About Us
Regular Contributors
  • JP Frantz (jp at sfsignal dot com) - A lifelong SF fan, well, at least as far back as he can remember, he decided it would be cool to start a weblog about SF and stuff. So, together with a few friends, he did, and SF Signal was born!

  • John DeNardo (john at sfsignal dot com) - John is an avid reader and reviewer. (See John's review criteria.) His book reading comes second only to his book buying, which some (including John himself) might call compulsive. (We often use the B-word.) His frequent jaunts to the local bookstores are legendary in his own mind. Although John reads an occasional fantasy/mystery/non-fiction book, his tastes lean heavily toward science fiction. John's tastes within any genre vary, but he is fond of classic sf even though he has a hit-and-miss experience with classic award-winning sf. John also likes to alternate novel-length fiction with shorter works, so he frequently reads anthologies between reading sessions. John's favorite authors tend to be Golden Age authors like Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov etc., but he also likes the new kids on the block like Alastair Reynolds, John Scalzi, etc. For a better idea of what he likes, see John's Year in Review for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009.

SF Signal Irregulars
  • Scott Shaffer - Scott typically plays games or reads, in that order, when he can fit those activities into his busy schedule. This schedule forces him to play games that take about 20 hours to complete and finish them in about 2 days. We think he doesn't sleep. Scott has also been branded, by a recognizable bank, as a Star Wars Enthusiast.

  • Tim - We're not sure how exactly Tim got in, but he's here and occasionally posts a relevant entry. Tim likes World of Warcraft, even if it is a derivative of EverQuest, and would play games all day if his wife, and work, would let him. He is a self-proclaimed Star Wars fanboy.

  • Kevin - Kevin is our resident game creator/distributor (check them out at APEGames). No science fiction games though.....yet. Kevin also finds time to read in short supply. He's usually getting his butt kicked at UT2004 instead of reading. We're not sure if Kevin can be called a fanboy of anything. Maybe zombie movies.

  • Fred Kiesche - Fred runs The Lensman's Children and contributes to TexasBestGrok and is one of SF Signal's original fanboys. His love and knowledge of classic science fiction is exceeded only by his desire to consistently point out our spelling and grammatical errors, an ability we give him the opportunity to exercise every chance we get. A former grievance administrator for a academic union, a former technical writer, and now perpetually underemployed in the financial industry, he hopes someday to get a "real job" working for a quality science fiction publisher. Until then he'll gloat over his multi-thousand volume book collection and play with his HALO dolls...ummm..."action figures". His current project is turning his daughter into a raving fangrrrlll.

  • Karen Burnham - Karen Burnham left all she knew behind in California and crossed the Great Western Desert to get to Houston. She did it solely to get into the good graces of the masters of SF Signal. Totally. (A Master's Degree wouldn't hurt either.) She kept one thing with her on her quest, a cyber-totem if you will: her sf reviewing blog, Spiral Galaxy Reviews. Her experiment in reversing the American Western Migration in the name of science fiction seems to be working out spiffily so far.

  • Larry Ketchersid - Larry Ketchersid is CEO of a security software and services company and the author of the novel Dusk Before the Dawn. He plays rugby, does martial arts, writes tech articles, reads a lot, and has degrees in Math, Physics and Computer Science. In other words, he still hasn't decided what he wants to do and is in no hurry to do so. His career includes 15 years at Compaq, the greatest computer company that used to be.

  • Jeff Patterson - By some fortuitous circumstance Jeff Patterson was born on September 1, 1962, the day the White House announced that the world population had exceeded three billion people, so he figures that was him. In ancient days he had stories published in obscure, short-lived, low-paying and generally unread periodicals. These days he runs Bad Day Studio, known mainly for its annual Holiday Cards. These were collected in a book called Solstice Chronicles. He hopes to get his blog Gravity Lens back up to speed soon.

  • Lisa Paitz Spindler - Lisa subsists on steady infusions of cafe mochas and science blogs, while constantly trying to beat her Free Rice high score of 45. Occasionally she writes science fiction and designs web sites. She also hosts the Danger Gal blog.

  • Dave Tackett - Dave is a long time fantasy, science fiction, and horror fan, who can never make up his mind which genre or medium he likes best. He runs the QuasarDragon blog and has numerous other hobbies and interests to drain him of time and money. Dave is an eccentric dilettante.

  • Terry Weyna - Terry still remembers the moment she first understood how to read. Reading struck her as miraculous then, and she has never had any reason to reconsider that opinion. She currently reads virtually anything that holds still long enough, but has a special interest in fantasy and horror, especially those works that fall into the realm variously described as New Weird, slipstream or interstitial fiction, whether published as genre fiction or mainstream fiction. Terry maintains her personal blog at Reading the Leaves. When she must, Terry practices law, as she has for 28 years; but she'd almost always rather be reading. Terry lives in Northern California with her husband, Fred White, the author (most recently) of The Daily Writer: 366 Meditations to Cultivate a Productive and Meaningful Writing Life (Writer's Digest Books, 2008). They share their home with the imperious Cordelia Cat Weyna-White, who demands incessant petting, and some 12,000 books, nearly all of which constantly clamor to be read or reread next. While most people would find it a quiet home, for two bookworms and cat lovers with active imaginations the place can get pretty noisy.

  • Peter Tzinski - Pete is a freelance writer, a wrangler of a small child, and a tea-sozzled, cat-hair-covered gentleman of adventure who is beginning to fear that all of the books in his house will soon topple and bury him. His short fiction can be found in various publications on and off the internet. He is attending university for a degree in literature, because he knows that there are a lot of extremely high-paying jobs in that field and it will make him rich and famous.

  • Carl Vincent - Carl Vincent of Stainless Steel Droppings traces his love of science fiction to a small Nebraska farmhouse, where his uncle's small bedroom bookshelf contained paperback portals whose covers and stories transported him to worlds that fired his young imagination. Memories of experiencing certain stories for the first time are like frozen moments in time. He can recall with perfect clarity the scene in which he first discovered The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat, the Harry Harrison creation for which his blog is named. While science fiction and fantasy are the major underpinnings of Stainless Steel Droppings, one is just as likely to find a treatise on the joys of period films like Pride and Prejudice as one is to find the ravings of a speculative fiction fanatic. His passions for art, particularly sf/f illustration, music, film, and literature (read: books!) are what fuel his pontifications. If he can inspire others to these same passions by exposing artists, authors, and musicians to a larger audience through Stainless Steel Droppings, then he is truly over the moon.

  • John Ottinger III - John Ottinger III is the proprietor of the popular SF/F blog Grasping for the Wind. His reviews, interviews and articles have appeared in Publisher's Weekly, The Fix, Sacramento Book Review, Stephen Hunt's SFCrowsnest, Thaumatrope, and at Tor.com.

  • Scott A. Cupp - Scott A. Cupp started collecting books in 1967 when he moved to San Antonio with three paperbacks. He still has one of those initial three volumes. Along the way he has had thousands of titles and volumes, many of them signed. He has purged and bought again, more times than he can remember. He once was even a co-owner of a specialty bookstore, Adventures in Crime and Space, where he placed more money than was good for him and took home way too many books. He counts many writers as close personal friends (which means he cannot knowingly sell their books). He has also been a writer of mystery, fantasy, western, and other stuff, non-fiction, comic books, and other ephemera over the last 20 years. He co-edited Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard with Joe R. Lansdale (his ownself) which earned a World Fantasy nomination for Best Original Anthology. He likes books. A lot. You can see some of his fiction and an old photo on his website www.scottacupp.com.

  • John Anealio - John Anealio writes songs about science fiction and fantasy. Alternate-tuned acoustic guitar picking, soaring synthesizers, and catchy pop hooks power his odes to androids, princesses, and vampires. He posts said songs, along with remixes and podcasts, as free MP3 downloads to his blog, http://scifisongs.blogspot.com/ every week. Anealio's ascent to Sci-Fi music super-stardom began on that fateful day when he composed a catchy tune to John DeNardo's (SF Signal's poet laureate) lyrical tribute to Summer Glau. The sheet music to his song "The Ballad of Wilson Cole" will be appearing in the appendix of Mike Resnick's upcoming novel: Starship: Flagship published by Pyr.

  • Derek Johnson - Derek Johnson's critical works have appeared in Nova Express, SF Site, RevolutionSF and Her Majesty's Secret Servant. He lives in Central Texas with the Goddess.

  • Andrew Liptak - Andrew Liptak is a longtime science fiction fan, and writes regularly at Words in a Grain of Sand on any number of topics, namely speculative fiction and history. He currently holds a degree in History and a master's degree in Military History from Norwich University, and resides in the green (or white, depending on the season) mountains of Vermont with a growing library of books.

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