MarsCon 2005
"Galactic Pirates & Mercenaries"
Airport Marriott Hotel
Bloomington, MN
March 4-6, 2005
MarsCon 2005
"Galactic Pirates & Mercenaries"
Airport Marriott Hotel
Bloomington, MN
March 4-6, 2005
Ron Ross was born March 11, 1935 in Mitchell SD. He graduated from Mitchell High School in 1953 and from Dakota Wesleyan University in 1957 with a bachelor of arts degree and a minor in radio, speech, and drama. He was married in 1954, and had two children, Margie and Jay. Jay is married with two boys.
Ron has worked in several medias. He spent one year in Clarkfield MN, teaching mostly English and a little art, and decided he would try to find a job in the art field. He went into commercial art with the Vernon Company in Newton Iowa. He also worked for KSOO TV in Sioux Falls, SD for several years as a graphic artist; for a Shoppers News as a commercial artist; and then for Lewis Drug as the sign man.
He went back into teaching for two years in Mitchell, South Dakota, then taught thirty years in Inver Grove Heights, with cartooning as a side line.
During his 50-year "side line", Ron Ross has seen his cartoons published in National Enquirer, Easyriders, V-Twin, Saturday Evening Post, Harvard Business Review, Tattoo, Woman’s World, Sun, Parkhurst Exchange, Medical Economics, Canadian Journal of Diagnosis, Biker, Bonkers, Trade A Plane, Phi Delta Kappan, Accounting Today, Keeper’s Voice, Protooner, Mutual Funds, Ontario Out of Doors, Florida Bar News, The Bawl Street Journal, Cortlandt, The Door, Farm Focus, Minnesota Beverage, Cartoon Opportunities, a medical text book and various others.
He's drawn 5000 cartoons with the help of a number of gag writers. It's a very competitive media for an independent cartoonist. We are thrilled that Ron will be joining us, and showing some of the Sci-fi and fantasy cartoons he's done during his long, successful, and diverse career as a local cartoonist.
Robert Dante is an internationally recognized bullwhip expert who has presented performances, workshops and demonstrations in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Portland, Phoenix, Chicago, Columbus, New York City, Boston, Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Dallas and Houston. Dante is a member of the Wild West Arts Club, and he writes a monthly column for Wild West Performers Magazine Online. He is founder and coordinator of L.A. Whip Enthusiasts, and he was the bullwhip coach at the Dream Circus in Hollywood before he moved to San Francisco. Dante has cracked the whip on numerous TV shows, including Blind Date, Playboy TV's Night Calls, KTLA's Morning News, The Eclectic Mind, Blitz, Envy TV, HBO's Real Sex, Sin City, and others. Dante also has spoken about whip cracking on many radio programs, from Texas to Australia. Dante set the first Guinness World Record for "World's Fastest Whip" at Dream Circus in September, 2003. On September 20, 2004, Robert Dante cracked a 6-foot bullwhip 214 times in 60 seconds at the Spirit of the West Festival in Sioux Falls, SD, beating his old record by 11 cracks. With his performing partner Tina Nagy, Dante travels the US to present bullwhip shows, including blacklight bullwhips. Dante has played nationally in wild west shows, circuses, and cabarets, and he has appeared on such TV shows as Blind Date and Evening Magazine. Dante and Nagy are members of the Wild West Arts Club, the Western Arena Arts Club, and the Guild of Oriental Dance.
From his hopeless manhandling of a drum set in the mid 70's to nasally punk singer in the late 70's to pathetically trendy synth-pop maven in the 80's to a mostly failed attempt to ignore the entire 1990's, Eric has had the sort of musical career that would make most musicians hopelessly incontinent. In the last couple of years Eric has suffered from what he refers to as "Songwriter MPD". He is either putting to tape "hopelessly sad songs filled with self pity and middle aged angst" or he is "making cruel fun of people who, frankly, make a lot more money than I do". At least that is his glib take on it. In reality Eric is writing either character studies of nervous, lonely and frustrated folks that are very much like people you know (and who frequently are people he knows, expect lawsuits if he ever gets famous), or he is writing oddball social satire with a vicious sense of humor. His live sets are punctuated with stories about the songs and the people in them as well as abuse for anyone foolish enough to ask Eric to play a cover song.
Tony Goldmark is the irrepressible 18 year-old scamp known to world wide audiences of the Dr. Demento Show as the author and performer of such infectious little ditties as Kill the Backstreet Boys, Penguin on the Telly and The Sorcerer's Stone. The Looney Bin is a 60-minute Internet radio show hosted by Tony Goldmark which can be heard every Thursday night on Dementia Radio.
THE NICK ATOMS return to MarsCon! If you haven't seen them yet, don't miss out this year! It's a wild trip though Sci-Fi and Fantasy movies and television while using theme songs and clips that have made them famous with an obscure reference or two thrown in to spice things up! So come and meet Dr. Ted Nelson and he'll introduce you to Coburn and Wyngarde, the two wacky robots he built! You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll sit and wonder why as you witness the astonishing THE NICK ATOMS!
The finest in pirate rock. Yarrrr! Experience the mystery of this live metal, blues, thrash, punk, speed, funk, rock music band. Discover the intrigue of rock for the masses. The best band you never heard... next to all the other ones! Nobody can be told what it is. You must experience it for yourself.
It's comedy rock, baby! If you're like us, you've been painfully searching for songs about Jeff Goldblum, Lando Calrissian, 15 year old obsessive fans, strippers, surf monsters and Demi Moore. Well, the search is over, my friend. The search is over.
Sudden Death was formed in the mid-80's and started releasing self-produced cassette albums in the early 90's. The band's big break came in 1998 when Dr. Demento played "South Park Junkie" on his nationally syndicated show of comedy music. The song became a huge success- ending up as the fourth most requested song of that entire year. Since then Sudden Death has become one of the most requested new artists on the show with several songs making the weekly Funny Five countdown, and two more year end Funny 25 appearances- one in 2002 with a duet with the great Luke Ski called Peter Parker (#1), and then again in 2003 with Ozzman (#6). If you're a fan of rap music, Sudden Death strives to produce high quality rap songs that just happen to be funny. If you're a fan of comedy, Sudden Death tries to make each song funnier than the last one. You don't need to be a fan of rap music to appreciate what Sudden Death does.
Worm Quartet is a Rochester, NY-based band that forcibly staples punk and electronica together and throws them into a blender with hysterically twisted lyrics. They have been featured repeatedly on the Dr. Demento show, with many "Funny Top Five" appearances, and one of their songs (the anti-drummer anthem Frank's Not In The Band Anymore) was the second most requested song of 2002! The sole member of Worm Quartet is a 6'4" 300-lb. bemulleted manic who insists on being called "Shoebox" and who poses by day as a mild-mannered software engineer. Worm Quartet is currently playing all over the damned place in support of their new CD, Faster Than A Speeding Mullet.
St. Paul science fiction and fantasy writer, S.N.Arly has had short stories featured at FearsMag.com and in a limited edition DragonCon 2000 chapbook. She has received an honorable mention from the L.Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future contest. She is a member of two local critique groups, Guts and Rocks and Pengames.
Ruth Berman is a co-author of the science fiction novel Autumn World and author of Dear Poppa: The World War II Berman Family Letters, nominated for the Minnesota Book Award. Her speculative fiction poems and short stories have been featured in Dragon Fantastic, Tales of the Unanticipated, Amazing Stories, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, and Weird Tales.
Walter H. Hunt is a science fiction author, with three books in publication: The Dark Wing, The Dark Path, and The Dark Ascent from Tor Books. These novels are set in a future when humankind has spread to the stars and encountered other alien races. Tor Books has also signed up for the last book in the series, titled The Dark Crusade, which is still being written. Walter is the youngest of three children; he grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, where he attended public school, graduating from Andover High School in 1977. He attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and was an exchange student in Munich in 1979-80; the year he met his wife Lisa, who was a graduate student in Switzerland at the time. They were married in 1982. Certainly the best decision Walter ever made. He is a baseball fan and a Freemason, and enjoys board games and roleplaying games; between those interests and family, he has a very busy life. Still, Walter enjoys writing most of all -- there's nothing like doing something you love (and getting paid for it.) He qualifies as a recovering programmer (10 years) and also a recovering technical writer (8 years). For the last three years Walter has been writing full time, which has brought some success and even more satisfaction.
P.M.F. Johnson and Sandra Rector have co-written many stories such as And All I See Are Dark Eyes, A Dwelling in the Evening Air, Desert Angel, Color Me Dead, and Till Death Do Us Part. Their stories have been featured in various anthologies and fantasy story collections, such as Witch Fantastic, Amazing, Whatdunits, and Xanadu 2.
Naomi Kritzer is a member of the Wyrdsmiths writers' group. Her first science fiction and fantasy novel, Fires of the Faithful was released by Bantam in October 2002, and her second, Turning the Storm came out January 2003. Ms. Kritzer's short stories have appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Tales of the Unanticipated, Scavenger's Newsletter, and Planet Relish. One of her stories, The Golem was reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy.
A Minneapolis-based journalist and writer, she is a former member of the Arise! Bookstore collective, and a current member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, the Erotic Authors Association, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Catherine Lundoff's stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, i.e., Such a Pretty Face, Cherished Blood, and The Twin Cities Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Kelly McCullough's first story appeared in Weird Tales in 1999. He has since become something of a regular there, with a half dozen pieces either published or forthcoming. He has three fantasy novels currently under editorial consideration, is polishing a fourth, and plotting a fifth. A collection of short stories for middle school science students will be coming out in 2004, as well as individual stories in Absolute Magnitude and The DNA Helix, among others.
MarsCon's 2002 Literary Guest of Honor, Lyda Morehouse has been a "professional" writer since 1997 when Angela Kessler bought Irish Blood for Dreams of Decadence for a whopping $9.27. Since then, Lyda has published several short stories, two of which made the honorable mention list of Gardner Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction. In May of 2001, Roc published Lyda's first novel, Archangel Protocol, which won the Shamus for best paperback P.I. novel for 2001 and the Barnes & Noble Maiden Voyage award for best debut. Her follow-up book, Fallen Host, takes place in the same universe as Archangel Protocol. Fallen Host was listed in the # 2 slot for Lisa DuMond's Top Ten Books of 2002 list on the SF Site, scored the # 3 spot for the Preditors and Editors poll, and was nominated for a Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award. Her novel, Messiah Node was released in June 2003.
Kathryn Sullivan is the author of The Crystal Throne (winner of the 2002 EPPIE for best Fantasy) and Agents & Adepts, both published by Amber Quill Press. Agents & Adepts is a finalist for the 2004 EPPIE Award for Best Anthology. Her children's book, Michael and the Elf, will be published by Writer's Exchange E-Publishing in 2004. Her short story, The Monster and the Archaeologists appeared in Big Finish's Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries, and another short story, The Oracle of Cilens will be published in Beyond the Mundane: Wondrous Magic and Flights of Mind by Mundania Press in 2004. When she's not writing, she's the Distance Learning Librarian at Winona State University and is owned by two confused birds.
Our Featured Guest for MarsCon 2001, Joan Marie Verba co-authored the science fiction novel Autumn World with Tess Meara, Deborah K. Jones, Margaret Howes, and Ruth Berman. Her other works include Voyager: Exploring the Outer Planets, North Dakota, and Boldly Writing: A Trekker Fan and Zine History.
Anna Waltz ia a local science fiction/fantasy writer who started selling short storirs to magazines in 1999. She also spent years writing anime fanfiction. Her best known original work is Swedish Lutheran Vampires of Brainerd. In 2004 she was a script writer for the on-line RPG EverQuest II.
Our 2002 Featured Guest, Craig Lang is the coordinator of field investigation for Minnesota MUFON, the local chapter of the Mutual UFO Network. He investigates sighting and close encounter reports in the Twin Cities and surrounding areas. Craig is a Certified Hypnotherapist, with the National Guild of Hypnotists. His "day job" is as a computer engineer, working with an electronics firm in the Twin Cities. Mr. Lang has been interested in astronomy, ET life and UFOs since childhood. He is an amateur radio operator (KCØZH), and also dabbles in writing science fiction.
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