2019 Confluence History

Dates: July 26-28 – This marked the 30th Confluence conference.
Venue: Sheraton Pittsburgh Airport Hotel in Coraopolis, PA

Guest of Honor: Tobias Buckell

A portrait of the sf writer as a young man

by Charles Oberndorf

ublish fantasy and science fiction and you live in the Cleveland area, you’re probably a member of the Cajun Sushi Hamsters from Hell, a fantasy and science writers workshop that meets one Sunday a month from 4 pm to whenever, depending on how many stories have been submitted and how long we spend on the dinner break. The Hamsters was founded in 1985 by Mary Turzillo. Mary was a professor of English at Kent State University and after she’d attended Clarion in East Lansing, Michigan, she decided that the Cleveland area should have an ongoing workshop of its own. After attending Clarion in the summer of 1999, Tobias Buckell, a senior at Bluffton College, joined the Hamsters.

It was a two and half hour drive from Bluffton, Ohio, to the Cleveland area, and Toby, who at first glance looks like a Midwesterner, someone who might have grown up in rural Ohio, instead seemed to have come from an sf universe by comparison. Born in Grenada, he talked of living on a houseboat, of a cat that could swim in the water, of the diverse people he knew. His long, tightly-curled hair, often in a pony-tail, hinted at the Caribbean heritage that was an essential part of him.

I have such a vivid impression of Toby that I thought this appreciations would be easy to write, so why didn’t I have a series of anecdotes? I called Mary, who said, “He was very young and very self-possessed. He was very focused. He knew what he wanted.” Geoffrey Landis, who attended Clarion with Mary and who joined the Hamster in 1988, when he moved to Cleveland to work for NASA Lewis Research Center, told me this story: “When he sold his first story that we critiqued and Mary told him he should bring champagne to the workshop to celebrate (as is our custom), he said that he couldn’t, because he wasn’t old enough to buy alcohol.”

Although it’s not the case for a number of sf writers, being sociable seemed to come easily to Toby. Over time, I keep meeting diverse people who know and like Toby. However much the Hamsters who knew him were impressed, there seemed to be a dearth of Toby stories. This is a signal of Toby’s strong sense of a center; his lack of desire to develop a social eccentricity that can become the badge of honor that it is for many members in the sf community; and his refusal to make a big deal of what had brought him to Ohio.

Through a writer’s retreat I attend every fall, I met the poet Jeff Gundy (try Abandoned Homeland), who had taught Toby at Bluffton College. In a recent interview, Toby relates the following:

No one in my family, paternal or maternal, had attended college. My stepdad had, though. I didn’t plan on college, I grew up in the Caribbean working on boats, as had a lot of various family. I figured I would as well. I was working on getting my captain’s license and logging hours in high school when a series of hurricanes hit the Virgin Islands in the mid 90s and we lost everything (including my hours sailed logbook, drawings, and writing). We ended up living in my stepdad’s parents’ basement in Akron, OH, a couple months into my senior year of high school. I worked at a McDonald’s, trying to get enough money to go back to the islands and couldn’t make it work, the car kept breaking down and I kept needing my savings to fix it to get me to McDonald’s. Some weeks before college started I ended applying to any college to buy myself four years, as I correctly perceived that I wouldn’t have much in the way of opportunities as a high school grad working a minimal job trapped in rural Ohio.

And here’s how Jeff remembers meeting Toby:

He came as a prospective student with his stepfather during the summertime. I met with him in the lobby of an old dorm where my office was, and just about the first thing he said was: “I want to be a science fiction writer. Can I do that here?” So of course I said yes. We get plenty of students who think they want to be writers; we don’t get many who are so single-mindedly focused.
 
Toby was one of those students who was dedicated to writing from the very beginning—more than he was dedicated to the course work. He had at least one altercation with a professor who didn’t understand why Toby hadn’t purchased the text book.
 
I found out later that Toby had set a goal of getting 500 rejections slips before graduation. He started sending out stories, he would get back rejections, but after a while he would get back small notes. I got to know him from other courses and from when he’d stop in to talk about his writing and the rejections he’d been getting, but then sometime in his sophomore year he took my fiction class. By then Toby saw himself as the “real writer” in the group, but there were some very smart women in the class, and they weren’t ready to just fall at his feet. They would say, “What’s going on here? Why did this happen? What’s this character doing?” All this could have gone poorly here, but to his credit, Toby took in what they said. By the end of the term, he wrote a long story about an old man who was scraping by in a future slum, and it turned out to be a really good story. [Not much later this story, “Fish Merchant,” became his first sale and appeared in Science Fiction Age in the March, 2000 edition. You can read it here: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/buckell_08_16_reprint/]

Toby came into my office late in his junior year. We have a departmental honor program, but you have to have a high GPA to do a project, and Toby’s fell well short. But he wanted to do a project. He had a universe mapped out and some means of faster than light travel figured out, and he was very enthused about it. I told him I would do what I could, and took his proposal to a department meeting. One of my colleagues–the one who had chewed him out for not having bought the book–was especially suspicious. I said, “In ten years he will be our best known alum.” She grumbled and agreed.

This project, which included several stories, became the basis for what Toby later called his Xenowealth series, current made up of four novels: Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin (which was nominated for a Nebula for Best Novel of 2007), Sly Mongoose, and Apocalypse Ocean. The first three were published by Tor, the fourth funded by a Kickstarter fundraiser. It was here that Toby had taken the wealth of peoples he’d known in the Caribbean and put that to use. Jeff again:

Toby kept writing prolifically, he won a Writers of the Future award and went out to that workshop, and started networking like a fiend. By the time he graduated, you could tell he was on his way. He took a job at the IT department for two or three years to pay the bills, married a Bluffton alum, and they got a house on the edge of campus. He decided that as his books started to sell and as he found online means to make money, he could give up the day job.

In the Hamsters, we watched his progress. Mary searched through her records and found old critiques. Mary said to me, “His stories had a good flip strength; you’d look at a single line and think, ‘that’s interesting.’” As she read out critique after critique, I could hear her praise each story and its sense of invention. The only repeated complaint was about character development. Several years later, Toby sent the group a rough draft of Crystal Rain. Mary shared her critique with me. Her concern about character development was absent; everything was about the fine tuning of plot, of making background clear–the kind of things any writer, mature in their talents and skills, needs to hear before revising.

As a hamster, Toby was a helpful critiquer, an encourager. For a number of years, he applied that enthusiasm to working on the staff for the very new Alpha Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Workshop for Young Writers (ages 14 – 19), now in its 18^th year. Founder Diane Turnshek writes, “Toby an Alpha guest author, he was staff for a while and then, when he got married, so was his wife, Emily. Staff at Alpha are volunteers, so for a few years he would truck over from Ohio and spend 12 summer days teaching students, earning nothing more than a hard dorm bed and some cafeteria food.” Toby mentored Alpha students Seth Dickinson, author of the Traitor Baru Cormorant Series, who told Diane, “Toby was great. I still talk to him occasionally.” He also worked with Lara Elena Donnelly, author of the Amberlough Dossier series. She said who said, “I saw him last summer at the Hoover Library Fest and it was really fun to catch up.” This past spring, Toby continues to mentor other young writers. This past spring he was as a Visiting Eminent Scholar at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

I do remember one particular conversation I had with Toby. The reviewer in MacLean’s, Canada’s weekly newsmagazine, called Crystal Rain, “violent, poetic, and compulsively readable.” Violence is a main feature of Toby’s adventure stories, and years ago at Confluence Toby recounted for me several dramatically gruesome moments in Alastair Reynold’s novels. While Toby was praising their dramatic ingenuity, I was deciding I wouldn’t give Reynolds another try. I forgot about the conversation until I read Jeff’s interview, which takes us back to Toby’s education at Bluffton. The college, now a university, is a Mennonite institution. Toby told Jeff, who is a practicing Mennonite:

I’ve been religiously unaffiliated my entire life, but attended an Anglican prep school, so I wasn’t worried about possibly being an odd one out. I grew up interacting with Hindus who celebrated Diwali, Muslims, refugees from the Middle East, practicing Rastafarians, all manner of Christians, and Europeans who considered religion a private question. I enjoyed being around the Mennonite students and professors in classes because they had this biblically-strict calling for social justice and peace that was normally tagged by the evangelical Midwest as something they expected from “godless liberals.”

And here we come to what makes the violence, when it appears, in Toby’s work so fascinating:

The effect of the exposure to Mennonite thinking has often been to remind me of one of my favorite Isaac Asimov quotes from the novel Foundation: “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” It has also led to me spending a lot of time thinking about violence in fiction and in my own fiction specifically. Frequently, when watching and reading fiction, I see authors fall back so quickly into violence without really examining violence and its corrosive impact too deeply. Perversely, that may have led to me being more interested in just how horrific violence actually is and exploring that, instead of painting it in fiction with light strokes.

With Tobias S. Buckell, we see a writer who has built a career around the rich, diverse world which formed his cultural heritage, shaped that writing by taking in the moral underpinnings of his college education, and listened carefully to learn from fellow students and writers. It’s this dedication combined with a willingness to grow that has shaped, and continued to influence our guest of honor’s fiction.

Jeff Gundy’s interview of Tobias S. Buckell can be found HERE

Thanks to Jeff, Mary, Geoffrey, Diane, and Levin Armwood for answering my questions.

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Featured Concert: Michael Moonwulf Longcore

Fun fact: A Klingon in toe socks is more powerful than thousands of convention attendees and can serve to gruntle even the most disgruntled.
Those years also served to hone his musical talents. Over the years he has penned enduring songs expressing the history and culture of the SCA, written seminal songs about SF themes, and set the works of poets Martha Keller and Rudyard Kipling to music. His special emphasis is history, and throughout his music he returns over and over again to the daily struggles of the individual – whether on a heroic level or with the simple goal of feeding his family for another day4, but always for the good of those around him5.
Fun fact: You CAN swing a broadsword when you’re in the forest, but only once and probably only partway.
Wulf has released 14 albums, the latest of which are Knight Upon the Road and Walking the Wilderness. He has won six Pegasus awards6 and was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2014. He has appeared not only at SF and Filk conventions but also in folk venues and on radio across the country and around the world. He has published short fiction in Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar and SERRAted Edge/Bedlam Bards anthologies.
Fun Fact: Michael Longcor has never held a job that did not involve either pointy objects or hammers. Sometimes both.
But these are merely answers to questions in the Trivial Pursuit 2024 Genus Edition7. The real question that needs to be answered for the discerning convention attendee is, as always, “Why should I spend my precious convention time on this guy?” (That’s assuming you read this bio when you got the program book, of course, and not afterwards, when the question would be “How did I let myself miss such a Golden opportunity?”.)
First, if you miss his concert you will never forgive yourself. Seriously. Few performers across the realms of fandom are as able to weave a stronger spell with their words, music, and performance8 as Wulf. He can take you from the bizarre world of Bob’s Dog Obedience School to the stoicism of the shieldwall, from the dreams of the would-be hero to the honor of the veterans of the Korean war, from a driving beat on the war-drum of his guitar to … that banjo of his.
Fun fact: The banjo is considered a deadly weapon in most civilized countries but is explicitly allowed in Ireland and the United States. Shocking.
Second, if you track him down in a hallway you will find him one of the most fascinating conversationalists and storytellers9 you will have the pleasure to meet. For the price of a wee dram of good Scotch, he can regale you for hours10 with stories of hunting both modern and historic, sagas of the DI and their kin, yarns of his time on the flight line helping pilots like Chuck Yeager land their planes, and genial tales of war in full medieval armor.
And, finally, you may come to understand why so many people in so many walks of life are honored to call him friend, comrade, and brother.

Enjoy.

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T-shirt artwork by Rhonda Libbey and back art by Nancy Janda

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Buy on Amazon

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Entertainment: Costume Contest
Parsec short story contest winning story: Graveyard’s Whistle, by Alfred (A.J.) Smith
Sound technicians: Mark Peters and Roberta Slocumb

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Photo Gallery

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Program Participants:

Rigel Ailur has published twenty-two novels and novellas in all genres but writes mostly science fiction and fantasy. Her work includes the ongoing series The Vagabonds’ Adventures, and Tales of Mimion. Writing as Azure Avians, Rigel’s most recent title Aftermath (book 3 in the Sorcery & Steel series, with Laura Ware) debuted two weeks ago at Shore Leave in Hunt Valley, MD. The author of over eighty short stories, Rigel wrote for the Star Trek Strange New Worlds 10 anthology and for the Shadowrun Seattle 2072 sourcebook. Several ongoing series include The Lady Pirates Series, The Angel Cats Collection, and The Patel Family Chronicles. Online, she’s published “Azencer”, a Mimion supershort piece of flash fiction at Daily Science Fiction, and “Deadly Hauntings” at Story Portals. For more information, please visit www.BluetrixBooks.com

Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen is a singer-songwriter-guitarist who performs both original songs and covers by other notable performers. She has also has published fiction in American and British magazines and in anthologies. Her 2003 first novel, CLAIMING HER, and its 2009 sequel, REFORMING HELL, (published by Wildside Press) received good reviews. A third novel, BABY BOY BLUE (also Wildside), a police procedural mystery set in Philadelphia, was published in 2011 and resold to Linford Mystery Library (large print edition) in Great Britain in 2014. She lives with her husband, editor and author Darrell Schweitzer, and their two cats, Tolkien and Lillyput, in Northeast Philadelphia.

Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times Bestselling author born in the Caribbean. He grew up in Grenada and spent time in the British and US Virgin Islands, which influence much of his work. His novels and over seventy stories have been translated into nineteen different languages. His work has been nominated for awards such as the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author.

Grant Carrington has about 40 stories published in sf, literary, and men’s magazines. SF novel Time’s Fool (1981, Doubleday). Brief Candle Press, Oregon–Time’s Fool & Other Stories (2014), sf story collection Annapolis to Andromeda (2014), sf novel Down in the Barraque (2015). Champlain Shakespeare Festival, American Light Opera Company, actor, lighting tech. 2 CDs, Songs Without Wisdom and Ancient Laughter available at CDBaby. Associate editor, Amazing/Fantastic 1971-74. Clarion Workshop 1968-69, Tulane Workshop 1971. “His Hour upon the Stage” Nebula finalist 1976. “Andromeda Unchained” Short Story Award 1977 Sandhills Conference. 5 plays given full productions in Baltimore.
www.grantcarrington.freeyellow.com.

Kenneth B. Chiacchia: Defrocked-biochemist-turned-science-writer Ken Chiacchia’s first pro SF sale was “A Technical Fix,” Cicada, 2002. Subsequent short stories include “Tribute,” Oceans of the Mind; “And Yet It Moves,” Paradox; “The Rescue Contact,” Cicada; “Victim,” From the Trenches; and “The Humanoid Element,” Cicada. He’s also contributed several stories to the Triangulation series. Ken’s poem “Casualty” garnered a 2007 Rhysling Poetry Award nomination. Ken works a day job as the senior science writer at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. His work as a nonfiction science journalist has won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Science Center Journalism Award and several Golden Quill Awards from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania. The unskilled labor for his wife’s 26-acre farm in Harmony, Pa., Ken also is a sidekick of the dogs who find lost people and (literally) chases after brushfires with the Harmony Fire District.

Brenda Clough has been publishing SF and F since 1984. She’s been a finalist for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards. Her latest novel, “A Most Dangerous Woman,” is available at SerialBox and on Amazon. https://www.serialbox.com/serials/mostdangerous. Her complete bibliography is up on her web page,
www.brendaclough.net

Lawrence C. Connolly’s books include the Veins Cycle novels Veins (2008), Vipers (2010), and Vortex (2014). His collections include Visions (2009), This Way to Egress (2010), and Voices (2011), which include his stories from Amazing Stories, Cemetery Dance, F&SF, Twilight Zone, Year’s Best Horror, and other top genre magazines. Voices was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. Current projects include the anthology film Nightmare Cinema (2018), produced by Mick Garris (Master of Horror) and featuring a segment based on Connolly’s story “This Way to Egress.” Connolly co-wrote the script with David Slade (executive producer of Hannibal and American Gods). Also a spoken-word performer, Connolly has been a featured reader at the Fantastic Fiction Series in NYC (hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel) and the Milford Readers and Writers Festival, where he was science fiction guest of honor in 2017. More at http://LawrenceCConnolly.com

Eric Leif Davin, Ph.D., is the author of “Pioneers of Wonder: Conversations with the Founders of Science Fiction” (Prometheus Books, 1999) and “Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1960” ( Lexington Books, 2006). His short stories have appeared in such anthologies as Jerry Pournelle’s “Far Frontiers” (Baen Books), “The Fantastic Civil War” (Baen Books), and Mike Resnick’s “Galaxy’s Edge,” among other places. His story, “Icarus at Noon,” appeared in “The Year’s Best Military SF and Space Opera” (Baen Books),
June, 2015. His story, “Twilight on Olympus,” appeared in “The Year’s Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction” (Baen Books), June, 2016. He is also a
two-time winner in the Parsec short story contest, including First Place the first year of the contest. Damnation Books published his debut novel, “The Desperate and the Dead,” in 2014. The sequel, “The Scarlet Queen,” appeared in 2016.

Susan Dexter: Once—long ago—I scrounged old diaries to write my first novels. Once, I was a mid-list author for Ballantine Del Rey Books. Now, I am an Indie Author/Publisher. I have both backlist and previously unpublished works available on the Kindle Direct and Nook platforms, and trade paperbacks for sale through Createspace and Wildside Press. Last year, I brought Book One of The Warhorse of Esdragon, The Prince of Ill Luck, back into print. This year, Book Two, The Wind Witch returns. Want more? Visit my website CalandraEsdragon.com and follow my blog there: Take Up the Quest.
Barbara Doran I am the author of “Claws of the Golden Dragon”, a Fantasy pulp with SF overtones published by Airship 27. Although I write mainstream fantasy primarily, I discovered New Pulp when I visited a local Pulpfest in Columbus. Talking to Ron Fortier at Airship 27 about some of the books he published, and the comics he’d written (Green Hornet, among others), it occurred to me that I might have a decent pulp story in me. He expressed some interest and I decided to give it a go. Inspired by “The Green Hornet” TV series, I wrote Claws that fall and by mid spring, Ron had accepted it. I’ve been working on pulps for him ever since. (My Sinbad short will be appearing in Airship 27’s fifth volume of that series in the near future.) Aside from writing, I am a former art show director, a former anime club president and a former programmer. I’m also the mother of two very lively sons and the wife of a long suffering engineer.

Frederic S. Durbin grew up in rural central Illinois, where he spent his childhood avoiding shoes, climbing trees, reading, and playing in a ramshackle barn. He studied classical languages and mythology at Concordia College, River Forest, and graduated summa cum laude. For two decades he taught English and creative writing at Niigata University in Japan. Dwelling with his wife among the wooded hills of western Pennsylvania, he is a frequent presenter of writing workshops. His published work includes the fantasy novels “Dragonfly” (Arkham House) and “The Star Shard,” as well as numerous stories in Cricket, Cicada, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and The Black Gate. His most recent novel, “A Green and Ancient Light,” received the Realm Award for Fantasy and was named a Reading List Honor Book by the American Library Association. Visit him at http://www.fredericsdurbin.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/frederic.durbin.

Shannon Eichorn is a science fiction novelist and aerospace engineer. By day, she works with aerospace test facilities. By night, she writes contemporary space opera. Her first book, “Rights of Use,” debuted in August 2018, thanks to encouragement from the 2005 Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers. When not writing or engineering, she can be found reading werewolf books, posting cat pictures, or playing bass with her church band.

Timons Esaias is a satirist, writer and poet living in Pittsburgh. His works, ranging from literary to genre, have been published in twenty languages. He has also been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award and won the Asimov’s Readers Award. His story “Norbert and the System” has appeared in a textbook and in college curricula. His SF short story “Sadness” was selected for three Year’s Best anthologies in 2015. Recent genre appearances include Asimov’s, Analog and Lightspeed. His full-length Louis-Award-winning collection of poetry, “Why Elephants No Longer Communicate in Greek,” was released Concrete Wolf. He is Adjunct Faculty at Seton Hill University, in the Writing Popular Fiction MFA Program.

Stephen C. Fisher I started reading science fiction and fantasy early in the Eisenhower years. My efforts to write it as well have earned me a nice collection of rejection letters and a tiny handful of publications in mid-sized markets. Along the way I got a Ph.D. in music, rediscovered and published a lost symphony by Haydn, and took part in over 150 performances of the works of Gilbert & Sullivan (variously as pirate, policeman, viola, and second violin). I am also a diehard Phillies fan, a serious amateur entomologist, and a 22-gallon Red Cross blood donor. I am the full-time servant of a family of extremely spoiled cats.

Wendelin Gray is a linguist, writer, dancer, a long-time volunteer with the Silk Screen Arts Organization, and a regular contributor to Pittsburgh Japanese Culture Society events. Her novels include “Sohyeon After Midnight,” “Kumori and the Lucky Cat,” “The Haunting at Ice Pine Peak,” “The Vulpecula Cycle,” and “The Weary City.” She won the bronze for Young Adult Fiction E-book at the 2016 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards for her ghost story, The Haunting at Ice Pine Peak, and in 2017 she founded a new educational project, the Enlightened Rabbit Scholastic Society, promoting Korean and East Asian culture: https://enlightenedrabbit.wordpress.com/. She blogs about East Asian language and literature at: icepinepalace.wordpress.com and sunrisesintheeast.wordpress.com

Kevin M. Hayes hates writing biographies for books in which his stories appear. For some, he relies on humor to entertain his readers; in others, he keeps to the serious side of his personality, hinting at dark, forbidden things readers would be best kept unaware of. Some of his stories and, by extension, his biographies have appeared in “Six From Parsec” and the first two volumes of “Triangulation.” Kevin has also published limericks, but doesn’t expect you to believe that. Sometimes, he reads for the podcast, “Pseudopod.” You will have to decide whether this is a humorous, or a serious biography.

Larry Ivkovich’s speculative fiction has been published in over twenty online and print publications, including Shoreline of Infinity, Across the Karman Line, and TV Gods II. He has been a finalist in the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest and was the 2010 recipient of the CZP/Rannu Fund award for fiction. The third book in Larry’s Spirit Winds Quartet urban fantasy series, Orcus Unchained, was released in 2017, following the novels, The Sixth Precept and Warriors of the Light from IFWG Publishing. Self-published SF novel, Magus Star Rising, was released in 2018. Larry is a member of the SF organization PARSEC, writing/critique group WorD, Pittsburgh Mindful Writers Groups East and North, statewide writers’ organization Pennwriters, and the Taoist Tai Chi Society of the U.S.A. He lives in Coraopolis, PA with his beautiful, talented wife Martha and wonder cats Trixie and Milo.

Nancy Janda attended her first SF con in 1982 and hasn’t looked back — except once, to find out that her grandmother had been active in fandom thirty years before! In the years to follow she has taken many roles in fandom – huckster, artist, judge, docent, demonstrator, actress, concom and now she returns for her second year as co-emcee of Confluence’s costume contest. She hopes that fandom’s late, great “Uncle” Marty will look kindly on her as she follows in his footsteps — but she promises not to tell any bad vampire jokes!

Herb Kauderer’s poem “After” won the 2017 Asimov’s Readers’ Award, and his work has been a finalist for the Analog AnLab Readers’ Awards and many other poetry and/or writing awards. Herb is a retired Teamster who somehow grew up to be an Associate Professor of English at Hilbert College in Hamburg, NY, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College in Vermont. Along the way he wrote ‘Beyond the Mainstream’ (2013) a super low-budget indie film that somehow opened opposite ‘Iron Man 3’ at the local arts cinema. He has sold over 50 short stories, 1500+ poems, and 18 poetry collections, most recently ‘Recalibrating the Future’ from Diminuendo Press and the forthcoming ‘Fragments from the Book of the After-Dead’ from Poet’s Haven Press. He has done many other things in life, much of it related to SF/F/H. He has not missed a Confluence in over twenty years. More details are available at HerbKauderer.com.

William H. Keith, the Confluence 2014 Guest of Honor, has published over 100 novels, mostly military SF and geopolitical thrillers, and has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list several times–unusual for the mil-SF ghetto. During his career, he’s written thrillers with Stephen Coonts, a spy novel with a real DoD spy, and an SF comedy with B-5’s Peter Jurassik. He is perhaps best known for his extremely alien aliens, though recent works have focused more on the technological singularity, mega-engineering, and the remote future. He lives in the woods of western Pennsylvania with his editor wife and numerous non-human sophonts.

Brandon Ketchum is a speculative fiction writer from Pittsburgh, PA who enjoys putting a weird spin or strange vibe into every story, dark or light. He runs the Pittsburgh Writers Meetup Group, and is the coordinator for the 2019 PARSEC Short Story Contest.

Brian Koscienski developed his love of writing from countless hours of reading comic books, losing himself in the different worlds and adventures within the colorful pages. He had minor successes early in his career by getting a few short stories published in independent ’zines, but found more success in partnering with Chris Pisano. As a writing team, they have had stories, articles, graphic novels, and poetry published, as well as two novels, “The Shattered Visage Lies” by Post Mortem Press and “The Devil’s Grasp” by Sunbury Press.

Geoffrey A. Landis is a science-fiction writer and a scientist. He has won the Hugo and Nebula awards for science fiction. He is the author of the novel Mars Crossing (recently re-issued from Tor Books) and the story collection Impact Parameter (and Other Quantum Realities), and has written over eighty published science fiction stories. As a scientist, he works for NASA on developing advanced technologies for spaceflight. He is a member of the Mars Exploration Rovers Science team, and a fellow of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. He was the 2014 recipient Robert A. Heinlein Award “for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space.” In his spare time, he goes to fencing tournaments so he can stab perfect strangers with a sword. More information can be found at his web page, http://www.geoffreylandis.com

Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but now lives in Pittsburgh. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in Analog, F&SF, Daily SF, Lightspeed, and Science. She has won the Rhysling Award and the Elgin Award, and has an antiquated website at http://www.marysoonlee.com. Last summer she finally succumbed to Twitter, where she uses the cryptic pseudonym @MarySoonLee.

Timothy Liebe is the husband of and Site Administrator for popular YA fantasy novelist Tamora Pierce, as well as her co-author on Marvel Comics’ White Tiger miniseries. As an actor, he appeared in original audio productions for NPR and the Pacifica Network; in audio dramatizations of Robert Heinlein’s The Star Beast, Shannon Hale’s Enna Burning, Geraldine McCaughrean’s myth retellings of Odysseus, Theseus, and Hercules, and in Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic series, The Will of the Empress, and “original audio novel” Melting Stones; as well as in cult classic movies Shock! Shock! Shock! and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. As an independent video/filmmaker, he has helped directed and produce numerous independent projects. He co-wrote The Spies’ Guide to Tortall with Tamora Pierce, Julie Holderman, Megan Messinger, et al.

Brea Ludwigson, a recovering technical writer/editor and intermittent poet, is an unabashed fan of the Oxford comma and inveterate critic of the greengrocers’ apostrophe. Her main contribution to the science fiction world is keeping Bill Keith’s office and website running more-or-less smoothly.

Jim Mann is a long-time fan and con runner and a sometime editor for NESFA Press. Volumes he edited include collections of Cordwainer Smith, William Tenn, John W. Campbell, Anthony Boucher, and James Blish.

Laurie Mann has been attending Confluences since 1994 and attended several PghLanges in the mid-70s. She edited William Tenn’s book of essays and interviews Dancing Naked for NESFA Press, which was Hugo-nominated for Best Non-Fiction book in 2005. She helped manage Worldcon Program three times (Sasquan, Renovation and Millennium Philcon). Laurie ran Program for the 2012 Smofcon and chaired the 2017 & 2012 Smofcons. She co-chaired Boskone 25 (1988) with her husband Jim and has run several Confluence Programs. Laurie served as local coordinator and hotel liaison for the Nebula Award Conference in Pittsburgh in 1999, 2017 & 2018. She is retiring from convention management, but will be an Events gopher at Worldcon 77 in Dublin.

Scot Noel: Both Scot and Jane Noel are former project managers of computer game development (in the 1990s for DreamForge Intertainment). In 1999 we founded our own web and software development company, now called Chroma Marketing Essentials. In 2018, we decided it was time to try to bring back a positive, encouraging voice for the future in the form of a science fiction and fantasy magazine, named DreamForge after the now defunct game developer where we met and worked on game like Chronomaster with Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold.

Charles Oberndorf shorter works. The novelette, “Another Life,” was chosen for Best SF #15, edited by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. Charlie is currently at work on two thematic sequels to that story as well as stories set in the Hundred Worlds milieu of “Oracle” and “Writers of the Future.” Charlie is also working on a biographical novel about Abe Osheroff, a carpenter who fought in the Spanish Civil War, built a community center in Mississippi during Freedom Summer and housing for a farm cooperative in a contra-infested region of Nicaragua in 1985. Charlie lives with his wife. He teaches English at University School in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Grant and of a major fellowship from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture. A video put out by CPAC featuring Charlie can be found here: http://www.vimeo.com/21115821

Andi O’Connor is the award winning author of the fantasy series The Dragonath Chronicles, The Vaelinel Trilogy, and The Legacy of Ilvania. Andi’s first YA novel, Silevethiel, was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2013. Her short story, Redemption, is a Kindle Book Review, 2014 Kindle Book Awards Semifinalist. Andi is a member of the National Writers Association and the Boston Chapter of the Women’s National Book Association. She currently resides in Pennsylvania with her husband, son, and four dogs. You can frequently find Andi as a panelist at Comic Cons throughout the country including the Rhode Island Comic Con, Awesome Con, Conclave, WizardWorld, and Chessiecon. You can connect with Andi on Facebook at facebook.com/oconnor.andi, Twitter at twitter.com/OConnorAndi, and Instagram at Instagram.com/andi_oconnor. For more information, visit Andi’s website at andioconnor.net

Hanne Madeleine “Iro” Paine loves books, space, and languages. You can find her wandering the halls in her jumpsuit and magboots, looking ready to clean the air filters or protest Earth and Mars’ exploitation of the outer planets, but actually hoping to chat about what you’re reading or teach you to swear like a multicultural citizen of outer space. Hanne is online as @ItReachesOut, tweeting about language and education and helping produce a weekly Expanse character-themed cocktail; and on Reddit as /u/it-reaches-out, where she moderates the Expanse and Lang Belta communities. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Mark Painter has worked as an electrical engineer and has practiced law in the field of disability rights. He served in elected office for 17 years, culminating in a stint in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, but they let him out early for good behavior. After retiring from politics, he returned to his first love, writing fantasy and science fiction, and sometimes nonfiction. His work has appeared in Weird Tales and Travel + Leisure. He also produces and hosts The History of the Twentieth Century podcast.

Tamora Pierce has published 28 novels and a short story collection in many languages, in addition to co-writing “White Tiger: a Hero’s Compulsion” for Marvel Comics together with her husband, Timothy Liebe, and an episode of Legends of Red Sonja together with Gail Simone, Nancy Collins, and others for Dynamite Comics. In 2013 she received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement. She and Tim live in Syracuse, NY, with a population of rescued cats, indoors and out, and two very suspicious parakeets. These days she is working on The Exile trilogy concerning a gawky wizard’s coming-of-age, set in her Tortall universe. For more information, visit www.tamorapierce.com.

Cat Rambo lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent books are Hearts of Tabat (novel), Neither Here Nor There (collection), and Moving From Idea to Draft (nonfiction). She has been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Endeavour awards and is a two-term President of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. She runs the popular online writing school. The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers. Find more about her at 
www.kittywumpus.net

Aaron M. Roth is a science fiction / fantasy writer. He currently pursues research in robotics and artificial intelligence as a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. He has worked as a software engineer at tech startups in fields such as machine learning, finance, healthcare, and consumer mobile applications.

A.M. Rycroft is the author of the sword and sorcery Cathell series and is part owner of the small publisher Mighty Quill Books. She grew up in the quiet suburbs of Pittsburgh reading horror and fantasy as an escape from the ordinary. In early 2017, she was accepted into the Horror Writers Association for her first dark fantasy novel, Into the Darkness.

Darrell Schweitzer is the author of about 300 published stories, and three novels. His collections include “Refugees From an Imaginary Country,” “Nightscapes” and the recent “Awaiting Strange Gods.” His work has appeared in Twilight Zone Magazine, Interzone, and many anthologies, including the Black Wing series. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award 4 times and was also a Shirley Jackson Award finalist in 2009 for the novella “Living with the Dead.” He was co-editor of Weird Tales for 19 years, and has edited anthologies, including “Tales from the Spaceport Bar” (with George Scithers), “Full Moon City” (with Martin H. Greenberg), “Cthulhu’s Reign,” “The Secret History of Vampires,” and “Tales From the Miskatonic University Library” (with John Ashmead). He has published books on Lord Dunsany and H.P. Lovecraft, written much for The New York Review of Science Fiction. He is also the author of a classic in its field, The Innsouth Tabernacle Choir Hymnal.

Ian Randal Strock (www.IanRandalStrock.com) is a writer, editor, and publisher. He is the owner and editor-in-chief of Gray Rabbit Publications/Fantastic Books (www.FantasticBooks.biz). Previously, he edited and published Artemis Magazine and SFScope. He also worked on the editorial staffs of Analog, Asimov’s, Science Fiction Chronicle, and many others. He considers himself a science fiction author, even though 98% of his published words have been non-fiction. He is the author of three books of presidential history and trivia. His fiction is high-lighted by a dozen appearances in Analog (from which he won two AnLab awards), two stories in Nature, and several in recent anthologies. He has also worked on Wall Street, and as a tour guide at Niagara Falls. He is currently the Northeast Regional Vice Chairman of American Mensa.

R. K. Thorne is an independent fantasy and sci-fi author whose addiction to notebooks, role-playing games, coffee, and red wine have resulted in many words over the years. Her romantic fantasy novel Mage Slave debuted summer 2016, followed by the second volume Mage Strike that winter The final volume of the Enslaved Chronicles trilogy is planned for late summer 2017. A military sci-fi series is also in progress and planned for early 2018. Rebecca independently publishes her work and writes full time. She’s read speculative fiction since before she was probably much too young to be doing so and encourages everyone to do the same. She lives in the green hills of Pittsburgh with her family and two gray cats that may or may not pull her chariot in their spare time.

Mary Turzillo: My Nebula-winner, “Mars Is no Place for Children,” and my Analog novel “An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl” are recommended reading on the International Space Station. I have been a finalist on the British SFA, Pushcart, Stoker, Dwarf Stars and Rhysling ballots. My forthcoming book, “Sweet Poison,” a collaboration with Marge Simon, just came out from Dark Renaissance. My poetry collection “Lovers & Killers” won the 2013 Elgin Award for Best Collection. I’m working on a novel called A Mars Cat and his Boy. I live in Berea, Ohio, with my scientist-writer husband, Geoffrey A. Landis.

Marie Vibbert’s work has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, F&SF, Strange Horizons and Lightspeed, among other places. The Oxford Culture Review said of one of her stories, “It is everything science fiction should be.” She’s a computer programmer by day and played for the Cleveland Fusion women’s tackle football team for five years.

Jeff Young is a bookseller first and a writer second–although he wouldn’t mind a reversal of fortune. He received a Writer of the Future award for “Written in Light,” which appears in the 26th L.Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Anthology. He’s been published in: Realms, Neuronet, Trail of Indiscretion, Cemetery Moon, The Realm Beyond, eSteampunk, and Carbon14. Jeff has contributed to the anthologies By Any Means, Best Laid Plans, In an Iron Cage: The Magic of Steampunk, Fantastic Futures 13, Clockwork Chaos, and the upcoming anthology The Society for the Preservation of C.J. Henderson. He is the editor for the Drunken Comic Book Monkey line for Fortress Publishing as well as the anthology TV Gods. He has led the Watch the Skies SF&F Discussion Group of Camp Hill and Harrisburg for fourteen years.

Live Music Concerts Performed by:

Middle Spoon is a super cute queer and poly positive band from New Bedford Massachusetts. It’s members include Sarah Donner (Sarah Donner, Kittens Slay Dragons), Kim Smith (Kim’s Myth) and Michael McLean (Kittens Slay Dragons). As the world locked down for the pandemic they found themselves quarantined together in the same house, where they fell in love and started this band. Middle Spoon is creating punk tinged indie rock music about their love for eachother, the struggles of polyamory, and cats. Their first single “Drown” is about queer sexy sex during a weather event, and is available wherever you listen to music. IG Bandcamp

Clif Flynt‘s “magic year” was when he was ten. That’s the year when he graduated from “Space Cat” and “The Lost Race of Mars” to Madeline L’Engle’s Wrinkle In Time, A. E. Van Vogt’s Destination Universe and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles. In Jr. High, his school library got the full collection of Heinlein juveniles. His love affair with music began about this time as well. A battered and ignored learner guitar got a full set of strings and a lot of use. Clif has gone on to two decades-long careers: one professional, as a computer programmer, and one amateur, as a writer and performer of filk music. He likes to think that both careers have been successful, but opinions vary.

Night Watch Paradox
The musical equivalent of reading “Treasure Island,” Night Watch Paradox brings the audience along on a participatory journey of musical performance and storytelling as they travel in their imaginary, steam-powered airship through time and space.

Sarah Donner is a singer/songwriter/creative type who has embraced her inner cat lady. Her songs teeter back and forth between playful, nerd core, and ballads, all tied together with bright melodies and driving, energetic instrumentals. Sarah Donner’s music has been featured on The Oatmeal, Conan O’Brien’s blog, NPR, Buzzfeed, i09, Showtime, and CBS. After stretching her legs with musical theatre, she picked up a guitar, abandoned her classical roots, and started rocking out (with fantastic breath support). When she is not touring, Sarah Donner runs Moby Kit Rescue, teaches voice and guitar lessons, She also tours with the bands Kittens Slay Dragons and Middle Spoon. 

For 30 years KIVA has been entertaining and enthralling audiences with their percussive, acoustic, worldbeat ensemble that celebrates the magic of nature and ancient bardic traditions with music that opens the heart and heals the spirit. The band blends strong vocal harmonies with rich and diverse acoustic and electric instrumentation, performing originals, traditionals, and covers. The musicians are inspired by many cultures, spiritual disciplines, and musical styles, including celtic-folk, folk-rock, blues, big band, traditional chants, and jazz. 

Sara Henya is a singer-songwriter and harpist based in Philadelphia, PA. Her music might best be described as Indie-Pop, combining the fun of pop music and the ethereal sound of the harp. Sara incorporates imaginative, fairy fashions and visuals that allow her audience to feel completely immersed in her colorful fantasy world. Though passionate, Sara Henya never takes herself too seriously, incorporating humor into her music and performances. 

Chuck Parker
A performer for more than 35 years, Chuck Parker has filled many musical roles: heavy metal guitarist, singer/songwriter, jazz sideman, open mic host, filk circle regular, and World’s Okayest Bassist™. A regular on the con circuit, both as a solo performer and as the bassist for wizard rock icons The Blibbering Humdingers. He plays slice of life, confessional geek tunes that are often kind of funny, and his lyrics have been called “sensitive”, “literate”, and “hard to sing…”.
Find his music on your favorite streaming service, or on Bandcamp!

T.J. Burnside Clapp encountered filk music at her first convention in 1975, and was delighted to discover she’d been writing filksongs before she even knew what they were. Along with Linda Melnick and Sheila Willis, T.J. formed the group Technical Difficulties in 1985, performing wonderfully harmonized filk songs by themselves and others. An active cosplayer, TJ created a Star Wars X-wing Pilot costume in 1977 that has gone viral on the Internet multiple times, notably after being re-tweeted by Mark Hamill. T.J. is married to fellow filker Mitchell Burnside Clapp. T.J., Mitchell, and Technical Difficulties have won multiple Pegasus Awards for excellence in filking. T.J. last appeared at Confluence in 2009, along with her daughter Jessie and her friends Linda Melnick and Jean Stevenson as the Filk GoHs. T.J. is happy to be back at Confluence to perform once again!

Muggle Snuggle. Equipped with autoharps, accordions, and amortentia, this acoustic duo brings you songs about the Harry Potter series that they have written over the last 7 years. Hear also a few songs from the Kingkiller Chronicle books and Steven Universe!

The Darkest Timeline is a myth, a bedtime story, a shadow in the corner. The Darkest Timeline doesn’t exist. This website doesn’t exist. Perhaps you don’t exist. Do you hear the doubt in the back of your head? That’s the sound of The Darkest Timeline.

With performance ASL for select concerts by Judi Miller

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