Your Cruise Director is the pseudonym for an author who wishes to remain private. This author frequently writes under this pseudonym (as well as Em Wycedee and MYCD), and information on them can be found on fanlore at https://fanlore.org/wiki/Your_Cruise_Director.

Henry Tin Chin Loo came to the United States in 1913 and died 1991. His grandniece Mary Yee provided this information on his life "although not formally schooled, he was an avid reader, wrote some Chinese poetry, and did some brush painting. Some of his restaurant menus and place settings were featured in an exhibit about Chinese restaurants that traveled here to Philadelphia's Atwater Kent Museum."

William A. Yates was a horticulturist, whose observations on root or stem tumors were included in the Annual Report, Bulletin No. 38 (March 1896) for the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, and published W.A. Yates' Catalogue and Price List of Nursery Stock in 1902 (Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection). Brought to Brenham, TX by William H. Watson, who founded the Rosedale Nursery in 1874, Yates help run the nursery along with John T. Herbert, William W. Haupt, D.R. Eldred, William Falconer, William Baker, James B. Baker, and Watson's children.

Dr. David G. Woodcock graduated from the Universtiy of Manchester (England) in 1960 with a Bachelor of Architecture along with a Certificate in Town and Country Planning.  In 1962 Dr. Woodcock was named a Fulbright professor and came to Texas A&M where he taught architecture classes.  He returned to England in 1963 to accompany his ill wife and taught at the Canterbury College of Art and was principal of his own practice, specializing in urban design studies and historic building reuse.  In 1966 he earned a Diploma in Town and Country Planning from the Universtiy of Manchester (England).

Woodcock returned to A&M in 1970 to head the urban design option for the College of Architecture and Enrironmental Design master of architecure degree program.  By 1973 he was named the head of the architecture department, a position he held until 1978, when he returned to teaching.  He was again named department head in 1983 and served until 1989, before returning to teach.

In 1991 Dr. Woodcock established the Histroic Resource Imaging Lab in the College of Architecture, which later became the Center for Historic Conservation.  The center’s mission is to train students, professionals and others in the use and application of imaging processes relative to historic and cultural resources, to develop new techniques for documentation, analysis, visualization and interpretation, and to apply imaging techniques to the study of historic resources.  Woodcock directed the HRIL and CHC for 16 years before stepping down and in 2009 was named director emeritus. He also created and developed the College of Architecture's Certificate in Historic Preservation.

Dr. Woodcock retired from Texas A&M Universtiy in 2011 and has an endowed professorship was established in his honor, the David Woodcock Professorship in Historic Preservation.

Gene Rodman Wolfe was born May 7, 1931, in Brooklyn, New York. Wolfe attended Texas A&M University from 1949-1952, and attained a B. S. degree from the University of Houston in 1956. Wolfe worked as a product engineer from 1956 to 1972, and as senior editor for Plant Engineering Magazine from 1972 to 1984, before turning to full-time writing. Wolfe is regarded as one of the major contemporary writers of science fiction. Wolfe has been honored with Nebula Awards, a Rhysling Award, British Science Fiction Award, British Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Awards and other awards.

Gene Wolfe was born on May 7, 1931 in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Texas A&M University from 1949-1952, where he published (in 1951) his first short fiction, in the student literary magazine Commentator. Wolfe left Texas A&M during his junior year and was drafted into the U.S. military, serving in the Korean War. Upon his return to civilian life he graduated from the University of Houston in 1956 and became an industrial engineer until 1972. From 1972-1984 he served as senior editor for Plant Engineering Magazine, while at the same time building a legendary career as a writer of science fiction.

Wolfe's first published novel was _Operation Ares_in 1970, although he began to achieve real fame with his second, The Fifth Hand of Cerberus(1972). Since then he has produced a large and critically-acclaimed body of work, most notably the novel cycle The Book of The New Sun(1980-1983), which consists of The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch. (Wolfe followed this series up with a coda, The Urth of the New Sun, in 1987). _New Sun_tells the story of Sevarian, an apprentice torturer who is exiled and forced to wander a far-future dying Earth.

In 1984, Wolfe retired from his editing career and devoted himself to writing full-time. He published two more works in the _New Sun_universe: _The Book of the Long Sun_consists of the novels Nightside the Long Sun(1993), Lake of the Long Sun(1994), Caldé of the Long Sun(1994), and Exodus From the Long Sun(1996). Wolfe then wrote a sequel, __ _The Book of the Short Sun,_which include On Blue's Waters(1999), In Green's Jungles(2000) and Return to the Whorl(2001). The three _Sun_works are often referred to collectively as the "Solar Cycle." Other major works of Wolfe include The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories(1980) ; Soldier of the Mist(1986) and its two sequels Soldier of Arete(1989) and Soldier of Sidon(2006); The Wizard Knight(2005); and The Land Across(2013).

Wolfe has won a number of major literary awards, including two Nebula Awards, a Rhysling Award, two British Science Fiction Awards, a British Fantasy Award, four World Fantasy Awards, an Apollo Award, a Deathrealm Award, a Skylark Award, and the 1996 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. In 2013 the Science Fiction Writers of America awarded Wolfe the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.

Walter Wipprecht [Senior] was born in Sisterdale, TX in 1864. Walter graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Scientific Agriculture in 1885. He was one of the first graduates at Texas A&M University. Walter Wipprecht [Senior] grew up to be a successful businessman who gave back years of service to his community and years of devotion to his family. Walter [Senior] was the President of the Bryan Telephone Company and the Bryan Press President of the Aggie Alumni Organization. Walter served as an instructor in chemistry and physics at Texas A&M as well as the first chemist for the Texas Experiment Station. He served as the Comptroller of Texas.

Terri Windling was born in New Jersey in 1958. She has written several novels including The Wood Wife (1996), which won the 1997 Mythopoeic Award for Adult Fantasy Literature, as well as enjoying a notable career as a fantasy artist and as an editor.

Her anthology series include Chronicles of the Borderlands, Elsewhere, Fairy Tale Anthologies, Fairy Tales Retold, Mythic Fiction, and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (the last four series co-edited with Ellen Datlow). She has also written a number of essays, short stories, and poems.

Windling, like her colleague, has been nominated and/or won a number of professional awards, including the 1982 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology/Collection, the World Fantasy Fantasy Awards for Best Anthology in 1992, 2000, 2003, and 2007, the 2000 Stoker Award for Best Anthology, and the 2010 Nebula Solstice Award.

Robert Charles Wilson was born in Whittier, CA in 1953, but spent his childhood growing up near Toronto, Canada; he has, in fact, spent most of his life in Canada. He has enjoyed a popular and critically acclaimed career as a science fiction writer, beginning in 1986 with his first novel A Hidden Place, which was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award for Best Novel.

Other notable works of Wilson's include Memory Wire (1988), A Bridge of Years (1991, also nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award), Mysterium (1994, winner of the Philip K. DIck Award), Darwinia (1998, nominated for the Hugo and the Locus SF Awards for Best Novel), The Chronoliths (2001, nominated for the Hugo and Locus SF Awards for Best Novel and winner of the Campbell Award), Blind Lake (2003, nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel), the Spin series of novels: Spin (2005, winner of the Campbell Award and of the Hugo Award for Best Novel), Axis (2007, nominated for the Campbell Award ), and Vortex (2011); and Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America* (2009).

Sir Angus Wilson (full name Angus Frank Johnstone-Wilson), 11 August 1913 – 31 May 1991, was an English novelist and short story writer. He was one of England's first openly gay authors.

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.

Walter Jon Williams (1953-) was born in Duluth, MN, but has resided most of his life in New Mexico, where he received his B.A. in 1975 from the University of New Mexico. Williams' earliest novels were non-SF historical works , written under the name 'Jon Williams': nautical adventures (1981-1984) set on board American ships as they battle the British in the Age of Sail, and based on games he designed for Fantasy Games Unlimited. His career in science fiction began with the 1984 novel "Ambassador of Progress"; his second SF novel, "Knight Moves" (1985) was nominated for the 1986 Philip K. Dick Award.

From 1986-1989 Williams produced the 'Hardwired' series of novels, a well-received group of novels in the emerging cyberpunk genre; Williams' interest in cyberpunk continued with the 1989 novel "Angel Station". Over the course of his career, Williams has written novels and short stories in a number of other genres, such as science fantasy (the 'Metropolitan' series, 1995-1997), SF noir (the 'Dagmar Shaw' series, 2009-2014), comedy (the 'Drake Majistral' series, 1987-1996), and far future military space opera ('Dread Empire's Fall', 2002-ongoing). He is also a noted fantasy writer, having written the 'Quilifer' series (2017-2019).

Williams also plays in other people's universes from time to time. He has written two works in the 'Star Wars' Expanded Universe series: "Destiny's Way" and "Ylesia" (both 2002). He has also written for George R.R. Martin's 'Wild Cards' shared universe series that explores the real-life societal effects over decades of a virus that struck Earth in the 1940s and infected many people with superpowers and others with horrible deformities.

He has been nominated for numerous awards in the course of his career, including Hugo Awards for the 1987 novelette "Dinosaurs", the 1988 novella "Surfacing", the 1993 novella "Wall, Stone, Craft" (also nominated for a Nebula Award), the 1998 novel "City on Fire" (also nominated for the Nebula), and the 2003 novella "The Green Leopard Plague"; and Nebula Awards for his 1986 novella "Witness", the 1991 novella "Prayers on the Wind", the 1995 novel "Metropolitan", the 1997 novelette "Lethe", and the 1999 novella "Argonautica". He won the 2001 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, for "Daddy's World" and the 2005 Nebula for Best Novella for "The Green Leopard Plague". He was a finalist for the 1998 Theodore Sturgeon Award for Best Short Science Fiction for "Lethe", and for the 2000 Sturgeon Award for Best Short Science Fiction for "Daddy's World".

The William Scott Chapter, National Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR) was organized and established on February 24, 1916. The William Scott Chapter, NSDAR is located in Bryan, Texas (District IV of the Texas Society Daughters of the American Revolution).

Sharon Faye Wilbur was a career librarian and Star Trek aficionado. She served as a Civil Service librarian for the Army for 33 years. She served at Fort Sill, White Sands Missile Range, Fort Hood, Fort Leavenworth, and Fort Bliss, and was at West Point for some one-third of her career. Ms. Wilbur retired in 1999, but returned to part-time librarianship in the Fort Worth Library system.

She developed an interest in science fiction as a child and teen in the 1950s, as she had three brothers and read everything that they did.

During the 1970s when she was a librarian at West Point, she became a member of the National Organization for Women. This triggered an interest in women writers of science fiction and fantasy and women as characters in science fiction and fantasy that has continued to the present. This was her original focus point in collecting and reading science fiction and fantasy by and about women that has continued to the present. Miss Wilbur has always loved animals especially cats. This was another focus point in her collecting. She now had an interest in animals as well as an interest in women in science fiction and fantasy.

She became interested in science fiction conventions during the 1970s and attended many in New York City and Boston. Her most interesting story about one con was one she attended in New York City. Isaac Asimov was present. She attended a reception for the authors and was kissed by him. She later realized that he liked to hug and kiss women. She attended many World Cons over the years. She learned that Cons were a good place to gain knowledge of science fiction and Star Trek and to add to her collection.

Miss Wilbur watched the original Star Trek series in college. She became more involved in Starfleet during the time that she lived in Killeen, TX and worked at Fort Hood. She helped organize the first Shuttle in Killeen that became the USS Kepler. She was active in the USS Nomad as well as the USS Mir. Wilbur primarily collected everything to do with the original series. She eased off collecting but remained still a member of Starfleet and a watcher of the Star Trek series on television as well as reading Star Trek novels.

Sharon Faye Wilbur died in early 2024.

William E. Whitsett, Jr. was born in Glasgow, Kentucky in 1837. He moved to Texas and became a Texas Ranger in 1860 under command of Col. M.T. Johnson. Whitsett was a member of the Confederate Army in Sam Bell Moxey’s Ninth Texas Cavalry Regiment in 1861. He was discharged from the service in June of 1865 after having participated in many battles, including Westport, Jackson, and Chickamauga. In 1870, Whitsett married Nancy Jane Lattimore.

Ted White was born on February 4, 1983, in Washington, DC. White has been an editor and writer of science fiction throughout his working life. He was the assistant editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1963-1968), and editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic (1968-1978). He also served in editorial capacities for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Heavy Metal (1979-1980), and Lancer Books. White was the chairman of the Twenty-Fifth World Science Fiction Convention.

He has written a number of novels and short stories (the first of his published work was the story "Phoenix", written in 1963 with Marion Zimmer Bradley; which he later expanded into the 1966 novel Phoenix Prime, the first in the Qanar series).

Robert I. White is a former attorney who has specialized in federal tax litigation since 1959. After working in private practice in New Orleans from 1958-1959, he began work as a trial attorney in both Houston and Dallas for the Internal Revenue Service, Chief Counsel’s Office. In 1963 he left the IRS and went to work until 1966 for the United States Department of Justice’s Tax Division in Washington, DC.  In 1966 he returned to Texas and joined the Houston firm of Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams & Martin, where he remains a shareholder.

White graduated from Tulane University with a B.B.A in 1953. He received his law degree from the Tulane School of Law in 1958 and obtained an L.L.M. from Southern Methodist University in 1966. In addition, he served for three years in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.

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.

Django Wexler was born in New York on January 13, 1981. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with degrees in computer science and creative writing, and before embarking on a full-time writing career conducted research on artificial intelligence for Carnegie Mellon and was a programmer for Microsoft in Seattle. Wexler's first novel, Memories of Empire, was published in 2005. His second, Shinigami, God of Death, was released the next year.

2013 saw the publication of the first in Wexler's noted The Shadow Campaignsseries, The Thousand Names. The Shadow Campaigns novels are early and prominent examples of the literary subgenre that has become known as 'flintlock fantasy' or 'gunpowder fantasy', that is, fantasy narratives that do not inhabit the traditional sword-and-sorcery medieval European analogues but instead are set in worlds more culturally and technologically reminiscent of 18th and early 19th-century Europe and America. In this subgenre, alongside the gods, magic and unworldly creatures of traditional fantasy stand early modern technologies such as cannons and flintlock rifles. The Shadow Campaigns follows the adventures of several individuals (many of them soldiers) living in the Vordanai Empire, a rough fantasy analog to the 18th-century British Empire. There are five novels in the series, including The Thousand Names, The Shadow Throne, The Price of Valor, and The Guns of Empire, as well as several short stories. The final volume, The Infernal Battalion, was released in 2018.

In 2014, Wexler released the first of a fantasy series for young adults, The Forbidden Library .The novel and its three sequels tell the story of young Alice, who lives with her uncle Geryon and discovers her ability to enter into the magical realms contained within books in her uncle's massive and mysterious library. Wexler also wrote another well-received YA fantasy series between 2019-2021: the Wells of Sorcery trilogy, a saga of mysterious warriors, ghost ships, and travels to strange new worlds. His latest book is the epic science-fantasy Ashes of the Sun, published by Orbit in 2020.

Wexler has also published a number of works of short fiction, including the story "The End of the War", which achieved 2nd place in the 2016 Asimov's Readers Poll for Best Novelette; the Star Wars story "Amara Kel's Rules for TIE Pilot Survival (Probably)"; and the 2021 Tor.com novella Hard Reboot.

Wexler currently resides in Washington State.

Kathy Diane Wentworth was born on January 27, 1951, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A graduate of the University of Tulsa, Wentworth embarked on a professional writing career with the short story "Daddy's Girls", which was published in the anthology L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume 5. (She later served as editor of the Writers of the Future contest from 2009 until her death.)

In the course of her career, Wentworth wrote over sixty short stories, three of which were nominated for the Nebula Award: "Burning Bright" in 1998, "Tall One" in 1999, and "Born-Again" in 2006. Her novelette "Kaleidoscope" was nominated for the Nebula for Best Novelette in 2009. She published her first novel, The Imperium Game in 1994, and another stand-alone novel, This Fair Land, in 2002. In addition, Wentworth wrote several novel series, including the House of Moons Chronicles ("Moonspeaker", 1994, and "House of Moons", 1995); the Heyoka Blackeagle series ("Black on Black", 1999, and "Stars Over Stars", 2001), and the two first books in the Jao Empire series, co-written with Eric Flint ("The Course of Empire", 2003, and "The Crucible of Empire", 2010).

Wentworth served as the secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for two terms in the early 2000s. She died of complications from cancer and pneumonia in Tulsa, on April 18, 2012.

Martha Wells, novelist ans short story writer, was born on September 1,1964 in Fort Worth, Texas, and graduated from Texas A&M University with a B.A. in Anthropology. She currently resides in College Station, Texas.

Her first novel, The Element of Fire, was published by Tor in hardcover in July 1993 and was a finalist for the 1993 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award and a runner-up for the 1994 Crawford Award. (The French edition, Le feu primordial, was a 2003 Imaginales Award nominee. Her second novel for Tor, City of Bones, was a 1995 hardcover and June 1996 paperback release. Both novels were on the Locus recommended reading lists. Her third novel The Death of the Necromancer (Avon Eos) was a 1998 Nebula Award Nominee and the French edition was a 2002 Imaginales Award nominee. Wheel of the Infinite (HarperCollins Eos) followed in 2000. In 2003 Wells published The Wizard Hunters (HarperCollins Eos/May 2003), the first book in a fantasy trilogy taking place in the world of Ile-Rien (from The Element of Fire and The Death of the Necromancer). It was followed by two sequels - The Ships of Air (2004) and The Gate of Gods (2005). Wells' books have been translated into numerous languages, including French, German, Russian, Italian, Polish, and Dutch.

Wells has also written an number of other books, including a fantasy series for young adults that includes the novels Emilie and the Hollow World (2013) and Emilie and the Sky World (2014); two tie-in novels set in the universe of television's Stargate Atlantis - Reliquary (2006), and Entanglement (2007); and the novel Empire and Rebellion: Razor's Edge (2013). This last is set in the Star Wars: Legends universe and is notable for placing Princess Leia Organa front and center as the main heroine.

Among Wells' most notable works are the five novels and numerous stories comprising the fantasy series The Books of the Raksura. The series, which began with the 2011 novel The Cloud Roads, takes place in the lush and varied Three Worlds, and is centered around Moon, a member of the shapeshifting Raksura species. Popular and critically-acclaimed, the series was nominated in 2018 for the Hugo Award for Best Series. The series ended in 2017 with the novel The Harbors of the Sun.

In 2017, Wells embarked on a new project, The Murderbot Diaries, an science fiction series about a self-aware cyborg who must reckon with its newfound autonomy as well as its ongoing frustration with the mass of humanity among which it lives and works. The first novella in the series, All Systems Red was nominated for the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award and the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novella. It won the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novella, making Wells the first graduate of TAMU to win a Nebula Award. All Systems Red has also won the 2018 Locus Award for Best Novella and a 2018 ALA/YALSA Alex Award. The second book in the series, Artificial Condition, was released in May 2018 and won the 2019 Hugo award for Best Novella (another first for Wells, as the first Aggie to win a Hugo Award as an author). Subsequent entries in the series include Rogue Protocol (2018), Exit Strategy (2018), Network Effect (2020, the first novel in the series and winner of the 2020 Locus Award for Best SF Novel, the 2021 Nebula award for Best Novel, and the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Novel), and most recently, the novella Fugitive Telemetry (2021). The series has been a critical and popular hit, winning the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2021 and the first book is being produced by Apple TV+ as a television series set for broadcast in late 2024. The latest installment of the series, the novel System Collapse, was released in November 2023.

Wells' new epic fantasy novel, Witch King, was published by Tordotcom in May 2023. It has been nominated for the 2023 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

L. C. Wells grew up in a Foreign Service family which introduced her to "fandom" at an early age with the first Doctor Who, William Harnell. Coming back to the U.S. she discovered science fiction, then comics, then on to Star Wars. She is a longtime fanfic writer, having written for a number of different media fandoms, including The Rat Patrol, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Star Wars, The Wild Wild West(TV), The Equalizer, Airwolf, Beauty and the Beast, She-Wolf of London, Indiana Jones, The X-Files, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, and Max Headroom.

Wells was an editor for the Star Wars zine Contraband, and the crossover zine CroSignals. Her Rat Patrol fanzine The Last Ride Raid, co-written with Kathy Agel, won a 1998 FanQ Award.

Gustav Wehrs was born December 29, 1915, in Nendorf, Germany. He had 5 brothers and 2 sisters, and was the 5th child born to his parents. His father was a farmer, and worked on a farm which had been in the family line for generations. He went to school in Nienberg, Germany, becoming a teacher after he graduated. He then taught school in Nienburg. In April of 1937, when Wehrs was 21 years old, he joined the Germany Army, because he could not avoid the compulsory signup any longer on the grounds of his profession. He was promoted to NCO in 1939, and promoted again to sergeant in 1942.

In 1943, he participated in the Battle of the Aegean, fighting in the battles for Kos and Leros before being captured by British soldiers. He spent the rest of the war in Egypt as a prisoner of war. He returned to Germany in 1947 or 1948, via ship. Four of his brothers had died in Russia during the war. Wehrs took over running the family farm after his father died on April 6, 1948, and also married in July of that year to his wife, Annemarie. They had two children, a son and daughter, and continued to live on the farm in Nendorf until 1958, when it was sold. The Wehrs then moved to Bremen, where Gustav got a job, and then later on to Hamburg, where he worked with electronics manufacturers.

Timothy A. Weaver is a graduate student and artist studying Visualization Sciences at the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University. He has been a long time Star Trek fan and collector since childhood. The VHS collection was formerly his father's David J. Weaver.

Elgin Award-winning author Holly Lyn Walrath (called "Houston's premier horror poet" by the Houston Press) was born and raised in a Baptist household in Garland, Texas. She graduated in 2007 from the University of Texas - Austin with a B.A. in English, and received a Master of Liberal Arts in Creative Writing degree from the University of Denver in 2015. That same year saw the first publication of her works, including the story "The Last Man on Earth" in the online flash fiction journal Grievous Earth and the poem "A Red Sky" in the online Vine Leaves Literary Journal. Since then, Walrath has published a large number of short stories, pieces of flash fiction, and poems.

Walrath published her first collection of poetry, Glimmerglass Girl (Finishing Line Press), in 2018. As A.J, Odasso, the senior poetry editor at Strange Horizons noted, “Glimmerglass Girl delights and chills the senses in equal measure, deceptively minute in its scope. Walrath challenges preconceived notions of feminine identity in these delicate, uncanny poems—and spares nobody, no body, in the process.” The collection won the 2019 Elgin Award for Best Chapbook from the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She had a collection published in Italian in 2020, Numinose Lapidi (Kipple Press), which was a semi-finalist for the 2021 Tomaž Šalamun Prize. The English translation of that collection - of horror poems written in the pantoum form - was published in April 2023 by Aqueduct Press as Numinous Stones. Walrath's most recent collection was The Smallest of Bones, released in 2021 by Clash Books and a 2021 Elgin Award nominee. The collection explores "a wide range of topics such as love, romance, relationships, queer sexuality, religion, death, demons, ghosts, bones, gender, and darkness."

Walrath's science fiction-, fantasy-, and horror-related work has appeared in many different venues, including 365 Tomorrows, Luna Station Quarterly, Fireside Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Sunday Morning Transport, Abyss & Apex, Dreams & Nightmares, StarLine, and Eye of the Telescope* (an issue of which Walrath guest-edited in 2018), among many others. Her 2020 poem "Yes, Antimatter Is Real" was nominated for the 2021 Dwarf Stars Award from the SFPA, and she has had numerous poems nominated for the SFPA's Rhysling Award.

Walrath is also an editor - in 2019 she launched Interstellar Flight Press, an indie speculative fiction publishing company focusing on underrepresented genres and authors. She has edited 9 books for IFP as of 2022, including several that have won major industry awards.

After residing in Colorado for 8 years, and Austin for nearly 19 years, Walrath moved to and currently resides in Houston, TX.

Nanne Shelby Waldrop (September 10, 1877 - March 18, 1970) Daughter of Dr. Joel Selman Willis (born circa 1853, in Culloden, Monroe County, Georgia), and Amanda Baldwin Davismanda (born circa 1856, in Texas).

Howard Waldrop was born in Houston, Mississippi on September 15, 1946, and moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas in 1950. He attended the University of Texas at Arlington, spent two years in the Army, and lived briefly in Grand Prairie and Bryan before moving to Austin in 1974 where he was been a member of the well-known Turkey City Writers Workshop along with Bruce Sterling, Leigh Kennedy, Chad Oliver, Lewis Shiner, and others.

Waldrop spent most of his life in Texas, especially in the Austin area. A prolific and singular writer, he was once described by George R. R. Martin as "the most startling, original, and entertaining short story writer in science fiction today."

He sold his first story to Analog, entitled "Lunchbox", in 1972, and was subsequently widely published in places as diverse as Omni, Playboy, Universe, Crawdaddy, New Dimensions, Shayol, Orbit, and Zoo World. His first novel, The Texas Israeli War: 1999, written in collaboration with fellow Texan Jake Saunders, was published in 1974. In 1984 his solo novel, Them Bones, was published as part of the new Ace Specials line. But it was as a short story writer that Waldrop made his reputation. Many of his unique and bizarre stories have been published in different collections, including Howard Who? (1986), All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past (1987), Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations (2003), and H'ard Starts: The Early Waldrop (2023). A particularly notable collection of his stories, Night of the Cooters (the title story was a 1988 Hugo nominee, and was adapted into an animated short in 2022), was published in 1990.

His 1980 story "The Ugly Chickens" won both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards in 1981, and Waldrop has also been frequently nominated over the years for many other awards, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the Locus, the Balrog, and the Sidewise Awards. In the course of his long career, Waldrop wrote over two hundred stories, with his most recent one (not including those appearing only in a collection) being "Til the Cows Come Home To Roost", in the Spring 2018 issue of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2021.

Waldrop died from a stroke in Austin, on January 14, 2024, at the age of 77.