In-Person Program Participants

Please welcome our programming participants who will be attending in person in addition to our Guests of Honor, Kevin Andrew Murphy and Myrna Donato.

Bob Brown is a walking example of the phrase “Used to Be.” Bob used to be an award winning photographer, an award winning journalist, a recalcitrant sailor, a Certified Health Physicist, Politician, and more. Now? Bob is a writer, editor, publisher, protester, and dog walker. He is best known as the Bob behind B Cubed Press where he publishes the best selling Alernative Series. Bob likes dogs, tolerates cats, and tries very hard to like most people he meets.

	Kuma Bear found Lisa Hayes in 1990 while Lisa was working as a “booth babe” at an amateur radio convention. He has been Lisa’s constant companion ever since, traveling around the world but also to the grocery store with her. Kuma chaired the Tonopah in 2012 Westercon bid, and still doesn’t understand why Kevin was so relieved that Seattle won the election. Kuma’s hobbies include sleeping, thinking about fish, and helping at fannish events. He’s a good bear.
	Guy Bradshaw born in Bristol England arrived in Carson, CA via North Carolina. He enjoys watching British and American Science Fiction TV shows. Guy loves learning about history, trains and anything aviation. He became obsessed with an online game called Kerbal Space and created a Kerbal world and looks forward to sharing that world with you all.
	Arlene Busby currently, holds the position of President on the Board of Directors of the Aerospace Legacy Foundation in Downey, CA a 501c3 non-profit organization. She also started a new Science/Science Fiction convention called OuteRimCon the mini con which is set up to fund the organizations many projects. Due to the COVID Pandemic OuteRimCon is on hold until further notice. Other pursuits Arlene is involved with is the aerospace speaker’s bureau which includes other space organizations and groups. She is also Vice President of the local Los Angeles chapter of the National Space Society OASIS. Her motto is never give up an opportunity to educate on the history of the aerospace industry.
	C.D. Carson once met someone who said that he had watched the 2012 documentary “Lunarcy!”, and thought that Christopher must be an actor, because surely no real person would look, speak, and behave like what he saw. Fortunately, Christopher doesn’t feel the need to meet anyone’s expectation of what is normal. That would take effort which he would prefer to expend (for instance) in establishing a lunar settlement. Caught between his natural shyness and the impulse to advocate for what he feels strongly about, Christopher finds SF conventions to be a great chance for conversation. If he bends your ear to say that the future of humanity lies among the stars, or that the control of atomic energy is one of the finest accomplishments of the human intellect and a very powerful aid in solving the problems we face in the world today, we might well end up talking about something else entirely. The Stars Are Ours!
	Timothy Cassidy-Curtis has been published in NOVA, the Magazine of Science Fiction, and the Orange County Science Fiction Club (OCSFC) Chapter Book (all Editions). Tim has been involved with space and space exploration almost his entire professional life. Tim is taking over being the closest thing to a “President” that the OCSFC has, succeeding after several decades of great, dedicated service by Greg Funke. Tim is also a Life Member of the Aerospace Legacy Foundation and serves on the ALF Board of Directors.
	Jim L. Doty is a full-time SF&F writer, scientist (Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, specialty laser physics), and former running-dog-lackey for the bourgeois capitalist establishment. With 15 published books, he writes hard science fiction, epic fantasy and urban fantasy, frequently with strong, young-adult themes. His first success came through self-publishing, which led to contracts with traditional publishers like Open Road Media and Harper Collins Voyager. Jim has an abiding interest in all things scientific, like orbital mechanics, space travel, laser weapons, and other geekie stuff. He lives in Tucson, AZ with his wife Karen, and two little beings who claim to be cats: Julia and Natasha. But Jim is certain they’re really extra-terrestrial aliens in disguise.
	Michelle Evans (www.Mach25Media.com) is a writer, photographer, and communications specialist in aerospace. She has written the bestselling book “The X-15 Rocket Plane, Flying the First Wings into Space” which was published by the University of Nebraska Press as part of their “Outward Odyssey, People’s History of Spaceflight” series. Michelle’s background in aerospace engineering includes serving in the US Air Force working on missile systems, and later in private industry accomplishing environmental testing for systems used in airliners and spacecraft. Her current work primarily involves exciting audiences about space exploration by speaking of the X-15 and other areas of the space program at venues across the country, as well as overseas. Michelle is a Distinguished Speaker with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and her book on the X-15 was a finalist for the Eugene M. Emme Award for Astronautical Literature. Michelle received the Diverse Community Leader Award from Orange County Human Relations, and was recognized as number 3 on the Orange County Register’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in Orange County. She has appeared in numerous publications, including Air & Space Smithsonian, Ad Astra, Orange County Register, Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times. Michelle had feature stories about her life in both Time and Newsweek magazines. She was a technical consultant on the Neil Armstrong biopic “First Man,” and has consulted with National Geographic television for “The Real Right Stuff.”
	Adrienne Foster stepped up to the leadership of Bay Area Ghost Hunters on Meetup.com in October 2008. At the time the organization had 227 members and as of this writing, it has a membership of 1,956 the BAGH can also be found on Facebook and Next Door. Before BAGH, she wrote reviews for Epinions.com, specializing in travel reviews on haunted hotels, restaurants and destinations, as well as books, movies and documentaries with a paranormal focus. She has also worked on several conventions — primarily coordinating writers workshops — including Worldcon, Westercon and BayCon.
	Zelda Gilbert is professor emerita of psychology, following a 45 year career in higher education. Just for fun, she currently lectures on political psychology, conspiracy theories, and the psychology of wearing costumes. For Westercon, she will be talking about a wide range of cosplay topics, including fantasy and SF costumes as well as political, life stage and sacred costumes and how they’re all related.
	Steve Gillett has been a frequent contributor to _Analog_, including a fiction piece set in Nevada with lots of the action in Tonopah (“Damned If You Do…”, May ’07). He was previously on the faculty of the University of Nevada’s Mackay School of Mines. He lives in Washoe Valley and is the author of _World-Building_ (Writer’s Digest Press, 1995). In recent years he has been interested in the staggering implications of molecular-scale nanotechnology to resource extraction and pollution control (which become the same problem), and his book on this topic has finally appeared (_Nanotechnology and the Resource Fallacy_, Pan-Stanford Publications, 2018). If the Mackay School of Mines had gotten behind the concepts it might still exist…
	Lynn Gold has been attending cons for longer than she likes to publicly admit. She’s been a con chair, run many music tracks, run a 24-hour con suite, run outreach (publications/publicity), programming, and of course Party Coordinator. She’s also run many parties and is known for being able to do so on a tight budget. Lynn has also been Toastmistress at Consonance, Fan GOH at Loscon, Featured Filker at LepreCon, and has performed original music at cons around the world. In her mundane life she shares a house in Mountain View, CA, with a Bichon Frise named Grace (as in “Hopper”) and writes computer documentation.
	Dr. Kevin Grazier is a planetary physicist, and currently the Staff Scientist at Masten Space Systems in Mojave, CA. Grazier has also served as a science consultant on several television series and feature films such as BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, GRAVITY, and, most recently, FOUNDATION. He is also the co-author of the “Hollyweird Science” series of books that explore the depiction of science, scientists, and the culture of science in TV and film.
	Hugh S. Gregory is a survivor of a recent battle with cancer, Hugh is an avid Spaceflight Historian based in Kamloops, BC, Canada. His career includes Engineers’ Surveyor, Industrial Paramedic/EMT and managing his own OHS Program consulting service. His research portfolio includes the conceptual theory work on the E.L.D.S.R.R. space reactor, Project M.O.S.S. (Musk Observatory Supernova Search), Project M.A.S.T. (Mars Analogue Simulation Trainer) for the Mars Society and co-authoring a paper published in Cartographia on mapping on Mars. From 2005 to 2008 he was the Mars Society Engineering Team’s Chief Training Documents Editor, Chief Cartographer and Waypoint Database Curator for both the MDRS and FMARS research stations. From 2006 to 2015 he was the Official Spokesperson for the Orbital Commerce Project, the world’s first non-government funded flight school for training sub-orbital pilots and payload specialists. He’s produced and sold videos on “Voyager 2 at Neptune”, “The Gas Planets”, “SSTO-The DC-X”, “Soviet Space Disasters” and “The Flight Of Buran-The Russian Shuttle Story”. Hugh’s slide/video shows have been appearing at Conventions across North America and also overseas for over 32 years, including 11 world cons and 8 Dragon Cons. On weekends he’s a private pilot, amateur astronomer, wind tunnel Bodyflyer & competition judge, an avid downhill snow skier, and enjoys mountain hiking with his wife Anne. This is Hugh’s 12th appearance at Westercon.
	Eileen Gunn is a writer and editor. Her short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies Eclipse One, Wired, Hayakawa’s Sf Magazine, Nature, Asimov’s Magazine, and others around the world. I’m the publisher and editor of The Infinite Matrix. Eileen’s fiction has received the Nebula award in the United States and the Sense of Gender award in Japan, and has been nominated for the Hugo, Philip K. Dick, and World Fantasy awards, and shortlisted for the James Tiptree. Jr. award.
	Lisa Hayes first attended Westercon in 1990 as part of a local Portland fan group. There she met her future husband, Kevin Standlee, under amusing circumstances (ask her to tell you the story). While they were planning their wedding at Eclecticon in Sacramento, they were stymied when the convention suddenly folded. Lisa stepped in to chair on short notice a small one-day substitute convention called Micro-Eclecticon. She has organized parties at and for Westercon and Worldcon at many conventions. Lisa shares Kevin’s love of trains and rail transit, so she and Kevin married on board a Portland Vintage Trolley somewhere along Portland’s light rail system. Lisa’s hobbies include video production. She has acquired extensive profession recording equipment, which she uses to record the Worldcon and Westercon Business Meetings and other fannish events. She makes Kevin sound good while running the tech at MATCH GAME SF. She’s ultimately the person responsible for Westercon 74 being in Tonopah, thanks to her truck having broken down while she was driving through the town and her exploring the town while waiting for it to be repaired.
	Sean Patrick Hazlett is an Army veteran, speculative fiction writer and editor, and finance executive in the San Francisco Bay area. He holds an AB in history and BS in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government where he won the 2006 Policy Analysis Exercise Award for his work on policy solutions to Iran’s nuclear weapons program under the guidance of future secretary of defense Ashton B. Carter. He also holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where he graduated with Second Year Honors. As a cavalry officer serving in the elite 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, he trained various Army and Marine Corps units for war in Iraq and Afghanistan. While at the Army’s National Training Center, he became an expert in Soviet doctrine and tactics. He has also published a Harvard Business School case study on the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and how it exemplified a learning organization. Sean is a 2017 winner of the Writers of the Future Contest. Over fifty of his short stories have appeared in publications such as The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, Terraform, Galaxy’s Edge, Writers of the Future, Grimdark Magazine, Vastarien, and Abyss & Apex, among others. He is the editor of the Weird World War III and Weird World War IV anthologies. Sean also teaches strategy, finance, and communications at the Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Executive Education Program. He is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and Codex Writers’ Group.
	John Hertz, a Los Angeles fan and member of LASFS, is noted for his fan writing, panel moderating, masquerade judging, art show tours and Regency dancing, to say nothing of his propeller beanie (exchanged for a top hat when he dons dancing attire). He received the Big Heart Award at the 2003 Worldcon and was the DUFF delegate to Aussiecon 4 in 2010. He was sent to the 2007 Worldcon by a one-time travel fund, HANA (Hertz Across to Nippon Alliance). He is a Rotsler Award judge and a perpetrator of the Prime Time Party. He writes frequently for fanzines, has pubbed his personalzine, Vanamonde, weekly since 1993, co-edited Button Tack: The Rick Sneary Memorial Fanzine, and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2006, 2007 and 2009. Several collections of his writing have been published: Dancing and Joking (2005), Neither Complete nor Conclusive (2013), On My Sleeve (2008), and West of the Moon (2002). Born in Chicago, John is a lawyer, educated at Antioch College and Northwestern University School of Law.
	Bradford Lyau has been in fandom for over forty years. A historian by training (BA, UC-Berkeley; MA, PhD, University of Chicago), he taught at several universities in California and Europe. He once worked for the Department of Energy at a national laboratory facilitating technology transfer (government to business) projects. He presently works for a start-up company, Globosocks LLC, and is also a political activist/consultant. He has published academic articles on American, British, European, and Chinese science fiction. He was an invited program participant in 1984 for the George Orwell Conference in London, and in 1991 for the Utopian Conference held in Switzerland, as part of its 700th anniversary celebration. His book, The Anticipation Novelists of 1950s French Science Fiction: Stepchildren of Voltaire, received very positive reviews from leading academic SF journals and is a reference for further reading in the “France” entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. In 2019 he received the Sam Moskowitz Archive Award (given by First Fandom), for both collecting and scholarship, at the Dublin World SF Convention.
	Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including Move Under Ground, I Am Providence, and The Second Shooter. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, Tor.com, and many other venues. Much of it was recently collected in The People’s Republic of Everything. Nick is also an anthologist; he co-edited the Bram Stoker Award-winner Haunted Legends with Ellen Datlow, and the Locus Award nominees The Future is Japanese and Hanzai Japan with Masumi Washington. He recently collected Lovecraftian fictions in the sublime mode in the anthology Wonder and Glory Forever. Nick’s fiction and editorial work has been variously nominated for the Stoker, Hugo, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson awards.
	Will Morton born in WV now lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife Yvonne. A retired electrical engineer with 16 years’ experience working on the Space Shuttle program, he teaches electronics part-time at a community college. He is active locally as a stand-up comedian. As a writer, he has been published in small press, and recently received Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future contest.
	Long long ago, Pat Murphy‘s fiction won multiple awards, including the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novelette, the World Fantasy Award, the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award for Best Paperback Original, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for Short Fiction. Then life got in the way of writing. But now, after a lengthy hiatus, Pat’s back. She spent the last two years hiding out in Boulder City, Nevada finishing a new novel. Her most recent short fiction is a cautionary tale titled Motherhood, available on Lightspeed.
	Gerald Nordley is a consulting astronautical engineer. retired USAF officer with experience in spacecraft operations and engineering, and a writer of nonfiction and science fiction as “G. David Nordley.” He has degrees in physics and systems management He has a hundred plus publications of nonfiction and fiction His writing won four “Anlab” readers’ awards and nominations for both Hugo and a Nebula awards. His two novels and five story collections are available from Brief Candle Press. His stories focus on the human experience in scientifically plausible futures, with many of them in astronomical settings. His latest is “Titan of Chaos” in this anthology. Gerald was born in Minneapolis, lives in Sunnyvale CA with his wife Gayle Wiesner, has three adult children and one grandchild. See: www.gdnordley.com.
	Maggie Nowakowska began reading SF in the 1st grade (Space Cat Visits Venus) and hasn’t stopped. Active in Star Trek fanzine fandom in the 1970s, Maggie found a home in regional SF cons as a panelist and as an award-winning fanzine fiction writer. In 1991, she was Fan Guest of Honor at AllianceCon II, 17th ItalCon, in the Republic of San Marino, Italy. When fandom moved online, Maggie remained active and currently supports efforts to familiarize new fans, especially young women, with the history of female fanac. She has been interviewed on media fandom history in podcasts, has sat on many “Geek Elder” panels, and discusses print fanzine history in the episode, “The Stories We Tell,” part of “Looking for Leia,” a documentary released on SF/Wire in 2019. Most recently, Maggie has co-edited the 2022 book, “Geek Elders Speak: In Our Own Voices,” a collection of 33 memoirs covering 50 years and more of women as published writers, gamers, costumers, con-support, fanzine authors and publishers, and dedicated readers — in SF and Media fandom. Maggie lives in Seattle, with her wife, SF writer Susan R. Matthews, and a varying number of Pomeranian dogs.
	Janice Oberding Historian and paranormal investigator, is the author of 37 books on the subjects of the paranormal, history, and true crime. She writes nonfiction as well as fiction. She appeared on Zak Bagans’ Ghost Adventures Goldfield Hotel episode. She is Nevada based. and has investigated throughout the US, especially the central Nevada area of Tonopah and Goldfield.
	Carole Parker‘s detail focus worked well in her publications career, as well as her interests in costuming, dyeing, and wearable art. She has competed in masquerades and won numerous workmanship awards for her dyework. Carole likes combining traditional, such as Shibori, and contemporary techniques to obtain unusual results. She has been a Workmanship Judge at Chicon 7 (Worldcon), and presentation judge at several other conventions. Carole has served on numerous concoms, including the Spokane, Helsinki, and San Jose Worldcons as the Costuming/Cosplay content programming lead.
	Martin Pyne has been reading science fiction and fantasy since he was a child, although he didn’t discover fandom until the late 2010s. He currently lives in a small apartment full of books in Sunnyvale, CA, where he writes software by day and serves as a Planning Commissioner by night. In his spare time, he’s been working on ascending the highest point of every county in Nevada (five left as of press time), California, and other places that host conventions.
	Kimberly Roberts is a physical medium and a psychic. She has dealt with the paranormal her entire life. She has read Tarot and palms since she was a teenager.
	Kevin Roche has been costuming since he was 8, and a conrunner for years. In his secret identity as a scientist at IBM Research Almaden, he’s hard at work wrangling giant robot vacuum chambers and electrons in atomically engineered materials, and is an IBM Q Ambassador and Qiskit Advocate, explaining the weird world of quantum computers to audiences around the world. He is also the editor of Yipe! The Costume Fanzine of Record (www.yipezine.com)
	Kevin Standlee is one of SF Fandom’s compulsive organizers. His first SF convention was the 1984 Anaheim Worldcon. He first attended Westercon in 1985 and almost immediately caught the bug for bidding and helping run conventions, clubs, and other fannish activities. He was involved in the San Francisco in 1993 Worldcon bid, and met his future wife, Lisa Hayes, while putting up flyers for an SF in ’93 bid party at the 1990 Westercon in Portland. Kevin later went on to co-Chair the 2002 Worldcon in San Jose. He is a director of SFSFC, Inc. (1993, 2002, and 2018 Worldcons, 2000, 2011, 2013, and 2022 Westercons) and of CanSMOF (2009 Worldcon), and he is currently Vice-Chair of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee and Chair of Westercon 74. Kevin is an expert on the rules of Worldcon and Westercon. He has presided over the Worldcon Business Meeting in six different countries (Scotland, Japan, Canada, USA, Finland, and Ireland) and over many Westercon Business Meetings. His other hobbies include trains and rail transit. In recent years, he has hosted the SF-themed game show MATCH GAME SF, with Lisa making the magic happen while he serves as straight man.
	Talulah J. Sullivan has been a pro equestrian, a dancer, an actor, an activist, and a teacher… yet she’s never managed to not be a storyteller. Ever. Blood Indigo is the first (but not the last!) of her novels seeking to weave a ‘tale basket’ in the proud example of her Choctaw and Chickasaw grandmothers. As J Tullos Hennig, she was awarded the Speculative Literature Foundation’s juried Older Writers Grant, and wrote the award-winning historical fantasy series The Books of the Wode, in which Robin Hood is reimagined as a queer, chaotic-neutral druid. Her works reflect worlds both old and new, cultures both fantastic and familiar, and promise an immersive, subversive experience.
	W. A. (Bill) Thomasson, who turned 85 in August 2021, discovered SF at roughly age 12. That was when Heinlein’s first YA novel was published and Adventures in Time and Space arrived on the paperback counter of the local five-and-dime. He didn’t find fandom until Windycon 3 in 1980, however. Bill discovered how much fun panels were 10 or 12 years later and, almost by accident, got involved in helping run Worldcons in 2011. Meanwhile he got a PhD in biochemistry but, discovering he didn’t have the patience for scientific research, switched into science/medical writing that has involved everything from PR to, most recently, drafting biomedical researchers’ journal articles and grant applications. Following retirement from that job, Bill resumed work on a long-suspended sword-and-sorcery novel, The Whip of Abadur, which was completed in 2021. In the last months of the Twentieth Century Bill became legally blind and has since been heavily involved with disability issues, currently serving as treasurer of Chicago’s annual Disability Pride Parade. Bill also has serious interests in politics and in figuring out what the future is going to look like.
	Andy Trembley found organized fandom in semi-rural Wisconsin when he learned of a SCA shire in his hometown. SCA led to costuming, filking and APAs. Costuming, filking and APAs led to conventions, and that led to attending events all over the upper-midwest. Most recently, Andy ran the “San Jose in 2018: Make the Future” campaign to bring Worldcon 76, the 2018 Worldcon, to San Jose. After a few years away from convention running, he and Kevin Roche will be assisting Westercon 74’s hospitality team by planning their bar.
	Michelle Deborah Weisblat-Dane is a second generation Lasfsian. She’s been in Fandom her whole life. Michelle worked and produced conventions both in and out of fandom since she was 14 years old. She also, supervises and trains robots in virtual reality, sells non-fungible tokens (NFT’s), and puts on events in Virtual Reality.