LibertyCon 39 Guests of Honor
John G. Hartness
Literary Guest of Honor
John G. Hartness is a teller of tales, a righter of wrong, defender of ladies’ virtues, and some people call him Maurice, for he speaks of the pompatus of love. He is also the award-winning author of the urban fantasy series The Black Knight Chronicles, the Bubba the Monster Hunter comedic horror series, the Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter dark fantasy series, and many other projects. He is also a cast member of the role-playing podcast Authors & Dragons, where a group of comedy, fantasy, and horror writers play Dungeons & Dragons. Very poorly.
M.M. Schill is an award winning artist, illustrator, writer, and pro-editor. She also serves as associated editor at Pseudopod (a pro-market, award winning, short horror podcast and E-zine). Outside of her artistic pursuits, she is a decades long student of aikido and iaido, a power-lifter, and (most importantly) she's an outspoken activist for victim's rights.
M.M. Schill
Artist Guest of Honor
Jim Beall (BS-Math, MBA, PE) has been a nuclear engineer for 50 years, beginning as a nuclear engineering officer in the US Navy. Civilian experience includes design, construction, inspection, enforcement, and assessment with a nuclear utility, an architect engineering firm, and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC). Assignments included on-site health physics support, piping design stress analyses, reactor licensing, reactor startup testing (Canadian Point Lepreau heavy water reactor), research reactor inspections, and an assist mission to the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine in Kiev.
Jim Beall
STEM Guest of Honor
National bestselling author Jason Cordova is both a John W. Campbell Award and Dragon Award finalist (though not in the same year). He is the author of Mountain of Fire, To Tread Obsidian Shores (w/ Melissa Olthoff), and Monster Hunter Memoirs: Fever (w/ Larry Correia), and editor of Chicks in Tank Tops, Dancing with Destruction, and The Monster Hunter Files Vol. 2 (w/ Larry Correia).
Jason Cordova
Master of Ceremonies
Larry Niven was born on April 30, 1938, in Los Angeles, California, and spent his childhood in Beverly Hills, "excluding two years (ages six to eight) in Washington, D.C., serving his country."
In 1956 he entered the California Institute of Technology, only to flunk out a year-and-a-half later after discovering a bookstore jammed with used science-fiction magazines. Larry finally graduated with a B. A. in mathematics (and a minor in psychology) from Washburn University, Kansas, in 1962, and completed one year of graduate work in mathematics at UCLA before dropping out to write. He made his first sale, "The Coldest Place," in 1964 for $25.