Sci-Fi Making, Comics Book Writing, Dystopian Reading, Directed Playing, Xenolinguistic Talking and more: The Saturday Fantasy speakers lineup is starting to shape up. Stay tuned for details…
Sheila Finch - View Website
Sheila Finch is the award-winning author of eight science fiction novels. She is most well known for her many stories about members of the Guild of Xenolinguists, the translators of the languages in the worlds we will explore in the future. Her novel, Infinity’s Web, received the Compton Crook award and her YA book, Tiger in the Sky, won the 1999 San Diego Book award for best juvenile fiction. In 1998, she won the coveted Nebula Award for her novella, Reading The Bones.
Sheila’s work has been collected in numerous anthologies and she’s a regular contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Sheila is now conducting private, small-group critique and workshop sessions. For more information, please visit SheilaFinch.com.
Marc Zicree - View Website
Marc Zicree and his wife, Elaine, are writer-producer-directors with hundreds of hours of produced network series, pilots and features for virtually every major network and studio. They are regarded among the country’s top media experts and have been interviewed by hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio shows.
Marc’s landmark book The Twilight Zone Companion has been credited with creating the modern genre of books on TV series and inspiring a generation of series creators and filmmakers who read the work as teenagers and went on to become writers. In addition, Marc is a lauded novelist with the bestselling Magic Time trilogy appearing from 2001-2005, published by HarperCollins and Blackstone Audio.
Marc’s non-fiction writing credits have included documentary work for PBS and the Discovery Channel and numerous articles in TV GUIDE and other publications. Beyond this, he broadcasts the popular Zicree Simkins podcast (zicreesimkins.wordpress.com and iTunes).
Joshua Hale Fialkov - View Website
Joshua Hale Fialkov is the creator of the critically acclaimed cult hit Elk’s Run, a graphic novel released by Random House Publishing’s Villard imprint. His other work includes the ecclectic comedy series Punks the Comic, and beloved horror anthology Western Tales of Terror.
Joshua was the winner of Top Cow Publishing’s inaugural Pilot Season program, wherein 1.5 million people voted for his refresh of Top Cow character Cyblade. He has been the translator of many volumes of manga, most notably Del Rey’s Princess Resurrection. Joshua also just completed an acclaimed run on Harris Comics’ iconic Vampirella. He has written for companies including Marvel, Wildstorm, IDW, Dark Horse, Image, Tor Books, Seven Seas Entertainment, Dabel Brothers Productions, and St. Martin’s Press.
Joshua Dysart - View Website
Joshua Dysart co-created and wrote the cult hit comic book series Violent Messiahs in 1997. The first eight issues were collected in the graphic novel, Violent Messiahs Vol. I: Book of Job in 2002. Since then he has done work for virtually every major comic book publisher, including DC, Vertigo, Dark Horse, Image, IDW and Penny Farthing Press.
He wrote the comic book adaptation of the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for Art Asylum, authored the one-shot Van Helsing: Beneath the Rue Morgue (an original story featuring the character from the Universal film) and penned Skull & Bones: A Monster House Story, which was tied into the Sony animated children’s film. He’s also had his comic books included in the packaging for both The Age Of Conan mmo computer game from Funcom and the Hellboy platform game from Konami.
Dan Goods - View Website
Dan Goods is the “Visual Strategist” for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology where he develops creative ways of communicating. My work ranges from art pieces in museums to ways of communicating to politicians. Installations for JPL include The Hidden Light, about finding planets around other stars, and The Big Playground, in which a hole drilled into a grain of sand shows the scale of the universe and the small area in which we have found hundreds of planets in our own galaxy.
He recently finished an installation using a substance called aerogel which is 99.8% air and has been used by NASA to capture dust from a comet. This installation entitled Solid Smoke, is at the Technorama in Wintertur, Switzerland. In addition I am part of a team creating a 108’ data driven sculpture that will be the centerpiece artwork for the new extension of the San Jose Airport.
Dr. Joan Wines (Aldous Huxley Society) - View Website
In addition to her duties as chair of the English Department, Dr. Joan Wines has been the advisor for California Lutheran Univerisity’s (CLU) award-winning literary publication Morning Glory for the past 12 years. She also directs the Writing Center and the Center for Teaching and Learning at CLU.
Dr. Wines is active in the Aldous Huxley research community and was an organizer for the 2008 International Huxley Symposium co-convened by CLU and the Huntington Library.