly Is Alive And Well On Ganymede is finally about to go into production. We’ll drink a Shiner Bock to that.
Nicky Drayden is a Systems Analyst who dabbles in prose when she’s not buried in code. She resides in Austin, Texas, where being weird is highly encouraged, if not required. She’s the author of over 30 published short stories and you can see more of her work at nickydrayden.com.
Rhonda Eudaly lives in Arlington, Texas, where she’s worked in offices, banking, radio, and education to support her writing. She’s married, with dogs and a rapidly growing rubber duck collection. She likes to spend time with friends and family, movies, and reading. Her two passions are writing and music. Check out her website--RhondaEudaly.com--for her latest publications and downloads.
Mark Finn is an author, actor, essayist, and playwright. A renowned Robert E. Howard scholar, Finn’s Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, was nominated for a World Fantasy award in 2007 and is currently available in a new Second Edition. He is the author of two books of fiction, Gods New and Used and Year of the Hare, as well as hundreds of articles, essays, reviews, and short stories for The University of Texas Press, RevolutionSF, Greenwood Press, Dark Horse Comics, Wildside Press, Monkeybrain Books, Tachyon Publications, and others. Current projects include Dr. Zombie for Monkeybrain Comics, with longtime friend and collaborator John Lucas, and a short story in Tails From the Pack from Sky Warrior Books. When he’s not lecturing or performing across Texas, he lives in North Texas with his long-suffering wife, too many books, and an affable pit bull named Sonya.
Derek Austin Johnson was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1968 and lived in Chicago during the Democratic Convention riots before spending his formative years in Houston, Texas. His reviews and criticism have appeared in Nova Express, His Majesty’s Secret Servant, RevolutionSF, Moving Pictures, and SF Signal. He produces the ongoing monthly film and media column, “Watching the Future,” for SF Site and has written erotic romance under a pseudonym. He currently lives in Central Texas with the Goddess. You can find out more at his website at derekaustinjohnson.weebly.com.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of 30 novels and numerous short stories. He is Writer in Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, a member of The Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and has received many recognitions for his writing, among them The Edgar for Best Crime Novel, The Lifetime and Grandmaster Award from The Horror Writer’s Association, and is the founder and Grandmaster of Shen Chuan, Martial Science. He lives with his wife in Nacogdoches, Texas.
Stina Leicht is a former Campbell Award nominee. Her debut novel, Of Blood and Honey, a historical Fantasy with an Irish Crime edge set in 1970s Northern Ireland, was released by Night Shade books in 2011 and was short-listed for the 2012 Crawford Award. The sequel, And Blue Skies from Pain, is in bookstores now.
Marshall Ryan Maresca is a fantasy and science-fiction writer, as well as a playwright, living in South Austin with his wife and son. His plays include: Slow Night at McLaughlin’s, Cinco Cenas, Danger Girl’s Night Off, Last Train Out Of Illinois, Entropy and Slept the Whole Way, as well as producing the award-winning sci-fi stage serial, Flame Failure. His micro-story “Reminder” appeared in Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction, and his story “My Name is Avenger Girl” was featured in Paige Ewing’s anthology, The Protectors.
One of the first professional Texas women journalists, Aurelia Hadley Mohl (1833-1896) contributed articles, essays, poems, and even fiction to various publications, including the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, Houston Post, San Antonio Herald, Waco Examiner, Dallas Commercial, Dallas Herald, Youth’s Companion of Boston, New York Examiner, Philadelphia Times, and Chicago Standard. A suffragette, she served as the corresponding secretary of the Women’s National Press Association and, later, as vice-president of the Texas branch of the organization. She helped to found the Texas Women’s Press Association. In 1893, Mohl attended the Women’s Suffrage Convention, which lead to the creation of the Texas Equal Rights Association. In 1900, the Federated Women’s Clubs commissioned a monument in her honor, the first by Texas women to commemorate a Texas woman.
Michael Moorcock has lived in Texas for about years. When asked why he moved to Texas, he explains he was on the dodge. Born in London in 1939, he edited New Worlds and wrote some SF and fantasy novels, mostly featuring his Eternal Champion, a recurring character whose job is to maintain the equilibrium of the multiverse. His current novel is The Whispering Swarm. Gollancz, beginning in 2013, is publishing a new, uniform edition of all his genre fiction. Titan are currently republishing (in the USA) his proto-steampunk Nomad of Time series, beginning with The Warlord of the Air, and his Hawkmoon omnibus recently appeared from TOR.
Lawrence Person is a science fiction writer living in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Postscripts, Jim Baen’s Universe, Fear, National Review, Reason, Whole Earth Review, The Freeman, Science Fiction Eye, and The New York Review of Science Fiction, as well as several anthologies. He also runs Lame Excuse Books and reviews movies (frequently with Howard Waldrop) for Locus Online. He owns a very large library of science fiction first editions. He also makes a mean batch of salsa. His blog is at http://www.lawrenceperson.com/.
Jessica Reisman’s stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies. Her first novel, The Z Radiant, was published by Five Star Speculative Fiction. She was a Michener Fellow, owns a large collection of Hong Kong movies, and finds inspiration and solace in books, movies and television, good friends, animal life, and rain. She lives in Austin, Texas, with well-groomed cats. Some of these facts are not related. For more about her fiction, visit storyrain.com.
Josh Rountree is a sixth generation Texan--a descendant of Texas Rangers, horse thieves, and other shady types. His short fiction has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including Realms of Fantasy, Electric Velocipede, and Polyphony 6. His short story collection, Can’t Buy Me Faded Love, is available from Wheatland Press, and his first novel, a collaboration with Lon Prater called Alamo Rising, will be published by White Cat Publications in 2013.
Bruce Sterling, born in Brownsville, is a Texan science fiction writer and occasional “Visionary in Residence” at various design schools.
Don Webb has had over 40 stories on Year’s Best Lists in the last 24 years. He teaches a Writing Science Fiction class for UCLA Extension. His latest fiction is from Wildside Press--half space opera/half vampire fiction, The War with the Belatran/A Velvet of Vampyres. He is a regular at Armadillocon and has written many nonfiction books about the occult.
About the Editor
Professional reviewer, geek maven, and optimistic curmudgeon, Richard Klaw was the co-editor of the groundbreaking original anthology of short fiction
in graphic form, Weird Business, editor of the acclaimed The Apes of Wrath, and co-founder of Mojo Press, one of the first publishers to produce both graphic novels and prose books. He also served as the initial fiction editor for RevolutionSF. Over the past decade, Klaw has written countless reviews, essays, and fiction for a variety of publications including The Austin Chronicle, Blastr, Moving Pictures Magazine, San Antonio Current, Geek Dad, Conversations With Texas Writers (University of Texas Press), The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy (Greenwood Press), San Antonio Business Journal, King Kong Is Back! (BenBella Books), Farscape Forever (BenBella Books), SF Site, Science Fiction Weekly, Nova Express, Steampunk (Tachyon Publications), Electric Velocipede, Cross Plains Universe (MonkeyBrain/FACT), and The Steampunk Bible (Abrahams). Many of his essays and observations were collected in Geek Confidential: Echoes from the 21st Century (MonkeyBrain).
Klaw can often be found pontificating on Twitter (@rickklaw) and his award winning blog The Geek Curmudgeon (revolutionsf.com/revblogs/geekcurmudgeon). He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, a large cat, an even bigger dog, and an impressive collection of books.
The editor would like to thank Jayme Lynn Blaschke for his help in conceiving the original concept lo those many years ago and Jonathan Miles for being the shepherd. Special thanks to George Proctor and Steven Utley for spiritual guidance. And above all, my wife and partner, Brandy Whitten, who suggested the appendices and, though suffering through a hip replacement surgery, still guaranteed that all the contributors got paid.
Other books by Richard Klaw
Anthologies