Colonel Robert E. Byrns was born on January 14, 1910, in Belfield, ND. He attended and graduated from Colorado Teachers College in 1933 with a bachelor’s degree in English and spent the following years teaching in Colorado. During this time he began his military career joining the Colorado National Guard during college and later requested active duty with the Civilian Conservation Corps. In 1940, Byrns was sent to Fort Benning, GA to serve in the Second Armored Division. During World War II he spent a few years at the Armor Center in Fort Knox, KY as a Captain, training recruits. He later served in the South Pacific with the Army Amphibious Forces in 1944.

Following the war, Byrns continued to serve in the Army and was sent to Fort Knox, the Army Arctic Test Center in Alaska. He then went to Fort Monroe in Virginia, where he and his wife Lily had two sons Robert Jr. and Stephen. After serving at Ft. Monroe, the Byrns family was sent to Copenhagen, Denmark.

After 28 years of service, Byrns retired from the army and he went on to obtain his master’s in history from Texas A & M University. in 1964 Byrns and his family moved to San Angelo where he became a professor at San Angelo College, and served as an elder at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church.

Colonel Byrns died on November 5, 1999.

The popular and skilled urban fantasy writer Roxanne Longstreet was born on April 27, 1962, in White Sands, NM, and grew up in West Texas. She graduated with a B.A. in Accounting from Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University in 1985. Her first novel, the fantasy Stormriders, based on the Shadow World role-playing game, was published in 1990 (and republished in 1996 under the pseudonym 'Ian Hammell'). She then wrote three horror novels and one thriller between 1993-1996, all under her original name.

After marrying artist Richard Conrad in 1992, Conrad then wrote two mystery-thrillers under the name 'Roxanne Conrad': Copper Moon (1997) and Bridge of Shadows (1998). In 2002, the thriller Exile, TX was also published under her married name.

2003 saw the debut of Conrad's writing career under her most famous pen name, 'Rachel Caine'. She published Ill Wind, the first of her popular Weather Warden series published by Roc from 2003-2011. The urban fantasy series, which ran in two series across 14 novels and several short stories, takes place on an Earth where a group of individuals called Wardens can control different elemental forces and use that power to protect humanity from natural disasters. The series' main character, Joanne Baldwin, is a Weather Warden, and the main series involves her adventures. An offshoot series, Outcast Season, concerns an outcast Djinn who seeks safety and a new life amongst the Wardens. In 2015, Caine launched a Kickstarter to fund a new novel in the series, entitled Red Hot Rain, but the book was unfinished due to Caine's health complications and her 2020 death.

Other series followed. In 2005-2006, Caine produced the two-book Red Letter Days series, an urban fantasy/paranormal romance about two female detectives who find themselves obliged to start taking cases from a supernatural client with their own agenda. From 2011-2013, Caine published three books in her Revivalist series, telling the story of Bryn Davis, a woman murdered by her pharmaceutical corporate overlords and revived from death via an experimental drug on which she now relies for continued existence. Her final series for adults was the best-selling Stillhouse Lake series of mysteries, starring Tennessee PI Gwen Proctor and beginning with Stillhouse Lake in 2017. The fifth book in the series, Heartbreak Bay was published posthumously in 2021 and was Caine's last published book.

Caine was no stranger to works of fantasy, science fiction, and horror for young adults. Her popular The Morganville Vampires series ran for 15 books, beginning with Glass Houses in 2006 and ending with the short story "Home" in 2019, was set in the fictional West Texas town in Morganville, a town owned by vampires as a sanctuary and where they live in uneasy tension with humans. The series was adapted as a web series in 2014 and lasted for one season, starring Amber Benson and Robert Picardo.

In 2015, Caine published the first in her YA alternate history/fantasy The Great Library series - Ink and Bone. The series is set in a world where the Great Library of Alexandria was never destroyed, and over the succeeding millennia has taken control of the world and the flow of information. Tne protagonists are several young Librarians who band together after discovering the injustice and tyranny behind the Library, and seek to bring it down through revolution. The series has five books, concluding with Sword and Pen in 2019. Caine co-wrote, with Ann Aguirre, another YA series - The Honors, a three-book space opera about a young woman named Zara Cole, who as an "Honor" pilots a living ship called a Leviathan along with her co-pilot Beatriz Teixiera. The first book in the series, Honor Among Thieves (2018) was named to the LITA Excellence in Children's and Young Adult Science Fiction Notable List for 2019. In addition to these series, Caine also wrote a YA standalone, Prince of Shadows (2015), a fantasy take on Romeo and Juliet.

Caine wrote several other standalone works as well, including Line of Sight (2007), a volume in the Athena Force series of novels about graduates of the Athena Academy, an elite school for girls with special talents, as they combat kidnappers, terrorists, and the forces of evil; a Stargate SG-1 media tie-in novel, Sacrifice Moon in 2007 (under the name 'Julie Fortune'), and a number of short stories contained in different science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal romance anthologies.

Rachel Caine lived for much of her life in Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband R. "Cat" Conrad. She was diagnosed in 2019 with soft-tissue sarcoma, and died on November 1, 2020. Caine was posthumously awarded the 2021 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for distinguished contributions to science fiction and fantasy by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Eugene W. Carter was born in Tennessee in 1875. He received his Mechanical Engineering degree in 1893 from the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. Carter lived in Dallas County, TX during the 1920s.

Beth Cato (1980-) is originally from Hanford, California, but currently lives and writes in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. She shares the household, to quote Cato herself, "with a hockey-loving husband, a numbers-obsessed son, and a cat the size of a canned ham."

Cato has written a large and impressive body of short fiction (over 60 stories) and poetry, which has been published in a number of magazines, including Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Mythic Delirum, Nature Magazine, and many others. Much of her short fiction was collected in Red Dust and Dancing Horses and Other Stories, published by Fairwood Press in 2017. She has been nominated for multiple Rhysling Awards, and her 2019 poem "After Her Brother Ripped the Heads from Her Paper Dolls" won the 2019 Rhysling for Short Poem. Additionally, her poem "he scores" was nominated for the 2021 Aurora Award for Best Poem/Song-English.

Cato's first novel, released in 2014, was The Clockwork Dagger, a rousing fantasy adventure with heavy elements of steampunk. The sequel, The Clockwork Crown, was released in 2015. Cato's novella Wings of Sorrow and Bone, set in her Clockwork Dagger universe, was nominated for a 2016 Nebula Award for Best Novella. Two additional stories, Final Flight and Deep Roots were released in 2016.

Her fantasy series Breath Of Earth, which is set in an alternate 1906 San Francisco, was released in fall 2016, and nominated for the 2017 Dragon Award for Best Alternate History. The novel has two sequels: Call of Fire, published in late 2017, and Roar of Sky in 2018. Cato's latest fantasy novel, A Thousand Recipes for Revenge is the first in a duology involving food-based magic and entitled Chefs of the Five Gods, and was released by 47North in June 2023.

Howard R. Cavitt was born son to Major William Richard Cavitt (1849-1924) and Mary (Mitchell) Cavitt (1854-1914) in Bryan-College Station, Texas.
Howard served as Captain and commanding officer of Company G, 2nd Infantry Regiment known as the Bryan Light Guard, Texas National Guard, from 1902-1904. His brother, Fred L. Cavitt, was appointed 4th sergeant in the Bryan Light Guard under him. Howard's sister Esther Cavitt (1891-1958) taught at Allen Academy in Bryan, Texas.
Howard married Miss Emily Thomas on April 2, 1912, he was owner and proprietor of Bryan Motor Car Company, and his hobbies included hunting, gardening, and amateur photography.
Howard R. Cavitt died at age 31 in the Brazos River flood of 1913 during which he and three others offered aid and rescue to those in distress. Cavitt and two of the other three men (both worked for Cavitt at Bryan Motor) lost their lives from exposure to the elements and exhaustion on December 8, 1913, after their boat was disabled. Tom Evans, was the only survivor of the aid and rescue party.

Josephus Franklin Cavitt (1867-1952) was a member of the prominent Cavitt family. He was the grandson of Andrew Cavitt (1796-1836) and Ann Cavitt (1801-1882), who left Alabama and settled in Robertson County, TX, and were friends of Davy Crockett and Sam Houston.

Josephus F. Cavitt was also the cousin of William Richard Cavitt (1849-1924), who served as a member of the Board of Regents (1883-1896) of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas.

William Richard Cavitt was born on July 4, 1849, in Wheelock Texas to Josephus Cavitt (1828-1883) and Cather Ann (Dunn) Cavitt (1826-1905).
William graduated from Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee with distinguished honors in both Literary and Law Departments. On February 4, 1874, he moved to Bryan Texas where he opened a law practice and was the Brazos County Attorney from November 1878 to November 1880 with reelection in 1882 until 1884. In 1884, William was elected Representative for the Texas State Legislature, where he served two terms, after being nominated by a Democratic Convention of the fiftieth district for the Legislature.
In 1883, he was appointed to the Board of Directors for A&M College by Governor Lawrence S. Ross and served on the board until 1896.

Cavitt married Mary Mithcell (1854-1914), who was the niece of Colonel Harvey Mitchell (referred to as the "Father of Brazos County"), and together they had six children.

The Cepheid Variable Science Fiction Club came into being in the period 1967 – 1969, the result of science fiction fans gradually coming together and organizing. Following a trip to the World Science Fiction Convention in 1967, Annette Bristol and Danielle Dabbs started the first known science fiction club, with Annette the President, Dabbs the secretary, and John Moffitt as vice-president. The club was pictured in the 1968 Aggieland, with officers listed there. The club was sponsored by the English Department, with two English professors as advisors.

In 1969, Cepheid was a part of "Science Fiction Week," the immediate precursor to AggieCon. "Science Fiction Week" featured Harlan Ellison as special guest, joined by Chad Oliver. Ellison spoke to many (perhaps 30) English classes. His visit was culminated by a meal function at the Ramada Inn, recalled by many for a "food fight" among other things. Cepheid was dissolved as a club, in part due to issues with the hotel.

In 1970, Gary Mattingly reorganized Cepheid Variable and became the second President of the club. Cepheid held a convention in the spring, referred to as a "comics and trade convention" in the Bryan Eagle. In 1971/1972, the first constitution of the club was written.

In April, 1972, the first named convention, AggieCon III was staged by Cepheid Variable. AggieCon is the most visible aspect of the Cepheid Variable Club, and has been continuously produced from 1969 to 2005 at this writing. It has been a very successful convention, and holds the distinction of being the longest continuously operating convention completely run by a student group. Cepheid Variable and AggieCon have many alumni in science fiction. Among them are Steve Gould, author; Noel Wolfman, currently a production supervisor for Dreamworks; Jayme Lynn Blaschke, author and editor; Martha Wells, author; and Brad Foster, Hugo winning artist.

Over the years, AggieCon has hosted many important names in the science fiction and fantasy field as Guests of Honor. Among them are: Harlan Ellison, Anne McCaffery, Fred Pohl, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, Theodore Sturgeon, Bob Tucker, Chad Oliver, Poul Anderson, Jack Williamson, Kelly Freas, Joe Haldeman, C. J. Cherryh, Roger Zelazny, Harry Harrison, L. Sprague de Camp, Catherine de Camp, John Varley, George R. R. Martin, Ben Bova, Spider Robinson, Jeanne Robinson, Walter Koenig, Fred Saberhagen, Lynn Abbey, David Drake, Michael Moorcock, Julius Schwartz, Greg Bear, Charles De Lint, Lois McMaster Bujold, Margaret Weis, Dave Wolverton, Jim Baen, Nancy A. Collins, Joe Lansdale, Bruce Sterling, Robert Asprin, Terry Pratchett, Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, Todd McCaffrey, and Elizabeth Moon.

AggieCon has also included numerous Texas authors as guests, many who have gone on to establish international reputations. AggieCon has been an important venue for Texas authors to promote their works, and regional guests have included authors such as Neal Barrett, Jr., Rachel Caine, Lillian Stewart Carl, Bill Crider, Carol Nelson Douglas, Steve Gould, Rory Harper, Katherine E. Kimbriel, Tom Knowles, Joe Lansdale, Justin Leiber, Ardath Mayhar, Laura Mixon, Warren Norwood, Chad Oliver, George W. Proctor, Tom Reamy, Nina Romberg, Lewis Shiner, Bruce Sterling, Lisa Tuttle, Steven Utley, Howard Waldrop, Martha Wells, along with many others.

This list of science fiction personalities is impressive, and has afforded the students of Texas A&M University the opportunity to hear them speak, visit with them, and become acquainted with their writings. Few events on this campus have exposed students to as many literary figures than has AggieCon.

Early in the existence of AggieCon, program booklets became standard fare. The first program book in the collection comes from AggieCon 7, 1976. The contents of the program books vary, but typically they include brief biographies and photos of guests, descriptions of movies, lists of committee members, schedules of events, and illustrations by guests or committee members. Bill Page did a brief history of AggieCon in the AggieCon XX Program Book. He noted that AggieCons II and III were small, with no Guest of Honor, and that "AggieCon III was the first to be called AggieCon." Most of the stories of AggieCon remain to be told. The infamous food fight of the 1969 event, featuring Harlan Ellison, remains legendary, but mostly unrecorded, as do most of the events of the following years.

AggieCon evolved over the years, to become a well-regarded event featuring books and authors, soon adding artists, and then later to feature media programming and stars more prominently, and then back toward a more print-oriented convention.

Cepheid Variable and AggieCon served as the focal point for many activities. Science fiction and fantasy has always been the core around which the club and conventions were built. Additional interests reflected in club and convention activities included: motion picture screenings, gaming, comics fandom, anime and manga, music (including performances by "Los Blues Guys"), filk singing, the SCA (Society for Creative Anacronism), fantasy weapons (especially swords and knives), costuming, and others.

While there is no official connection between AggieCon and the University Library, the two organizations have complemented each other for years. The Cushing Library Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection has been a tour site for many years, introducing authors and fans to the existence of the collection, and affording them the opportunity to see items they have never had the opportunity of view. Those contacts have fostered later research visits to the collection, and have resulted in donations to the collection.

The convention struggled for years as an independent effort. In the fall of 1972, Cepheid Variable became a sub-committee of the Contemporary Arts Committee of the MSC. A year or two later, it became an MSC Committee.

The successful acceptance of the group as an MSC Committee provide funding, guaranteed access to MSC space for the convention and programming, fiscal handling support, and advice and guidance from the Memorial Student Center administration and staff. The latter was regarded with a jaundiced eye by Cepheids, but, it should be noted, they diligently listened and heeded the advice of the MSC administrators – occasionally. In 2004, "budget restrictions" were cited as the reason the MSC dropped Cepheid Variable from MSC Committee status and support. The student organizers continued their work, and successfully produced AggieCon 35 in 2005.

Imogene Chamberlain was famous for being the first woman to fly a four-seated Lake Buccaneer plane from California to Sydney, Australia, solo in March 1978. The trip lasted ten days and she flew for nineteen hours. She has also flown around the world from Canada to Germany.

Chamberlain was a member of the International Organization of Women Pilots, an advisor for the Texas A&M’s Flying Club, and she also taught education classes at Texas A&M along with aviation classes.

She was a fifteen-year resident of Bryan, TX. Her husband Howard was an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University.

Cheap Street Press was a small independent specialty press founded and operated by George and Jan O'Nale of New Castle, Virginia. For over two decades the press produced original contemporary science fiction and fantasy in a fine press format. Individual titles were produced in signed and numbered editions, on fine (sometimes handmade) paper and hand-bound in fine cloth and leather, with runs of no more than 200 copies.

Cheap Street's first production was Ervool, by Fritz Leiber, in 1980. Subsequent authors who produced work for Cheap Street included writers like Gregory Benford, Charles de Lint, Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Tanith Lee, Elizabeth Lynn, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, John Sladek, Gene Wolfe, and many others. The last production of Cheap Street Press came in 2002, with Flying Saucer Rock and Roll by Howard Waldrop. In 2003, George and Jan committed mutual suicide due to increasing ill-health.

Jeannette Kathleen Cheney was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1964. She matriculated at a number of different institutions, including Texas Tech University, Abilene Christian University, the University of Texas-El Paso, Lubbock Christian University, and El Paso Community College. Cheney is a former teacher and has taught mathematics (ranging from 7th grade to Calculus) in both Putnam City, TX and Lubbock, TX, with a brief stint as a Gifted and Talented Specialist.

In 2005 Cheney decided to pursue writing as a full-time endeavor. Since then her short fiction has been published in Jim Baen's Universe, Writers of the Future, and Fantasy Magazine, among others, and her novella "Iron Shoes", the first in her Hawk's Folly Farm series, was a 2010 Nebula Award Finalist.  Her first novel, The Golden City was released by Penguin in 2013. Set in an alternate Portugal marked by magic and a civilization of selkies and other oceanic folk, the book was nominated for the "Best First Novel" Award by Locus Magazine. The book's sequel, The Seat of Magic came out in 2014, and the final novel in the trilogy, The Shores of Spain, was released in 2015. The trilogy is supplemented by two 2016 novellas: The Seer's Choice and After The War . An online story available to Cheney's Patreon supporters, "The Truth Undiscovered" has been serialized, as has the nautical story "O Submarino*.

In 2016 she released a new fantasy work, Dreaming Death. The story of the Palace of Dreams world continues in Cheney's online serial for her Patreon supporters, "In Dreaming Bound" and several additional works. Her fantasy trilogy series "The Horn" was published in full in 2017. Yet another fantasy series from Cheney, The King's Daughter, has had 4 volumes published between 2018-2020: The Amiestrin Gambit, The Passing of Pawns, The Black Queen, and Knight and Nightrider, along with a 2019 story collection, On Common Ground. An additional series of fantasy short fiction, Kseniya Illyevna, has been published by Cheney from 2008-2017.

Cheney twice attended the Summer Writer’s Workshop at the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas under the tutelage of James Gunn. She has noted C. J. Cherryh, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Georgette Heyer among the writers who influenced her most–as well as Ansen Dibell, whose ghostly fingerprints can be seen all over her work.

Cheney is nothing if not versatile in her story telling, but weaving through her work is a common thread, that of the improbable heroine. From worlds set in humanity’s distant post-apocalyptic future to alternate worlds of today or of the near past, her heroines include a siren who with help from a gentleman of the city must stop a regicidal plot, the neglected daughter of an absent king coming to terms with her shapeshifting ancestors, a blind teenager who dreams of others’ deaths and who uses her gift of touch to find their killers, and the widow of a trainer who with a most unusual horse must save her farm and way of life. All use their unusual gifts and talents to overcome obstacles and find their place in the world.

Dr. Robert D. Chenoweth earned a BS and MS in electrical engineering at TAMU in 1946 and a doctorate from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1955. Dr. Chenoweth was assistant dean of TAMU’s College of Engineering in 1985. He came to TAMU in 1967 and taught electrical engineering for years after attending University of Missouri at Rolla. He served on numerous committees and achieved numerous awards including the Distinguished Achievement Award. He was a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers since 1957 and served on their committees. He retired from TAMU in 1989.

Robert Cherry was born in 1914, attended Sam Houston State University for his bachelor's degree in business administration, the University of Wyoming for his master's in educational administration and commerce, and North Carolina State College for his doctorate.

Robert G. Cherry first joined the Texas A&M University System in 1943, as an assistant registrar, later moving on to become a member of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Sociology. He was appointed extension economist in 1956, and in 1959 went to Europe to study agricultural markets for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He was appointed an assistant to President James Earl Rudder in 1962, and began working in 1975 as an assistant to the Chancellor, and also was appointed the secretary of the Board of Regents during this time. He was known as "Mr. Texas A&M," and served as the main lobbyist for the University's interests in Austin with the state government. He was later promoted to Vice-Chancellor, and retired in 1984 to part-time, retiring fully in 1989.

He never married, but due to his interests in education, Cherry was known for his annual donations to the Agricultural Economics department for scholarships for students and was a benefactor for the Girl Scouts of America and to the Bryan Independent School District.

Robert Cherry died in 2005, at St. Joseph Rehabilitation Center, at the age of 91.

C. J. Cherryh (C. J. Cherry) was born September 1, 1942 in St. Louis, MO. She received a B. A. degree in Latin from University of Oklahoma in 1964, and an M. A. in Classics from Johns Hopkins University in 1965. After a brief teaching career, she turned to full-time writing in 1977. Cherryh focuses on alien races, culture, and power as key elements in her work, making use of her training in the classic and in anthropology in her writing. Cherryh has been awarded the Hugo award three times, the Locus Award, and the John W. Campbell award, all attesting the quality and popularity of her work.

Carolyn Janice Cherry was born in St. Louis, MO, on September 1, 1942. She received a B.A. in Latin from the University of Oklahoma in 1964, and an M.A. in Classics from John Hopkins University in 1965. Cherry taught classics and ancient languages in the Oklahoma City public school system after her graduation, although she wrote SF and fantasy stories in her spare time.

In 1976, Cherry's professional writing career was launched with the publication of her first two novels, _Gate Of Ivrel_and Brothers of Earth. (She added a "h" to her last name because her editor Donald A. Wollheim of DAW Books thought that the name "Cherry" sounded too much like that of a romance writer, and Cherryh used her initials in order to disguise her gender.)

Those two novels were the first of many works set in Cherryh's famed "Alliance-Union Universe", which has come to include over 25 novels and a number of short stories. Many of Cherryh's most important works take place in this universe, including Downbelow Station(1981), Merchanter's Luck(1982), Cyteen(1988), and the _Faded Sun_trilogy (1978-1979). The Alliance-Union Universe is set in a far future marked by conflicts between and among privately-funded planetary stations and powerful merchant families.

Cherryh has written a large number of other works, including the cycle of novels (1994-2015) set in the "Foreigner Universe", a series chronicling the lives of a group of descendants of an Earth ship lost while on its way to found a new station; the "Gene Wars" novels Hammerfall(2001) and Forge of Heaven(2004); the fantasy "Fortress Series"(1995-2006); and many others.

C.J. Cherryh received the 1977 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and since then has also been lauded with numerous nominations and awards. She has won the 1979 Hugo Award for Best Short Story ("Cassandra") and the 1988  Skylark Award (the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction). She won the 1982 Balrog Award for Short Fiction ("A Thief In Korianth") and the 1982 Hugo Award for Best Novel ( Downbelow Station _)._Her novel _Cyteen_won both the 1989 _SF Chronicle_Award, the 1989 _Locus_Award, and the 1989 Hugo Award fo Best Novel.

Dr. Thomas D. Clareson was a noted scholar and critic of literary science fiction. He was born on August 26, 1926, in Austin, MN, and was a graduate of the University of Minnesota. Clareson received a M.A. from Indiana University in 1949 and his Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania in 1956. He was a professor of English at the College of Wooster (Wooster, OH) from 1955 until his retirement in May 1993. Clareson died in Wooster on July 6, 1993. In addition to science fiction, Clareson's academic specialities included 19th-century American literature and the English and American novel.

Clareson was the author of a number of notable works of academic criticism on science fiction, and champion of SF as a legitimate literary genre. He once said that "for years I've tried to show that science fiction is a form of American popular literature which has a long tradition and, as a kind of fantasy, has an importance equal to that of the realistic social novel."

Most famously, he wrote Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources(Greenwood Press: 1984), which became a standard reference work for the study of science fiction literature. Other major works of his include Some Kind Of Paradise: The Emergence of American Science Fiction(Greenwood Press: 1986), which won the Eaton Award from the University of California-Riverside; and Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: The Formative Period, 1926-1970 __(University of South Carolina Press: 1990). _Some Kind Of Paradise_is an important historical and thematic survey of science fiction that, like Science Fiction in America,  incorporates many plot synopses of different works.

Clareson's first work of SF criticism was the article "The Evolution of Science Fiction", published in _Science Fiction Quarterly_in August 1953. He went on to edit the journal Extrapolation(the oldest established academic journal relating to science fiction) from 1959-1989, as well as a number of different anthologies of SF criticism. In addition, Clareson was the general editor of Greenwood Press' microfilm reprint series of SF pulp magazines and its collection Early Science Fiction Novels: A Microfiche Collection.

Clareson was the chairman of the Modern Language Association's first seminar on science fiction in 1958, and from 1970-1976 was the first president of the Science Fiction Research Association. Since 1996, the SFRA has presented the yearly Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service in his honor. In 1977, Clareson received the Pilgrim Award from the SFRA for Lifetime Achievement in the field of science fiction scholarship.

John D. Clark (1907-1988) was a noted American chemist and science fiction writer and fan. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1934. From 1949 to 1970 he was the Chief Chemist at the Naval Air Rocket Test Station in Dover, New Jersey, which later became the Liquid Rocket Propulsion Laboratory of Picatinny Arsenal, where he developed liquid propellants. In 1972 he published a nonfiction work, Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants which included a preface by his friend, Isaac Asimov.

Clark was an active member of the early science fiction community. He published several stories in the 1930s with his friend L. Sprague de Camp and was friendly with other notable figures including L. Ron Hubbard and Fletcher Pratt. He became a fan of Robert E. Howard's fantasy stories in the 1930s. With P. Schuyler Miller, Clark worked out an outline of Conan's career as well as a map of his world, which he sent to Howard, who confirmed and corrected their findings, which were eventually published in the 1938 fanzine The Hyborian Age. Recognized as an early authority on Howard's work, Clark was invited to write introductions to the Gnome Press collections of his work in the 1950s. The Archive contains the materials relating to the publication and revisions of these items.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke is widely regarded as one of the best of the science fiction and science writers of the 20th century. He was born in Somerset, England on December 16, 1917. During World War II Clarke served as a radar specialist and instructor with the Royal Air Force, an experience that contributed to his early interest in communications technology. After being demobilized from the RAF after the war with the rank of First Lieutenant, Clarke attended King's College London, where he obtained a first-class degree in mathematics and physics.

Clarke was the Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) from 1946-1947, and it was as a member of the BIS in 1945 that he wrote a paper (later that year published in Wireless World) suggesting the idea that geostationary satellites could be used as telecommunications relays. For this insight, Clarke has been generally credited with inventing the concept of satellite communication. (As a tribute to Clarke's contributions in this field, the International Astronomical Union has officially named the geostationary orbit of 22,000 miles above the equator the "Clarke Orbit.")

Over the course of his career, Clarke wrote a number of works of nonfiction promoting science for a popular audience, especially the idea of space travel, starting in 1950 with Interplanetary Flight: An Introduction to Astronautics. Other scientific works of Clarke include The Exploration of the Moon (1951), The View From Serendip (1977), and How The World Was One (1992).

However, Clarke's fame derives largely from his storied career as a science fiction writer. His first sale as a professional writer was the short story "Loophole", which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in April 1946. This story was the first of over one hundred stories that Clarke produced in the course of his career. The most famous of these was probably "The Sentinel," published in 1948. This story was not only the basis for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey (which was filmed concurrently with Clarke's novel of the same name), but was the first of Clarke's works to display a common theme in his work, that of humanity being watched over by an unknowable cosmic intelligence.

Clarke's first novel was Against the Fall of Night (1948), which had originally been serialized in Startling Stories, appeared in book form in 1953, and was later expanded and revised as The City and The Stars in 1956. Childhood's End, probably his most famous novel, was published in 1953. It tells the story of a future Earth in which peace and order have been instituted after a friendly invasion by the mysterious alien race nicknamed the "Overlords". Over time Overlord rule results in the accelerated evolution of humanity into a new, transcendent form of life.

Clarke's other novels include, among others, the 2001 sequence: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), 2061: Odyssey Three (1987), and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997); the Rama sequence: Rendezvous with Rama (1972), Rama II (1989), The Garden of Rama (1991), and Rama Revealed (1993), the last three co-written with Gentry Lee; The Songs of Distant Earth (1986), and The Hammer of God (1993). His novels and stories earned Clarke a lasting literary reputation that has placed him in many eyes as one of the "Big Three" of Science Fiction, together with Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein.

Clarke was married to Marilyn Mayfield for six months in 1953, their divorce was finalized in 1964, and he never remarried. He moved from Great Britain to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1956. where he lived until his death on March 19, 2008, in Columbo, Sri Lanka.

Over the years, Clarke gathered numerous honors, including a Hugo Award in 1956 (for the short story "The Star") and again in 1974, the 1961 UNESCO-Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science, the Nebula Award, the SFWA Grand Master award in 1986 and the 2004 Heinlein Award. He was named a Science Fiction Grand Master in1985 by the Science Fiction Writers of America, a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2000 Clarke received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.

Cassandra Rose Clarke was born on September 21, 1983, in south Texas. She graduated from the University of St. Thomas in Houston with a B.A. in English in 2006, and received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. In 2010 she attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in Seattle, where she was a recipient of the Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund.

In 2009, Clarke produced her first published work, the short story "The Cowboy's Wife", which was published in the Summer 2009 issue of Zahir. She published several additional short stories in the next few years, and in 2012 published her first novel, the young-adult fantasy The Assassin's Curse. Curse was named one of the Best Teen Books of 2012 by Kirkus Reviews. Clarke wrote two sequesl to the novel: The Pirate's Wish (2013) and Magic of Blood and Sea (2017) as well as additional novels and short fiction in the Assassin's Curse universe.

Clarke published her first novel for adults, The Mad Scientist's Daughter, in early 2013. It tells the story of Cat Novak, a young woman tutored by an android named Finn, acquired by her scientist father and with whom Cat eventually falls in love. The novel was nominated for the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. In 2015, Clarke released her second adult novel, Our Lady of the Ice, a science fiction story with steampunk elements and a definite noir flavor, set in an alternate Antarctica which has been colonized chiefly by South Americans. Our Lady was nominated for the 2015 Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award in Science Fiction. In 2017 she released the space opera Star's End, and a YA fantasy, Forget This Ever Happened in 2020. Her latest novel, a paranormal romance titled Singing With The Devil, and its sequel Demon Song, were released as e-books in 2022. Another fantasy novel, The Beholden also came out in 2022.

She has written several tie-in novels for media universes, including two novels set in the world of Halo (Battle Born and Meridian Divide, both 2019), and one set in the world of Star Trek: The Next Generation: Shadows Have Offended (2021). Clarke is also an accomplished genre poet. Her 2018 poem "For Preserves" was the runner-up for the 2018 Rhysling Award for Long Poem. Her poetry collection Sacred Summer (2020) was a finalist for the 2021 Elgin Award for Best Book.

Eldridge Cleaver, born in Wabbaseka, Arkansas on August 31, 1935, was a founding member of the Black Panther Party, remains a controversial figure within the Black Power Movement of the 1960s-1970s. Cleaver was one of the leading spokesperson for the revolutionary organization. He traveled extensively, nationally and internationally, on behalf of the group as Minister of Information, including a long period of hiding in exile with his then wife, Kathleen Cleaver (married on December 27, 1967), to avoid a murder charge. He represents a powerful symbol, both negative and positive, within African American history.

Timeline:

• Convicted of rape and assault in 1958, he is sent to San Quentin Prison, transferred to Folsom Prison in 1964, transferred to Soledad Prison in 1965, and released on parole in December of 1966.
• In early 1967, Cleaver meets Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, founders of the Black Panther Party (BPP). Cleaver becomes Minister of Information.
• On December 27, 1967 Eldridge Cleaver and Kathleen Cleaver are married.
• In 1968, Soul on Ice is released.
• In April 1968, Cleaver is involved in a gun shoot-out with police in Oakland California. He flees the United States in November before his scheduled hearing.
• From 1968 to 1970, Cleaver travels to Cuba, USSR, North Korea, Vietnam, China, and Algiers. In September of 1970, he establishes the International Office for the BPP in Algiers.
• On February 26, 1971, Cleaver splits with Huey Newton and the BPP.
• In late 1972, Cleaver relocates to Paris.
• After eight years of living abroad, Cleaver returns to the United States and surrenders to the FBI in 1975, telling Reader's Digest that he'd "rather be in jail in America than free anywhere else." He makes a deal and by pleading guilty to assault charges, the attempted murder charges are dropped. He is sentenced to 1,200 hours of community service in 1980.
• During the 1980s to the end of his life, Cleaver is involved in many endeavors: he starts his own clothing line, joins the Mormon Church, establishes a recycling business, attends Harvard Law School, becomes a recovering drug addict, and has many unsuccessful runs for political office.
• In 1985, Eldridge Cleaver and Kathleen Cleaver divorce.
• On May 2, 1998, Eldridge Cleaver dies in Pomona, California.

William Perry Clements, Jr. (Governor of Texas 1979-1983 and 1987-1991) was born April 13, 1917, in Dallas. He is the son of William Perry and Evelyn Cammack Clements and the grandson of Oliver B. and Louise Norwood Clements. He had one sister Betty Clements. Grandfather Oliver came to Texas from Indiana to help prepare the roadbed for the Texas and Pacific Railroad into Dallas. He stayed in Texas when the railroad was completed and opened a livery stable in a community originally called Brooklyn but later changed to Forney. The business gradually expanded to include producing hay and trading in horses and mules, some of which he shipped back to Indiana where members of his family still resided. By the middle 1880s, Forney claimed to be the biggest hay market in the world.

William Perry Clements (usually called Perry) graduated from Forney High School at age 18 and decided to move to Dallas rather than stay in his smaller hometown. His first job was selling insurance for Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. Perry was active socially and met Evelyn Cammack whom he married in June 1912. By that time Perry had become interested in oil and became a broker in early Texas oil fields selling oil leases and participating in oil wells. By the early 1900s, Dallas was a rapidly growing city, and housing developments were begun within as well as outside the city limits. Perry and Evelyn Clements built their first house in what was to become Highland Park in 1912. A year later their daughter Betty was born. Highland Park was incorporated that same year with William Perry Clements, Sr. as one of the incorporators. Before long Perry and Evelyn built a second and larger home. It was here that their only son William Perry Clements, Jr. (called Billy during his childhood) was born.

William Perry Clements, Jr. (usually referred to as Bill during most of his life) attended school in Highland Park from which he graduated in 1934. He played guard on the football team that won the state quarterfinals but lost to Dallas Tech in the semifinals during his senior year. Clements was named to the All-State team. Throughout his youth, Bill Clements developed his love of reading, his interest in history, and his participation in Boy Scouts. He earned his Eagle Scout rank in August 1930 and has long been a strong supporter of scouting and has made large financial contributions to scouting in Texas. Because of his excellent football skills, colleges recruited him to play football at that higher level, but family financial setbacks during the depression beginning with the Wall Street crash in 1929 wiped out most of the family's money.

Thus, instead of playing football at Southern Methodist University or some other university the fall after graduating from high school, Bill Clements left Highland Park two days after graduating from high school and headed for the south Texas oil fields to work as a roughneck. He earned $150 per month, two-thirds of which he sent home to support his family. His father got a job a year later, so Bill could leave the oilfields and go to college. He enrolled at Southern Methodist University to study engineering and play football under coach Matty Bell.

An attack of appendicitis kept him off the team for the 1935 season. Clements and Bell did not get along, so in 1936 he transferred to the University of Texas. There he met Pauline Allen Gill, whom he married on April 6, 1940, and encountered more conflicts with a coach who wanted him to play in the backfield instead of the line. By then Clements had lost his interest in football and had become tired of college life. As graduate engineers could earn only $110 a month while oilfield roughnecks could earn $180 a month, Clements chose to start living in the oilfields at that level. Many years later he told his biographer that going to the oilfields was like getting a Ph.D. in life.

Trinity Drilling Company sent him to Edna near Victoria, Texas where they had 10 rigs working. He worked initially with driller Z. A. "Boliver" Sloan and Bruce Shanklin who taught him all about running a drilling rig. This was the beginning of a long-term relationship for the three men.

After a short stint with Trinity Drilling Company, Clements took a job with Oil Well Supply to learn more about the technology of drilling and the machinery used. After a brief period, he became a field engineer at Jennings, Louisiana. Soon thereafter the company sent him to Jackson, Mississippi where it appeared a boom was in the making. There he met I. P. "Ike" LaRue with whom he developed a long friendship and working relationship. When World War II broke out, Clements wanted to participate in the military, but he was kept from doing that when Oil Well Supply named him one of the six deferments it was granted by the federal government. Oil Well Supply completed numerous construction projects during World War II in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico with Clements as a construction supervisor.

During the first decade of their marriage, Bill and Pauline Clements moved thirteen times. Their two children, Ben Gill and Nancy were born in 1941 and 1942. They moved to several places in Texas as well as to Alberta, Canada. This marriage ended in divorce in 1975. Clements later married Rita Crocker Bass.

By the end of the war in 1945, Clements was well on his way up the company ladder of Oil Well Supply, but that changed quickly when his old friend "Ike" LaRue called in late November 1946 to ask Clements to join him in starting a drilling company. He had made similar calls before, but this time he succeeded in persuading Clements to join him. Although neither of them had any money, LaRue was sure he could get funding from Toddie Lee Wynne, whom Clements also knew. Both men knew Wynne was wealthy. Wynne had been in partnership with Clint Murchison for many years, but that partnership ended about the same time that LaRue and Clements began plans for their drilling company. Wynne agreed to guarantee $100,000 with Oil Well Supply to make down payments and supplies for two used drilling rigs and another $100,000 at the First National Bank for working capital for the rigs. For this, he was granted a third interest in the company. Clements, LaRue, and Wynne each received a third interest. The company was officially created on January 1, 1947, as Southeastern Drilling Company (later to become SEDCO) with two used rigs. They got a drilling contract in Mississippi for two wells and completed the contract on both of them. Over the next several decades the company developed into a large and highly respected drilling contractor around the world.

In 1950 Clements moved his family back to Dallas and bought a house in University Park. That same year he and LaRue bought Toddie Lee Wynne's one-third interest in the company for $83,000. Five years later Clements purchased LaRue's half interest for $1.2 million. By this time Southeastern Drilling was operating in India, West Pakistan, and East Pakistan. Three years later they had expanded in Iran and the neutral zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In 1960 they began a project to drill 1,000 wells in Argentina and completed the project in three years. In 1965 Southeastern Drilling became publicly owned and was listed in the national over-the-counter market. That same year they decided to specialize in deepwater drilling. Over the next five years, they acquired other companies and worked on designing new types of deepwater drilling rigs. In 1969 the company changed its name to SEDCO and its stock began to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Two years later it moved its offices to the restored Cumberland Hill School building on North Akard Street in Dallas. Over the next decade, SEDCO continued to work at developing new and better deepwater drilling rigs for use around the world and to acquire other companies. An economic downturn for the entire country in the early 1980s turned the oil business from boom to bust. In 1984 SEDCO was sold to Schlumberger Limited for $1.2 billion.

Among the companies acquired by Southeastern Drilling and later SEDCO were Baylor Company, a Houston company specializing in sophisticated electrical equipment for offshore drilling; Earl and Wright, a San Francisco engineering firm; and Houston Contracting Company, the largest cross-country pipeline company. SEDCO also acquired an investment position in Delhi International Oil Corp. and Marathon Oil Company. Those stocks were sold after only one year at a profit of $316 million.

For much of its history SEDCO was at the forefront of developing new and more sophisticated drilling rigs to drill deeper and in deeper water for use all over the world. The list of new rigs developed and constructed is long and impressive. Shortly before SEDCO was sold to Schlumberger Limited, it contracted to the Texas A&M University Research Foundation for a dynamically positioned drillship to be used in an ocean drilling program to explore the ocean basins and study how the earth was formed and developed. The program was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Two decades before Clements left the oil drilling business he made his first entry into the political arena. Peter O'Donnell, Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas asked him to run for the U. S. Senate. Clements recruited George Bush to run instead and served as Bush's state finance chairman in 1964. Four years later Clements raised money in Texas for Richard Nixon's presidential campaign. In1969 Nixon appointed him to the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel. In 1972 Clements co-chaired the Texas Committee to Re-Elect Richard Nixon. In January 1973 Nixon appointed Clements Deputy Secretary of Defense, a post he held until January 1977. In November 1977 Clements became a candidate for the Republican Party's nominee for Governor of Texas. He won the Republican primary in May 1978 and defeated Democrat John Hill in November of that year.

Clements election as the first Republican Governor of Texas since Reconstruction was a major boon for the Republican Party. Now for the first time in a century, loyal Republicans had hopes of being rewarded for that loyalty by appointment to a vast assortment of posts filled by appointment by the governor. Applications and nominations for appointment flooded in as soon as Clements won the election in November 1978 and continued to come in through most of his four-year term. Files were generated on nearly 9,000 people who were considered for appointment as judges, members of licensing and regulatory boards and commissions, regents and boards of directors of universities, branch pilots, and members of numerous other boards, commissions, and task forces. Clements took a very active and strong personal role in this entire process. He had run a very active campaign and had met thousands of individuals all over the state in those campaign events and seemingly has the ability to remember those people. Of course, he also had a broad base of friends and acquaintances around the state from previous efforts to raise money for other candidates.

Before the end of Clements' first term as Governor of Texas, he was re-nominated by the Republican Party for a second term in 1981. The campaign against his Democratic opponent Mark White, who had served as Attorney General during that term, was a bitter one. There was a controversy between the two men during the term, and that strife carried on throughout the campaign. White's campaign was part of the re-election campaigns of U. S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen and Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby. Thus Clements was running against major figures of the Democratic Party. Clements had been led to believe by advisors that he would win easily. Consequently, he did not campaign as hard as he did during the previous campaign. As a result, White won the election in November 1982, and Clements packed up his belongings and his records and moved back to Dallas. Texas Governors had been taking their records with them rather than placing them in the State Archives for more than two decades.

In 1986 the Republican Party once again nominated Clements as its candidate for Governor. The Democrats nominated Mark White again. It was once again a heated battle between the two party leaders. This time, however, Clements defeated White and moved back into the Governor's Mansion in Austin. Much effort during this term was devoted to solving the problem of overcrowded prisons. The legislation was passed to permit issuing bonds to begin a massive project of prison construction. The concept of privatization of prisons was explored and a program was begun to open such prisons in Texas. Additional effort was devoted to reducing crime and to carrying out the Texans' War on Drugs. By 1987 the economy of Texas and the nation had taken a serious downturn, which in turn led to the loss of many jobs statewide. Consequently, Clements devoted much time and effort to bring new business and industry to Texas in order to create more jobs for Texans. These efforts were quite successful. Many thousands of jobs were created, and the overall economy improved considerably by the end of Clements' second term in 1991. The Texas Department of Commerce was created to help coordinate the efforts to improve the economy of the state. Creating a new method of financing public education in Texas required much energy by Governor Clements and his staff. A federal district had declared the old system of financing education unconstitutional. Because of the many issues and the difficulties in finding solutions to the many problems, Governor Clements called six special sessions of the 71st Legislature in 1989.

Born November 17, 1839, James Reid Cole acquired his taste for literature while he worked at E.W. Ogburn’s Book Store. He graduated from Trinity College in 1861 and fought on the Confederate side as a Colonel in the Civil War. In 1883 he was elected as president of the Department of English Language, Literature, and History at Texas A&M College.

The Office of Continuing Education open December 1973 to assist the academic colleges of Texas A&M University coordinates of their continuing education activities. The first annual report is a summary of the information reported to this office about activities conducted from September 1, 1973 through August 31, 1974.

Hernan Contreras was born in Rio Grande City, in Starr County, TX. He was the only child of Abundio Contreras and Mary Howard Contreras. His father, Abundio, was the postmaster of Rio Grande City from 1898 to 1922. Hernan attended Texas A&M University, graduating in 1923, with an Engineering degree. He married Estela Perez (1910-1992), daughter of Casimiro Perez Alvarez (1869-1936) and Silvestra Perez Alvarez in the November of 1938. They settled in the Contreras family home in the 1940s, raising two children, both sons. After Hernan’s death, Estela Contreras continued to live there, until her own death in 1992.

Glen Cook was born on July 9, 1944, in New York, NY. He worked in a variety of jobs prior to his retirement in 1998. Cook is best known for his "Garrett" series and for his "Black Company" series. Critics note that he features the "common man" more centrally than most SF and fantasy writers.

Glen Cook was born in New York, NY on July 9, 1944. He graduated from the University of Missouri in 1965 and worked a number of blue-collar jobs for General Motors before turning to write full-time. Cook's first published work was The Heirs of Babylon, published in 1972.

It was during Cook's time working for General Motors that he began writing The Black Company (published 1984), the first of the Chronicles of the Black Company, a gritty fantasy series of novels and short stories that chronicles the adventures of an elite mercenary company. His other series include the Garret P.I. series, a set of detective novels set in a world of fantasy creatures, and the Dread Empire fantasy series.

Brenda Cooper, born August 12, 1960, is a science-fiction and fantasy author, poet, and futurist (or futurologist, that is, one who studies potential and probable futures with subsequent reflections on the present day) from Washington State. She received a BA in Information Management Systems from California State University, Fullerton, and also pursued courses in creative writing (no degree received) from Lower Columbia College in Longview, WA.

Cooper's first short stories, beginning with "Ice and Mirrors" in 2001, were written in collaboration with noted SF author Larry Niven. Her first solo story was "Linda's Dragon", published in Analog in July 2003. Since then she has published over seventy stories in a number of magazines and anthologies. Her first science fiction short-story collection, Cracking The Sky and Other Stories, was released by Fairwood Press in the fall of 2015. (It was preceded by a self-published anthology of her fantasy fiction, Beyond The Waterfall Door, earlier in 2015.)

In 2005 Cooper's first novel (co-written with Niven), Building Harlequin's Door, was published by Tor. Her second (and first solo) novel The Silver Ship and The Seacame out in 2007, and won the 2008 Endeavor Award for Distinguished Novel or Collection. It was also nominated for the 2008 Golden Duck (Hal Clement Young Adult Award).  Her subsequent novels include Reading The Wind (2008), Wings of Creation (2009), Mayan December (2011), and most recently, The Making War (2020). 2012 saw the release of the first novel in Cooper's Ruby's Song duology, The Creative Fire. Both that book and its sequel The Diamond Deep tell the story of mechanic Ruby Martin, member of an underclass laboring on board a vast worldship. Ruby rises from her humble origins to assume the leadership of a class revolt that breaks down age-old social barriers. The duology was followed up by The Edge of Dark (2015), the start of a new series (titled The Glittering Edge) which takes place in the same universe as Ruby's Song, but many years later. Edge of Dark was nominated for the 2016 Philip K. Dick Award. Cooper's most recent works include the 2017 YA novel Post; her climate change-related Project Earth series, Wilders (2017) and Keepers (2018); and the latest in her Fremont's Children/The Silver Ship series, 2020's The Making War.

Cooper also served until recently as the Chief Information Officer for the city of Kirkland, WA. She and her wife reside in western Washington State.

Brenda was educated at California State University, Fullerton, where she earned a BA in Management Information Systems. - See more at: http://www.brenda-cooper.com/about/#sthash.c731HGVQ.dpuf Brenda was educated at California State University, Fullerton, where she earned a BA in Management Information Systems. - See more at: http://www.brenda-cooper.com/about/#sthash.c731HGVQ.dpuf