Alfred Elton Van Vogt was born in Winnipeg, Ontario, Canada, on April 26, 1912; he immigrated to the United States in 1944 and became a naturalized citizen in 1952. Inspired by reading an issue of _Astounding Science Fiction_in 1938, Van Vogt decided to embark on his own career writing science fiction. In 1939, he published his first story, "The Black Destroyer", the tale of an exploration spaceship (the Space Beagle) whose decks are stalked by a carnivorous monster; it was combined with several other _Beagle_stories into a fix-up novel: The Voyage of the Space Beagle, in 1950. The story was an inspiration for a number of science fiction movies such as It! The Terror From Beyond Space(1958) and Alien(1979).

In 1946 Van Vogt published his first, and most famous novel, Slan. _Slan,_originally serialized in 1940) is the story of Jommy Cross, a young mutant (a "slan") wiho has, among other abilities, the power to read minds, and who flees the anti-superhuman society that killed his parents. The novel quickly gained popularity, and the slogan "fans are slans" gained currency in the world of science fiction fandom. Fans drew similarities between perceived greater intelligence and imaginative capability of science fiction fans with the superior abilities of slans in the novel, as well as their harassment by non-fans to the persecution of slans in the novel.

Among Van Vogt's other more significant works are the _Null-A_series of novels ( The World of Null-A[1948], The Pawns of Null-A[1956], and Null-A Three[1985]), which uses the adventures of Gilbert Gosseyn, who can transport himself or anything instantaneously across vast distances, to explore the non-Aristotelian concept of general semantics; The Weapon Shops of Isher(1951, fixed-up from three previously published stories) and its 1952 sequel The Weapons Makers; two books exploring the Roman Empire-like decline of a far future empire, Empire of the Atom(1956) and The Wizard of Linn(1962); Rogue Ship(1956); and Quest For The Future(1970). In addition, he also wrote a great many works of short fiction.

Van Vogt was nominated for a number of awards over the course of his lifetime. He received the 1980 Prix Aurora for Lifetime Achievement, and was made a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1996. Also in 1996 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. His _The Weapons Shops of Isher_won the 2000 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.

A.E. Van Vogt died on January 26, 2000, in Los Angeles, CA.

Simon McCaffery, a resident of Tulsa, OK, was born in San Francisco, CA in 1963. He is a former magazine editor and telecommunications director, who has been a professional writer since 1990, when he published his first story, "Night of the Living Dead Bingo Women". Since then he has published over twenty works of short fiction, in the science fiction and horror genres.

Jon Manchip White (1924-2013) was born in Cardiff, Wales. He enrolled at Cambridge; after military service, he returned and completed a degree in prehistoric archaeology and anthropology in 1950. White worked for the BBC Television Service, the British Foreign Service, turning to full-time writing in 1956.

In 1967, White moved to El Paso Texas, becoming a writer-in-residence, and founded the creative writing program at the University of Texas at El Paso. In 1977, White left UT-El Paso to head the creative writing program at the University of Tennessee.

White is a distinguished Welsh-American writer who has published over 30 books of fiction and non-fiction. He wrote many scripts for radio, television, and film (including contributions to such films as El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, and The Day of the Triffids.

Jon M. White died in Knoxville, TN on July 31, 2013.

Jeffe (Jennifer Mize) Kennedy (August 22, 1966) is a noted and notable writer of fantasy and erotic romance. An author of novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction, Kennedy has been writing steadily for many years. Her first book was a book of non-fiction essays, Wyoming Trucks, True Love, and The Weather Channel (2004), describing her family, her upbringing, and her life in Wyoming. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award.

Her first published work of fiction was the 2010 novel Petals & Thorns, an erotic reworking of the Beauty & The Beast story originally published under the pen name "Jennifer Paris". Since then she has written a number of fantasy romance series, including the Covenant of Thorns trilogy (2012-2014), Sorcerous Moons (2016-), She has also written several series of more conventional romance, including Facets of Passion (2011-2013) , Falling Under (2014-2016), and Missed Connections (2017-) as well as a number of erotic vampire tales.

Kennedy's most famous series is her award-winning fantasy romance trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, which was published in 2014 and 2015. The series tells the stories of three sisters, Princesses Ursula, Andromeda, and Amelia, who discover romance and adventure while uncovering the secrets of their birth and struggling against their increasingly unstable father King Uorsin. The first book, The Mark of the Tala, received a starred Library Journal review and was nominated for the Romantic Times Book of the Year; its sequel, The Tears of the Rose, received a Top Pick Gold and was nominated for the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2014. The third book, The Talon of the Hawk, won that same award for 2015. In 2015, Kennedy began publishing the spinoff Twelve Kingdoms series The Uncharted Realms. The first book, The Pages of the Mind, was nominated for the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2016 and won the 2017 RITA Award for Paranormal Romance. The second book in the series, released in late 2016, was The Edge of the Blade. Five additional Forgotten Empires novels followed before Kennedy brought the sweeping Tala saga to a conclusion in February 2020 with the publication of The Fate of the Tala.

She has recently completed a new fantasy series - The Forgotten Empires, which began in 2019 with the publication of The Orchid Throne and continued through The Fiery Crown (2020) and The Promised Queen (2021). A prolific writer, Kennedy has begun several new series: the 4-volume (to date) Heirs of Magic series (2021-2022) and Bonds of Magic (3 books to date, 2021-2022).

Kennedy currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She served as the President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) from 2021-2023.

Jack Williamson is, beyond any doubt, the Dean of the Science Fiction Writers, with his career spanning from 1928 to the present. Born in 1908, Williamson traveled to New Mexico by covered wagon. In 1928 he sold his first story, "The Metal Man," and has continued to write through 2005, with his latest novel being The Stonehenge Gate. He earned a B. A. and M. A. degree from Eastern New Mexico University, and a Ph. D. from the University of Colorado. In the course of his career, Williamson has been honored with a First Fandom Science Fiction Hall of Fame Award, the Pilgrim Award of the Science Fiction Research Association, the Grand Master Award for Lifetime achievement of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Hugo awards in 1985 and 2001, and a Nebula Award 1n 2001. Historian Sam Moskowitz noted that Williamson "pioneered superior characterization in a field almost barren of it, realism in the presentation of human motivation previously unknown, scientific rationalization of supernatural concepts for story purposes, and exploitation of the untapped story potentials of antimatter." As an academic, Williamson helped legitimize science fiction as a literary field of study, and publicized the many courses in science fiction in American universities. He is truly a "Grand Master" of science fiction and fantasy.

Jack Williamson (1908-2006) was one of the great masters of 20th-century American science fiction. Born in Arizona Territory in 1908, he spent his early childhood in western Texas before moving to New Mexico in 1915. He received both a B.A. and an M.A. from Eastern New Mexico State University, and a PhD in English literature from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Williamson was a writer from an early age, selling his first story "The Metal Men" to _Amazing Stories_in December 1928. That story launched Williamson's long and legendary career as an author. His first novel was the serialized The Green Girl, which ran in _Amazing_in 1930 (and was published as a stand-alone novel in 1950), and was followed by a great many serialized and stand-alone novels, including, among others, The Legion of Space(serialized 1934, published 1947); The Humanoids(1947), The Legion of Time(serialized 1938, published 1952); Golden Blood(serialized 1933, published 1964); _Rogue Star_w/Frederick Pohl  (serialized 1968, published 1969), _The Singers of Time_w/Frederick Pohl (1991); and The Stonehenge Gate(2005). He also wrote a vast number of short stories and essays.

Williamson earned many accolades over the course of his career, including the 1968 First Fandom Science Fiction Hall of Fame Award, the 1985 Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book ( Wonder's Child: My Life in Science Fiction), the 1985 Skylark Award, the 1994 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the 1997 Bram Stoker Award for Life Achievement, the 2001 Hugo Award for Best Novella and 2002 Nebula for Best Novella ("The Ultimate Earth"), and the 2006 Robert A. Heinlein Award. In 1976 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Williamson died on November 10, 2006, at his home in Portales, New Mexico.

Philip K. Dick (1928-12-16-1982-03-02) is one of the major voices of American 20th-century science fiction. Born in Chicago, Dick spent most of his life in California. Like so many giants of the genre, Dick began his career in the pulp magazine market - his first SF stories appeared in Planet Stories in 1952, and in 1955 he published his first novel, Solar Lottery as one-half of an Ace paperback double. (Although Solar Lottery was Dick's first published SF novel, he wrote several earlier in his life that was published later, including The Cosmic Puppets, Vulcan's Hammer, and Dr. Futurity.

Whether early or late in Dick's career, his works are marked by particular themes such as metaphysical philosophy, alternate worlds and realities, shifts in identity and consciousness, and nations or worlds ruled by authoritarian governments or all-powerful corporations. Dick himself once declared as a major and recurring theme of his to be the question, "What constitutes the authentic human being?"

Though reasonably well-known in his early career, Dick achieved major fame in 1963 when his 1961 novel The Man In The High Castle won the 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel. The book is a chilling dystopia set in the United States after the Axis Powers have won World War II, and is regarded as one of the greatest alternate history stories yet written. Over the next two decades, Dick produced a number of other famous novels, including Martian Time-Slip (1962), The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965, Nebula Award nominee), Counter-Clock World (1967), Ubik (1969), Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1970, Hugo and Nebula Award nominee), A Scanner Darkly (1977, BSFA Winner), and Radio Free Albemuth (1985).

Perhaps Dick's most famous novel is the post-apocalyptic Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (1968), which tells the story of bounty hunter Rick Deckard. Deckard's job is to hunt down and 'retire' escaped androids, and the novel explores Deckard's exploration of what it means to be truly human. The book was adapted into the 1982 film Blade Runner.

In 1974, Dick experienced a number of visions, hallucinations, and mystical encounters, which affected his thought and fiction for the rest of his life. He began keeping a journal of his opinions about the origins of these experiences, which later became known as the Exegesis. From 1978-1981 Dick published a trilogy of novels relating to these mystical events: VALIS (1978, VALIS referring to Dick's vision of the entity that he believed contacted him, or as he termed it, "Vast Active Living Intelligence System"), The Divine Invasion (1980), and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1981).

Dick died in March 1982 after suffering several strokes.

William Gibson is one of the most important writers of late 20th- and early 21st-century science fiction. Gibson and his postmodern/postindustrialist aesthetic have had major cultural and literary influence on the development of modern science fiction. Gibson is noted for his imagery and themes involving such topics as the often-intimate impact of computers on humans, the refashioning and development of capitalism in the shadow of an increasingly technological and computerized society, and how people live and interact within near-future urban environments.

Gibson is one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary sub-genre. As one commentator as put it, cyberpunk might be summed up as "low life, high tech", based around stories that combine advanced scientific concepts such as cybernetics, vast communication networks, and artificial intelligences, with characters who are social outsiders, misfits or outcasts and live in a thriving and heterogeneous underground society. These concepts and characters meet in plots often centered around conflicts between hackers or other people involved in information technology, and late-capitalist megacorporations. Cyberpunk stories usually take place in contemporary or near-future urban settings with dystopian flavors. Cyberpunk tends to oppose the traditionally utopian or progressive vision in futurist science fiction in favor of darker, pessimistic societies dominated by corporations and/or communication networks that reach into all areas of human existence.

William Gibson's literary career began in 1977, with the publication in Unearth of the short story "Fragments of a Hologram Rose". For the next few years he continued to focus on the short story genre, with stories that include "Johnny Mnemonic" (1981, later made into a film in 1995);  "The Gernsback Continuum" (1981); "Burning Chrome" (1982), which introduced the term 'cyberspace'; and "New Rose Hotel" (1984). His early stories were collected into the volume _Burning Chrome_in 1986.

In 1984 Gibson published his first novel, Neuromancer. The book was immediately successful and critically hailed, becoming the first novel to win all three of science fiction's highest awards: the Nebula, the Philip K. Dick, and the Hugo. Set in the "Sprawl" universe that Gibson first described in "Burning Chrome", Neuromancer tells the story of ex- computer hacker Case, who lives in the dystopian underground of Chiba City, Japan. Case and augmented cyborg Molly Millions investigate a shadowy figure named Armitage, and thereby stumble into a plot involving a super-advanced artificial intelligence.

Gibson continued to explore his "Sprawl" universe with two additional novels: Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988, winner of the 1989 Aurora Award). In the 1990s, he wrote another trilogy of novels (the "Bridge" trilogy), this one set in a near-future San Francisco and Tokyo that face the emergence of new and transformative technologies after having both been devastated by earthquakes. This series, also popular with readers as well as criticially acclaimed, includes the novels Virtual Light (1993, winner of the 1995 Aurora Award), Idoru (1996), and All Tomorrow's Parties (1999).

In 1990, Gibson collaborated with fellow cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling to write The Difference Engine. Set in an alternative Victorian England where Charles Babbage's invention of the computer has profoundly transformed British society, the novel is an early and prominent example of steampunk, an offshoot of cyberpunk typically set in an industrialized historical setting such as Victorian Britain or the American West (or a fantasy world that employs similar motifs), and which often features societies driven by steam-powered machinery (or gear-centered machinery, in the offshoot-of-an-offshoot genre "clockpunk").

In the early 2000s, Gibson produced yet another trilogy, the "Blue Ant" series of novels, consisting of Pattern Recognition(2003), Spook Country (2007), and Zero History (2010). The Blue Ant novels were the first of Gibson's works to take place in the present day. His most recent novels include The Peripheral (2014) and Agency (2020), set in a near-future world and including time travel and multiple timelines.

Gibson has also written several works of non-fiction. The most notable of these has been the semi-autobiographical electronic poem Agrippa: a Book of the Dead (1992), which is famous for having been produced on a 3.5" floppy disk and embedded in an artist's book (art by Dennis Ashbaugh). The disk was programmed to encrypt itself after a single reading and thereby be unreadable forever after, and the art was treated with photosensitive chemicals that would cause it to begin fading upon the first exposure to light. Gibson and Ashbaugh produced the work in order to demonstrate the ultimate ephemerality of electronic media and, indeed, of text itself.

Gibson was born on March 17, 1948 in Conway, South Carolina, and spent much of his childhood in Virginia. In his youth he wandered throughout the country and became involved with 1960s counterculture, eventually moving to Canada in 1967 with the vague intent of avoiding being drafted into the Vietnam War. Gibson has resided in Canada ever since. In 1972 he and his wife Deborah moved to Vancouver.

William Gibson was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2008. Besides the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Philip K. Dick Awards, he has also won two Auroras, one Ditmar, one Seiun, and one Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award. In 2019 the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America gave Gibson the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.

Llewelyn Powys (August 13, 1884 - December 2, 1939), wrote a wide variety of works, including essays, a biography, a novel, travel books, works of popular philosophy and propaganda, autobiographical memoirs, and "an imaginary autobiography".

Born in Dorset, England, Llewelyn Powys moved with his family to the village of Montacute in Somerset, England, where his father would be rector for the next thirty-three years. Powys was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1909. Though he spent the next two years in a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, he was never to regain full heath.

From 1914 to 1919 Llewelyn Powys lived in Kenya, managing a farm for his brother William, who was in military service during World War I. In 1919, Llewelyn moved to the United States, marrying Alyse Gregory in October 1924 who was the managing editor of the Dial magazine as well as a widely known and connected New York novelist and essayist. Powys returned to England again in 1925, the pattern of leaving and returning to England informs the rest of Powys' life until the last few most productive years of his life, between 1931 and 1936, when he remained to write in his boyhood home of Dorset, England, Llewelyn Powys only achieved fame by forsaking his homeland and publishing outside of England.

In autumn 1936, Llewelyn Powys' health severely deteriorated and he left England in December for the sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, in which he died in 1939.

Born in Alabama in 1944 to a middle class family, Davis was the oldest of three children. She attended the segregated schools of Alabama until the age of 15, when she received a scholarship from the American Friends Service Committee to attend Elizabeth Irwin High School, a progressive private school in New York City.

After graduating from high school Davis won a scholarship to Brandeis University, where she majored in French literature. She spent her junior year (1962) at the Sorbonne in Paris, witnessed firsthand the Algerian conflict being waged in the streets there, and attended the Communist Youth Festival in Helsinki which had a significant impact on her political development. In 1965 she graduated from Brandeis with honors and went to Frankfurt, Germany to study philosophy at Goethe University. At the University she continued her activism and joined a socialist student group opposed to the war in Vietnam. In her autobiography, Davis notes that she spent time in East Germany, which served to deepen her commitment to socialism.

Upon her return to the U.S. Davis joined the Black liberation movement and the struggle against the Vietnam War in San Diego and Los Angeles.

According to her autobiography, Davis first became aware of the Soledad Brothers after reading a February 1970 article in the Los Angeles Times. She accepted the co-chair of the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee and as a result of her activities and subsequent visits to Soledad Prison, Davis befriended the families of the Soledad Brothers and corresponded with the three men.

On August 3, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, George Jackson's seventeen year old brother, tried to assist James McClain, on trial for an alleged attempt to stab an officer, escape from the courthouse. During the escape attempt the judge and Jackson were killed in a shootout with the police; one juror and the district attorney were wounded. The guns used in the kidnapping were allegedly traced to Davis, implicating her in the escape attempt. A California warrant was issued for Davis' arrest in which she was charged as an accomplice to murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy. She fled Los Angeles and evaded arrest by seeking refuge in several places including New York City. A federal fugitive warrant was subsequently issued and she was placed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's ten most wanted list.

Two months later Davis was captured in New York City. While awaiting trial, and after a few joint court appearances, Davis separated her case from Magee's and their cases were tried separately. Magee wanted his trial held in a federal court while Davis wanted her trial held in California's state court. Davis' trial was moved from Marin County, a primarily white upper middle class community to San Jose, California which was an ethnically and racially more diverse city, in an effort to secure a fair trial with a less biased jury.

Almost immediately a groundswell of support developed in favor of Davis' release. Davis in particular, received widespread national and international support from the black community, liberals and the progressive left. The Communist Party mounted a major political campaign and held rallies in the United States and abroad, published articles, pamphlets and posters, issued petitions, distributed postcards, and requested that the public mail cards and letters on Davis' behalf.

After a trial by jury, consisting of eleven whites and one Latino, Davis was acquitted of all charges. Following her acquittal Davis taught at San Francisco State University for several years. From 1973 until the early 1990s she served on the board of the National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression, an organization she helped found with Charlene Mitchell. In the Fall of 1995, she was appointed to the University of California at Santa Cruz Presidential Chair and became a consultant to the Ph.D program at UCSC where she continues to teach. Davis has written several books on gender and class issues, the prison system and its impact on minority populations, and is a major figure in the orthodox Communist Party.

Elmer Kelton was born in Crane, Texas, in 1926. His father was the ranch foreman for the McElroy Ranch, where Kelton grew up. His mother was a schoolteacher, who taught him to read at the age of 5 or 6. He grew up around ranchers, ranchhands, bronc busters, and cowboys, and first started writing when he was 8 or 10 years old. He has said he always knew he wanted to be a fiction writer.

Encouraged by his high school English teacher at Crane High School, he attended the University of Texas, where he attended classes for 2 years before seeing combat infantry service in Europe during World War II. After the war, he returned to Texas with his Austrian-born wife, Anna, and returned to classes. He graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in journalism in 1948.

Kelton then got a job with the San Angelo Standard-Times as a farm and ranch writer. Later on, he became the agricultural editor, and after 15 years at the newspaper, he left to become editor of Sheep and Goat Raiser Magazine. He then went on to be associate editor of Livestock Weekly, a job he kept until 1990 when he retired. Throughout that time period, however, Kelton also wrote Western novels, selling his first stories to pulp magazines. He published his first novel in 1955, Hot Iron.

Since then, he has written roughly 40 novels, usually set in 19th Century Texas, based on stories he heard growing up around cowboys as a kid. Other novels have been based on historical events; his novel The Time It Never Rained, published in 1973, is based on a 7-year drought that occurred in Texas in the 1950s. Kelton's novels have won him seven Spur Awards, four Western Heritage Awards, and international acclaim. He is often praised for his characterization (while most people make their cowboys '7 feet tall and invincible', Kelton's are '5 foot 9 and nervous'), and his novels' abilities to capture the feel of West Texas as a region and a culture.

Western Writers of America have twice proclaimed him the most popular western writer of all time, ahead of Zane Grey, Willa Cather, Louis L'Amour and Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry. The Time It Never Rained has also won great praise, two major awards, and has been declared by John Tuska to be "one of the dozen or so best novels written by an American (in the 20th Century)". In 2003, San Angelo honored their most famous resident with a monument along the Concho River, near the art museum. Rather than a bust or statue of Kelton, it is instead a silhouette sculpture of a buffalo bull, cow, and calf grazing near a dry water hole.

Kelton lives in San Angelo, Texas with his wife, Anna. They have three grown children; Gary, Steven and Kathy.

Charles Criner was born and raised in Athens, Texas on November 27, 1945. In 1964 he attended Texas Southern University and studied art under the guidance of the renowned late artist, Dr. John Biggers. While in college Charles supported himself by working as a sign painter, graphic artist, and billboard illustrator. After graduating in 1968 with a BA in Art Education, he worked for NASA, producing drawings for Apollo 11. Two years later he worked as the advertising art director at the Houston Post that was interrupted for a two-year stint in the Army. He returned to the Houston Post after his service until the Post folded. He started his own business and was lured away to create advertising art for the Houston Chronicle.

Criner is noted for his cartoons including the Johnny Jones series created while in the Army and later adapted for The Houston Post, The Job Crowd, The Dogs and a few others. He also collaborated with his longtime friend, newspaper columnist and sportswriter William Henry Hygh on the Johnny Jones cartoon carried in The Houston Post with Hygh providing the narrative for Criner's art. Mr. Criner's art, ads, and cartoons have been featured in Ebony Magazine, Houston Business Journal, the Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and in advertising for the Houston Oilers. His works are owned by museums and individual collections throughout the US. He currently teaches at Houston Community College and is the Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of Printing History in Houston.

Joe Linus Barton was born on September 15, 1949, in Waco Texas to Bess Wynell and Larry Linus Barton. He was a Republican U.S. Congressman for Texas's 6th district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1985-2019 and was the Chair of the House Energy Committee from 2004-2007.

William Robinson (1818-1876) made his name as a journalist, writing for and editing many New England newspapers during a long career, especially known for his strong views in various reform movements and as a radical anti-slavery voice. "Charles Sumner, John A. Andrew, Henry Wilson, John G. Whittier, and other Massachusetts radicals" were among his friends (see DAB). The editor, Harriet Hanson Robinson (1825-1911), worked in the Lowell, Massachusetts, mills as a young woman and was also involved in various 19th-century reform movements, especially suffrage, helping organize the National Woman Suffrage Association of Massachusetts as an ally of Susan B. Anthony and publishing Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement (1881). "Her life was perhaps more valuable for what she experienced than for what she achieved" (NAW). Bird, Webb, Warland, Pitman, Russell, and Griffin were all journalists who worked with Robinson on mid-19th century New England newspapers or periodicals and of whom he writes in his reminiscences.

Four of the letters were written to Harriet Robinson, including the one from Lucy Larcom (12mo, 4-pages, declining an invitation to a wedding and discussing other personal matters: two others were written to third parties among the correspondents and forwarded with other letters to the Robinsons. The balance were addressed to Mr. Robinson and cover a broad range of personal and business issues, notes on meetings and current events, and musings on life, journalism, and the various reform movements all were involved with to one degree or another.

The portraits and views, representing a wide range of 19th-century American historic events and sites and public figures, include engravings, some hand-colored, eight photographs (including ones of Charles Sumner, John Wilkes Booth, Charles A. Dana, General Butler, and Benjamin Shillaber), woodcuts, chromolithographs, cartoons, a gilt silhouette of Elijah Lovejoy, a small broadside advocating the election of General McClellan to the presidency in 1864, an engraved illustrated invitation to Horace Greeley's 61st birthday, and other plates, some inlaid to size.

Mercurio Martinez, school teacher, rancher, legal researcher, public spirited citizen, and authority on the history and genealogy of Zapata County, Tex., was born in San Ygnacio, Zapata County, Tex. on October 27, 1876, and died in 1965. He descended from Spanish-Mexican pioneers who had settled on the banks of the Rio Grande Riverin the mid-eighteenth century.

Don Mercurio's great-great grandfather, Bartome Martinez was one of the original settlers of Revilla, Tamaulipas, Mexico in 1750. He served as Alcalde of this frontier ranching settlement for 30 years. Revilla, the town of origin for many Zapata County families, was renamed Guerrero in honor of General Vicente Guerrero after Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821.

Luis Uribe, another of Don Mercurio's great-great grandfathers, was one of the founding settlers of Laredo, Tex., but moved from there to Revilla about 1755. A third ancestor, Juan Jose Gutierrez, was the owner of San Jose Ranch, an extensive holding on the banks of the Rio Grande near Revilla. Don Juan Jose had three daughters, each of whom either married or mothered a successful south Texas pioneer. Mercurio Martinez was descended from the families established by all three of Don Juan Jose's daughters.

Viviana Gutierrez married Jesus Trevino, an ambitious young man who had migrated to Guerrero from Marin, Nuevo Leon. Between 1830 and 1832, Don Jesus Trevino purchased lands on the north bank of the Rio Grande from the heirs of Jose Vasquez Borrego. The Borrego Grant was made in 1750, but the area had remained sparsely settled partly because of Indian raids and the fact that Borrego and his heirs also had enormous holdings in Coahuila where they spent most of their time. Jesus Trevino became acquainted with Jose Maria Marfil Vidaurri, the grandson of Jose Vasquez Borrego, when Don Jose Maria came to Guerrero in 1828 in order to clear the title to the Borrego lands located in what was to become Zapata County, Texas. The titles to these lands had been lost or destroyed during the Mexican War for Independence, but the claim of the Borrego heirs was declared valid by the Guerrero city council, of which Trevino's father-in-law, Juan Jose Gutierrez, was a member.

Jesus Trevino moved his family to Texas and established the settlement of San Ygnacio in 1830. His holdings of approximately 125,000 acres included the entire San Ygnacio sub-division of the Borrego Grant.

Another of the Gutierrez daughters, Ignacia, married Jose Dionicio Uribe, the son of Luis Uribe. She was widowed early and moved across the river with her young sons. One of these sons, Blas Maria Uribe, married Juliana Trevino who was his third cousin and the daughter of Jesus Trevino and Viviana. Don Blas Maria eventually acquired more than half of his father-in-law's holdings and became a highly successful rancher and merchant. His daughter, Maria de Jesus Uribe, was Don Mercurio's mother.

The third daughter of Juan Jose Gutierrez married Antonio Martinez, son of Don Bartome, the original Alcade of Revilla. Their son, Cosme Martinez was born in Revilla in 1811. He married Magdalena Gonzales in 1829 and the couple remained in Tamaulipas while their children were growing up. However, in 1859, Don Cosme purchased one quarter of the Dolores subdivision of the Borrego Grant and, together with his children and their families, established the small settlement of Dolores. Rancho Dolores was located near the river a short distance from the ruins of the hacienda de Dolores which had been established by Jose Vasquez Borrego in 1750, but abandoned by 1814.

One of Cosme's seven children, Proceso Martinez, had moved to Nuevo Laredo as a young man. Proceso helped his father establish the settlement of Dolores in 1859, but moved to Laredo during the American Civil war. There he prospered while running a store and operating a ferry boat. In 1869, however, he married his distant cousin Maria de Jesus Uribe, and settled in San Ygnacio. He was a storekeeper there and was also active in long-distance trade along the border. Among his contributions were the introduction of the first steel plow, kerosene lanterns, corn planting machines and cotton cultivation to the San Ygnacio community. He was also active in local politics.

Mercurio Martinez was one of six children born to Don Proceso and Maria de Jesus. He grew up in San Ygnacio were he attended the local school, helped his father in the mercantile business, and assisted in tending the family crops and herds. His mother died when he was ten years old, and his father did not remarry.

At the age of twelve, Mercurio began to study guitar and violin. Within three years, he was frequently employed as a musician at dances, weddings, and other local fiestas. Music remained an avocation throughout his long life, and he wrote numerous "corridos" or ballads which were based on historically significant events in the Zapata County area.

In July, 1894, young Mercurio left home to work as the assistant foreman of a group of three hundred cotton pickers employed in the fields near Hearne, Texas. He returned home in December and assisted in his father's various enterprises until August, 1895. He then enrolled at St. Edward's College in Austin, Texas where he studied business and telegraphy. In addition, he continued his study of music during his college years (1895-1898). While in college, Mercurio received some financial aid from A. M. Bruni, an Italian immigrant who had achieved wealth and power in Laredo.

Mercurio graduated from St. Edwards in June, 1898, with a degree of Master of Accounts which is equivalent to a B. S. degree in Business Administration. At the age of 22, he returned to Zapata County where he passed the examination for a teaching certificate. Between 1898 and 1907, Mercurio taught school in the Dolores settlement where many of his paternal kinsmen lived. According to autobiographical accounts, he moved to the county seat of Zapata in 1908 in response to a written petition from local parents that he come there as a teacher.

Before this move, however, tragedy entered his life. Although not mentioned in any of Mercurio's accounts of his own life, some of the genealogical records he compiled show that his first wife, Maria Christina Uribe, died about 1907 and that an infant daughter soon followed her mother to the grave. Nearly 30 years were to pass before Mercurio Martinez was blessed with the two children who brought joy to his old age.

Upon moving to the town of Zapata in 1908, Martinez was appointed principal of the local schools by County Judge A. P. Spohn. He served as principal and teacher from 1908 until 1911 when he resigned to become Zapata County treasurer and the administrator of the County School Depository. Martinez held this position through 1916. By this time he had married his second wife, Guadalupe Uribe, a sister of his first wife, she was nearly 15 years his senior. No children were born of this marriage.

In 1917, Martinez was appointed Sanitary Inspector of Zapata County by the State Health Department. During his two years term, he actively attempted to reduce conditions which led to the spread of contagious diseases. From 1919 until 1921, he devoted his time to farming and ranching. Although he continued to supervise his lands and rental properties throughout his life, Martinez accepted a position with the Laredo law firm of Hicks, Hicks, Dickson and Bobbitt in 1921, and moved to Laredo.

This firm changed names several times during Martinez's tenure as the active partners changed. Martinez's duties included work as bookkeeper, cashier, auditor, translator, interpreter, abstracter, and investigator. His knowledge of kinship networks and histories of land ownership in Zapata County was an especially valuable asset to the firm. He also served as a Notary Public and remained active in politics, primarily as a supporter for various candidates among the Zapata County electorate.

The second Mrs. Martinez died in 1935. Two years later, Mercurio married Cristina Trevino, originally of Guerrero, Tamulipas. His only son, Mercurio Martinez, Jr., was born to this marriage in 1937. A daughter, Rosa, was born a few years later.

Mercurio Martinez retired from the Laredo law firm in 1942 at the age of 66 but continued to work with local lawyers on occasional cases having to do with land ownership. Interests in the history of the region his forebearers had pioneered led him to cooperate with Virgil Lott of Roma, Texas, in writing a county history, The Kingdom of Zapata, which was published in 1953. Active participation in the work of the Laredo Historical Society and the Texas State Historical Association occupied some of his time.

One of the great achievements of Mercurio's long and vigorous life was his role in the salvation of the community of San Ygnacio. The decision to build the great Falcon Dam in 1949 marked the doom of the ancient towns along the river south of Laredo. Guerrero in Mexico and Zapata, Lopeno, Falcon and other communities in Zapata County, Texas, were to be lost forever under the waters of a reservoir which would bring life to dry soils farther down the valley. The lands, the old stone homes, the churches, the places familiar to six generations of men and women, and even the cemetaries where the ancestors lay buried were to be inundated by the waters of the river which had beckoned the first pioneers. Men fought this fate and were accused of blocking progress. In the long-run "progress" won, and the dam was built. What this meant to the people of the region is clear in their words which describe the filling of the reservoir. Among them it is known as the Great Flood.

San Ygnacio, then a community of about one thousand, was far enough upstream from the dam to be spared submersion in a watery grave; however, the town-site had been condemned as part of the federally administered area around the new lake. Bull-dozers rather than water were destined to destroy the last remnants of an ancient heritage. The community united, and in April, 1951, the 75-year-old Don Mercurio Martinez was appointed chairman of the "Committee for the Preservation of San Ygnacio." He communicated the passion of his people to the lawyers who worked with him and the other committee members. A petition was drafted in eloquent language befitting the circumstances and signed by the people of San Ygnacio. Through the good will of men like Congressmen Lloyd Bentsen and Senators Tom Connally and Lyndon B. Johnson, the order to destroy San Ygnacio was rescended.

With this victory behind him, Don Mercurio turned to the task of helping the stricken people of the towns whose doom remained sealed. He worked as a key agent of the International Boundary and Water Commission in contacting the many citizens of Zapata County who were resettled on higher ground. His notes reveal that he attempted to convey their requests to the authorities.

When this work was completed, Don Mercurio retired again to the maintenance of his scattered farms and ranches and the administration of his numerous rental properties in Laredo, San Ygnacio, and New Zapata. He corresponded frequently with those of his tenenats who worked part of the year as crop-pickers in the north, as well as, with his children who went away to college. He located Zapata County landmarks for his associates in historical societies and wrote accounts of family history so that these things would not be lost to time. Assisting friends and relatives in the preparation of wills and other legal documents and taking people on tours of San Ygnacio occupied many hours. During the tours he pointed with pride to the stone houses with ancient beams which had been floated down the Rio Grande from New Mexico so very long before when his grandparents were young.

At last he was in his late eighties and must not have had much energy left for his papers. Very few are dated past 1963, when he was 87 years old. Yet, even in 1965, the year of his death, he was still planning and dreaming. His last papers are the plans for the construction of a small dam on one of his ranches in Zapata County. They are dated 1965.

Mercurio Martinez, 1876-1965, as revealed in his papers, was a complex and fascinating man. His autobiographical accounts, written in stilted legal English, reveal only parts of the framework of his life. Since his prose in Spanish flows with great freedom it is regretable that he did not leave the story of his life in his mother tongue. He was a man of two worlds. That which is revealed about him in the papers written in English conveys primarily the legal mind, the businessman with expertise in accounting, the efficient face presented to the larger society in which he lived. In the relatively few documents preserved in Spanish, he is a different man. His "corridas" are songs of the heart as it wonders about man's destiny. It is hard to believe that the beautiful Spanish ballad of the doomed Zapata was written by the same man who wrote the official notes in English on the property holdings and expectations of Zapata residents for the International Boundary and Water Commission. With very few exceptions, it was only in the Spanish language that Mercurio Martinez revealed himself as the emotional, human person that he was.

As a man of two worlds, Mercurio Martinez has left scholars of the future a rich heritage for the understanding of a time and a place. There is a loss because he did not come to terms completely with his bilingual heritage. He tried to leave his written heritage primarily in English, but, in spite of his technical mastery of the language, he apparently did not accept it as a language for expressing the feelings and emotions which make history truely comprehensible. He left us too little in Spanish, possibly because he thought that he had to leave his record in English for it to count in his native land. His papers reflect this, and that is also an historical lesson.

Julian Pennybacker was a Texas A&M student from Palestine, TX who graduated in 1886 with a BS in Agriculture. He was born in 1875 in Mississippi, and his family later moved to Palestine, Texas located in Anderson County. He was a brother-in-law to the Texas Women's rights suffragist, Anna J. H. Pennybacker.

Born March 6, 1884 in Bucyrus, Ohio, but lured out West as a youth, Harold Osman Kelly (1884-1955) traveled a long, hard road before turning his hand to painting as a means of support. Kelly's father was a Lancaster County, Pennsylvaniarailroader and his mother an Ohio born German. In Kelly's own words he loved animals and felt a desire to work with them from his earliest years, leaving school at 16 to work in stables around his home. H.O. Kelly's great American dream, however, was to own Western land and raise fine stock, particularly horses. For nearly 40 years of his life he worked in thirty states as a muleskinner, farmer, logger, bull-whacker, mill hand, sheepherder, freighter, and rancher. With the help of family, H.O. and his wife Jessie, whom he met and married in Arkansas, finally bought a farm in the Texas Panhandle in 1921. By 1939, however, the Dust Bowl swirled H.O. Kelly's dream into a bank foreclosure. Health broken after years of hard outdoor work, Kelly and his wife settled in Blanket, Texas, where he turned more and more to his painting, first with watercolors, then in oils by 1947, not only to occupy his mind and time, but to provide a modest supplementary means of support for himself and Jessie. His first one-man show was held at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1950 at the invitation of Jerry Bywaters, the museum director and Kelly's early champion. Kelly died in Blanket, Texas December 12, 1955.

Francis C. Turner (1908-1999) was born in Dallas, Texas, and graduated from Texas A & M University in 1929 with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. He worked as a highway engineer for the Bureau of Public Roads, earning a professional degree in civil engineering from Texas A & M University in 1940 as well. As a highway engineer, he was selected to work on the Alaska Highway Project in 1943. From 1946 until 1949 he helped restore roads and organize a highway department in the Philippines, serving as coordinator of the Philippine Rehabilitation Program by 1949. Upon his return to the United States, he became Assistant to Bureau of Public Roads Chief Thomas H. McDonald.

In 1954 Turner was appointed Executive Secretary to President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Advisory Committee on a National Highway Program . Turner's work on the President's Committee on a National Highway Program , or Clay Committee, (so-called after its Chair, General Lucius D. Clay), is widely acknowledged as being instrumental in the passage of the highway legislation that established and provided for the funding of a national interstate highway system.

Turner continued to work for the Bureau of Public Roads and its successor, the Federal Highway Administration, for the rest of his career, and ultimately headed these organizations. In 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Turner as Director of the Bureau of Public Roads, an occasion Johnson may have commemorated by giving Turner a copy of his book A More Beautiful America inscribed "To Frank Turner, with great expectations." (The book is included in Series 1. of the Papers and cataloged separately. See Items Separated section in this finding aid.) later, President Richard M. Nixon appointed Turner as Federal Highway Administrator in 1969.

Although Turner retired from his post as Federal Highway Administrator in 1972, he remained active in the service of the highway program for the rest of his life. He was influential in transportation circles, continuing his life-long membership in numerous industry associations such as the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. A member of an elite circle of transportation experts known as the "No Name Group" or "No Name Committee", he was also in constant demand as a consultant by agencies such as the Transportation Research Board and the International Road Federation. Perpetually researching issues relating to the transportation field, he remained a champion of highway causes until his death in 1999.

Over the course of his life, Turner received numerous awards, beginning with membership in the Philippine Legion of Honor in 1951. He was named a distinguished alumnus by Texas A & M University in 1969. The American Society of Civil Engineers honored him with the James Laurie Prize in 1971 and created the Francis C. Turner Lecture Series in 1989. In 1998, the Transporatation Research Board established the Frank Turner Medal for lifetime achievement in the field of transportation. Turner died in a Goldsboro, North Carolina hospice facility in 1999.

Charles R. Bond, Jr. was born in Dallas, TX on April 22, 1915 (d. August 18, 2009). His military career began in March 1938 when he enlisted in the Texas National Guard under the Aviation Cadet Program. In September 1941, he transferred to the Flying Tigers, an American volunteer air force serving in China. Charles Bond fought against the Japanese and received honors from the Chinese military for his bravery along with numerous American military honors. In October 1942, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps and became Chief of the Air Division, United States Military Mission to the U.S.S.R. in Moscow, where he served for one year as an aide to Ambassador Harriman. In 1947 Bond entered Texas A&M College underthe U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology program and graduated in 1949 with a BS in Management Engineering.

After graduation, Bond served as Chief of the Air Defense Plans Branch, Director of Plans, Organization and Requirements, Headquarters Continental Air Command (CONAC). Later, he attended the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, AL in 1951. From 1951 to 1954 General Bond served at Pepperrell Air Force Base, Newfoundland, as the Director of Air Defense and then Deputy for Operations, Headquarters Northeast Air Command (NEAC), and as Commander of the 64 thAir Division (NEAC). In July 1954, General Bond went to Colorado as Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations at the Continental Air Defense Command Headquarters. In September 1957, he was named Commander of the 25 thAir Division, McChord Air Force Base, Washington, and in August 1959 was assigned as Commander of the 28 thAir Division, Hamilton Air Force Base, California.

Major General Charles R. Bond, Jr. was assigned other various high ranking positons until his retirement from service August 1968.

Neal Barrett, Jr., born on November 3, 1929, in San Antonio, TX was a Texas writer of over fifty novels and numerous short stories of mystery/suspense, fantasy, science fiction, and historical novels, and a bit of mainstream fiction. Barrett has a B.A. from the University of Oklahoma and worked in public relations before turning to write full-time. He won a Nebula Award in 1990 and a Texas Institute of Letters Award in 2000. In l997, Barrett was Guest of Honor and Toastmaster at the 55th World Science Fiction Convention. He passed at the age of 84 on January 12, 2014, in Austin, TX.

Guy Lillian is a long-time science-fiction fan and amateur writer. He has been active in the Southern Fandom Press Alliance for many years, serving in offices of the alliance and managing mailings the group. He wrote a history of the alliance in their 30th anniversary mailing in 1991.

Robert Duncan Milne, a Scottish emigrant who settled in San Francisco after attending Oxford and traveling around the West Coast of America. He had an engineering background and his science fiction stories usually are very technically detailed. He became part of the Bay Area writing culture and contributed frequently to periodicals, especially The Argonaut.

"One of the greatest idea-men in the history of science-fiction, in this respect on a par with H. G. Wells, but his literary abilities did not match his ideas. His stories are often flat and a little crude, without the finish attained in the work of certain of his West Coast colleagues." Bleiler, Science-Fiction: the Early Years, p. 502.

First president of the NIRA, was an Animal Science major at Texas A&M.

Ray Bradbury is an icon of science fiction and fantasy, needing no introduction. He is highly regarded in both fields, and is a staple of educational institutions.

Philip Jose Farmer was born in North Terre Haute, IN, on January 26, 1918. He was raised in Peoria, IL, where he attended Bradley University and graduated with a B.A. in English in 1950.

Although Farmer worked as a technical writer from 1956-1970, he began his science fiction writing career in 1952, when his story "The Lovers" was published by Startling Stories. "The Lovers" was notable at the time for featuring a sexual relationship between a human and an alien, and it caused Farmer to be awarded a Hugo Award as "most promising new writer" (the first of three Hugos for him). The story is considered by many to have broken the existing taboo on featuring sex in science fiction.

Over the next several decades, Farmer built up an impressive career in science fiction literature. Among his most notable works are his novel cycles Riverworld and World of Tiers. The former chronicles the adventures of a number of characters (most of them real historical figures) through a strange afterlife in which every human ever to have lived is simultaneously resurrected along a single river valley that stretches over an entire planet. The series began in 1971 with the novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go (which won the Hugo for Best Novel in 1972), and continued through four more books, concluding in 1983 with Gods of Riverworld. The World of Tiers series (7 books, 1965-1991) concerns series of artificially-constructed universes, created and ruled by decadent beings (called Lords, or Thoans) who are genetically identical to humans, but who regard themselves as superior, and who the inheritors of an advanced technology they no longer understand.

Other memorable works of Farmer's include Riders of the Purple Wage (1967), a novella-length pastiche of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake which won Farmer his second Hugo Award; Venus On The Half-Shell (1975), which Farmer wrote under the pseudonym "Kilgore Trout", a character name used originally by Kurt Vonnegut; A Barnstormer in Oz (1982), an adult sequel to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that tells the adventures in Oz of Dorothy Gale's grown son; and the Dayworld series (1985-1990), among many, many others.

Farmer is also noted for his body of novels and stories involving pulp heroes of the early 20th century, including Tarzan and Doc Savage. In this vein, Farmer helped pioneer the concept of crossover fiction by formulating what became known as the "Wold Newton" Universe. In the history of this universe, a meteorite fell to Earth near the English town of Wold Newton in 1795 (a real-life event). The meteorite emitted a strange form of radiation that caused genetic mutations in the occupants of a passing coach. Many of the affected individuals' descendants became endowed with extremely high intelligence and strength, in the context of the Wold Newton Universe, these exceptional individuals- as expanded on both by Farmer and by later authors working in this universe, have included such characters as Tarzan, Doc Savage, Phileas Fogg, Sherlock Holmes, and Professor James Moriarty, Lord Peter Wimsey, Allan Quartermain, Professor James Challenger, the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Shadow, Sam Spade, Nero Wolfe, Philip Marlowe, James Bond, and Fu Manchu as well as his adversary Denis Neyland-Smith.

Over the course of his career, in addition to his three Hugo Awards, Farmer also won the 2000 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award as well as the 2001 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. He was nominated for an additional three Hugos, two Nebula Awards, and a Locus Award.

Philip Jose Farmer died in Peoria, IL on February 25, 2009.