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New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention
The New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention is a volunteer-run science fiction convention that is scheduled annually, and usually takes place either at Easter or at Queen's Official Birthday, Queen's Birthday weekend (end of May/early June). It is usually abbreviated as NatCon. New Zealand's premier science fiction award, the Sir Julius Vogel Award, is presented each year at the national convention. Unlike the case with many other countries' national conventions, each convention is run by a different committee, unaffiliated with any national fannish body. Bids for running the NatCons are voted on by attendees at the NatCon two years ahead. These votes are organised by the current NatCon committee in liaison with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand. In the early years of the national convention, the four main cities (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin) all held the NatCon, but in recent years, the conventions have mostly been held in on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction Convention
Science fiction conventions are gatherings of fans of the speculative fiction genre, science fiction. Historically, science fiction conventions had focused primarily on literature, but the purview of many extends to such other avenues of expression as films, television, comics, animation, and games. The format can vary but will tend to have a few similar features such as a guest of honour, discussion panels, readings and large special events such as opening/closing ceremonies and some form of party or entertainment. Science fiction conventions started off primarily in the UK and US but have now spread further and several countries have their own individual conventions as well as playing host to rotating international conventions. History The precise time and place of the first science fiction convention is a matter of some dispute. The idea and form was clearly anticipated in Robert Bloch's short story about a large convention of writers, "The Ultimate Ultimatum" (''Fantasy M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tracy Tormé
Tracy Tormé (born April 12, 1959) is an American screenwriter and television producer, known for his work on the science fiction series ''Sliders'' and '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'', and the film ''Fire in the Sky''. Early life Tormé was born on April 12, 1959, in Los Angeles, California to Arlene Miles and singer Mel Tormé. Career In the early 1980s, Tormé was a writer for ''Saturday Night Live''. In the late 1980s, he was a story editor and writer in the first season of ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'', but left early in the second season over creative differences. In 1991 with Barry Oringer, Tormé wrote the screenplay for the miniseries '' Intruders'' which ran on CBS in May 1992. ''Intruders'' was based on the book of the same name by Budd Hopkins. Tormé wrote the screenplay for the 1993 film ''Fire in the Sky'' based on Travis Walton's book '' The Walton Experience''. With Robert K. Weiss he co-created the television series ''Sliders'', which ran 1995 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wayne Stables
Wayne may refer to: People with the given name and surname * Wayne (given name) * Wayne (surname) Geographical Places with name ''Wayne'' may take their name from a person with that surname; the most famous such person was Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne from the former Northwest Territory during the American revolutionary period. Places in Canada * Wayne, Alberta Places in the United States Cities, towns and unincorporated communities: * Wayne, Illinois * Wayne City, Illinois * Wayne, Indiana * Wayne, Kansas * Wayne, Maine * Wayne, Michigan * Wayne, Nebraska * Wayne, New Jersey * Wayne, New York * Wayne, Ohio * Wayne, Oklahoma * Wayne, Pennsylvania * Wayne, West Virginia * Wayne, Lafayette County, Wisconsin * Wayne, Washington County, Wisconsin ** Wayne (community), Wisconsin Other places: * Wayne County (other) * Wayne Township (other) * Waynesborough, Gen. Anthony Wayne's early homestead in Pennsylvania * Wayne National Forest in southeastern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wes Takahashi
Wes Ford Takahashi is an American visual effects animator and animation supervisor who has worked for motion picture visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic. He is known for his special effects work on numerous films; his efforts includes animating the time travel sequences for all three ''Back to the Future'' films and the "boy on the moon" in the DreamWorks logo. He is the former head of ILM's animation department. Education and career Takahashi attended Hampshire College in Massachusetts, as well as the University of California, Los Angeles, both of which enabled him to study computer graphics and animation. He began working at Industrial Light & Magic in the early 1980s and subsequently rose to become the head of its animation department. After essentially ceasing work with ILM in the 1990s, he helped to establish the New Zealand-based effects studio Weta Digital with filmmaker Peter Jackson. He has been with International Technological University since 2011 and c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley (July 16, 1928 – December 9, 2005) was an American writer. First published in the science-fiction magazines of the 1950s, his many quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist, and broadly comical. Nominated for Hugo and Nebula Awards, Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001. Biography Sheckley was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York City. In 1931 the family moved to Maplewood, New Jersey. Sheckley attended Columbia High School, where he discovered science fiction. He graduated in 1946 and hitchhiked to California the same year, where he tried numerous jobs: landscape gardener, pretzel salesman, barman, milkman, warehouseman, and general laborer "board man" in a hand-painted necktie studio. Finally, still in 1946, he joined the U.S. Army and was sent to Korea.Jonas, Gerald"Robert Sheckley, 77, Writer of Satirical Science Fiction, Is Dead" ''The New York ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jane Lindskold
Jane M. Lindskold is an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels. Early life Jane M. Lindskold was born on 15 September 1962, and grew up in Washington, D.C., and the Chesapeake Bay area. Jane is the first of four siblings, the others being Ann M. Lindskold Nalley, Graydon M. Lindskold, and Susan M. Lindskold Speer. Lindskold's father, John E. Lindskold, was head of the Land and Natural Resources Division, Western Division of the United States Justice Department. Her mother, Barbara DiSalle Lindskold, was also an attorney. Jane received a Ph.D. in English from Fordham, concentrating on Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern British Literature. Literary work Mentored by her friend, Roger Zelazny, she started publishing stories in 1992, and she published her first novel, ''Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls'' in December, 1994. In her ''Athanor'' series, she writes about the creatures of legend — shape-shifters, satyrs, merfolk, and unicorns — wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Taylor (filmmaker)
Sir Richard Leslie Taylor (born 8 February 1965) is the founder, creative director and head of New Zealand film prop and special effects company Wētā Workshop. Early life Taylor was born in Cheadle, Cheshire, England, on 8 February 1965, and emigrated as a child to New Zealand, where his family lived at Te Hihi, and later the Auckland suburb of Patumahoe. He was naturalised as a New Zealand citizen in 1974. Taylor studied at Wesley College, Paerata, and then became a graduate of the former Wellington Polytechnic. Career Peter Jackson, Taylor and his company created all of the props, costumes, prosthetics, miniatures and weaponry for Jackson's epic ''The Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy. For his work on the three films, he shared in winning four Academy Awards. This included two for '' The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring'' in Make Up and Visual Effects, and two for '' The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King'' in Costume Design and Make Up. He was nominat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vonda McIntyre
Vonda Neel McIntyre () was an American science fiction writer and biologist. Early life and education Vonda N. McIntyre was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of H. Neel and Vonda B. Keith McIntyre, who were born in Poland, Ohio. She spent her early childhood on the east coast of the United States and in The Hague, Netherlands, and Poland, before her family settled in Seattle in the early 1960s. In 1970, she earned a Bachelor of Science, with honors, in biology from the University of Washington. That same year, she attended the Clarion Writers Workshop. McIntyre went on to do graduate work at University of Washington in genetics. Career In 1971, McIntyre founded the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, Washington, with the support of Clarion founder Robin Scott Wilson. She contributed to the workshop until 1973. McIntyre won her first Nebula Award in 1973, for the novelette '"Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand". This later became part of the novel ''Dreamsnake'' (197 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Zelazny
Roger Joseph Zelazny (May 13, 1937 – June 14, 1995) was an American poet and writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for ''The Chronicles of Amber''. He won the Nebula Award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo Award six times (also out of 14 nominations), including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ''...And Call Me Conrad'' (1965), subsequently published under the title ''This Immortal'' (1966) and then the novel ''Lord of Light'' (1967). Biography Zelazny was born in Euclid, Ohio, the only child of Polish immigrant Joseph Frank Żelazny and Irish-American Josephine Flora Sweet. In high school, he became the editor of the school newspaper and joined the Creative Writing Club. In the fall of 1955, he began attending Case Western Reserve University, Western Reserve University and graduated with a B.A. in English in 1959. He was accepted to Columbia University in New York and specialized in Elizabethan and Jacobean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara Hambly
Barbara Hambly (born August 28, 1951) is an American novelist and screenwriter within the genres of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction. She is the author of the bestselling Benjamin January mystery series featuring a free man of color, a musician and physician, in New Orleans in the antebellum years. She also wrote a novel about Mary Todd Lincoln. Her science fiction novels occur within an explicit multiverse, as well as within previously existing settings (notably as established by ''Star Trek'' and ''Star Wars''). Early life and education Hambly was born in San Diego, California and grew up in Montclair, California. Her parents, Everett Edward Hambly Jr. and Florence Elizabeth (Moraski) Hambly, are from Fall River, Massachusetts; and Scranton, Pennsylvania (respectively). She has an older sister, Mary Ann Sanders, and a younger brother, Everett Edward Hambly, III. In her early teens, after reading J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings'', she af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven (; born April 30, 1938) is an American science fiction writer. His best-known works are ''Ringworld'' (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards, and, with Jerry Pournelle, ''The Mote in God's Eye'' (1974) and ''Lucifer's Hammer'' (1977). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him the 2015 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics. It also often includes elements of detective fiction and adventure stories. His fantasy includes the series ''The Magic Goes Away'', rational fantasy dealing with magic as a non-renewable resource. Biography Niven was born in Los Angeles. He is a great-grandson of Edward L. Doheny, an oil tycoon who drilled the first successful well in the Los Angeles City Oil Field in 1892, and also was subsequently implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal. Niven briefly attended the Califor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julian May
Julian Clare May (July 10, 1931 – October 17, 2017) was an American science fiction, fantasy, horror, science and children's writer who also used several literary pseudonyms. She is best known for her ''Saga of Pliocene Exile'' (''Saga of the Exiles'' in the United Kingdom) and ''Galactic Milieu Series'' books. Background and early career Julian May grew up in Elmwood Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, the oldest of four children. Her parents were Matthew M. May (originally Majewski) and Julia Feilen May; as a child she was known as Judy May. She became involved in science fiction fandom in her late teens, publishing the fanzine ''Interim Newsletter'' for a time. She sold her first professional fiction, a short story called "Dune Roller", in 1950 to John W. Campbell's ''Astounding Science Fiction''; it appeared in 1951, under the name "J. C. May", accompanied by her original illustrations. She met her future husband, Ted Dikty, later that year at a convention in Ohio. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
