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Jonathan Carroll
Jonathan Carroll was born in 1949. His father was a movie script writer
and his mother an actress. Undoubtedly this kind of background has had an
influence on the fact that Carroll's talent in writing was detected
early. First short stories of the gifted writer were published when he was
under 25 years of age. Carroll graduated from the University of Virginia,
with major in English. Today he lives in Austria and teaches English in
American International School in Vienna.
Carroll is a magical writer. He belongs to that small group of writers,
who can easily explore the worlds of myth and everyday life, and create
stories that are both believable and fantastic, by mixing these utmost
elements. Carroll's short stories dive into deepest realms of horror and
macabre. His characters face repeatedly unexplicable, surreal
situations. Carroll's novels are an exceptionally unique mixture of
magical realism, horror and fantasy, and his characters realistically
described persons.
Homepage: http://www.jonathancarroll.com/
David Langford
David Langford, born 1953, graduated as a physicist at the Brasenose College,
Oxford, and worked for the Ministry of Defense of Great Britain in arms
industry until year 1980, when he begun his career as a freelance writer
and journalist. He has been the publisher of the sf-magazine Ansible
since year 1979.
Ansible, edited in Great Britain, is the only non-US sf-magazine,
which has been awarded (four times) the Hugo Prize of the World
Science Fiction Society (WSFS). David Langford, chief editor of Ansible,
has been awarded for 14 times the Hugo Prize in 'Best Fan
Writer'-category, and holds thus a record in number of Hugo
prizes. Langford has also been awarded European SF Award,
shared with Peter Nicholls and Brian Stapleford. Ansible has regional
editorial staff in North America, Australia and England.
Langford has authored several non-fiction reference books and
has also been assistant editor of 'Encyclopedia of Fantasy'. He
writes regularly to magazines 'SFX' and 'Interzone', and also contributes
to following publications: 'Nature', 'New Scientist', 'Sanity' and
'Science and Public Policy'. Additionally, Langford has written hundreds
of articles and reviews to the major publications in the fields of science
fiction and fantasy.
Langford has published one sf-novel, 'The Space Eater' (1982). He is also
known as short story writer, with 70 published short stories.
Further information: David Langford,
Ansible
Stelarc
Stelarc is an Australian artist who has performed extensively in Japan, Europe and the USA- including new music, dance festivals and experimental theatre. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems and the Internet to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body.
He has performed with a THIRD HAND, a VIRTUAL ARM, a VIRTUAL BODY and a STOMACH SCULPTURE. He has acoustically and visually probed the body- having amplified brainwaves, bloodflow and muscle signals and filmed the inside of his lungs, stomach and colon, approximately two metres of internal space. He has done twenty-five body SUSPENSIONS with insertions into the skin, in different positions and varying situations in remote locations.
In 1995 Stelarc received a three year Fellowship from The Visual Arts/ Craft Board, The Australia Council. In 1997 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He is presently Artist-In-Residence for Hamburg City. In 1999 he was re-appointed as a Senior Research Scholar for the Faculty of Art and Design at the Nottingham Trent University. His art is represented by the Sherman Galleries in Sydney.
Homepage and source of this text: http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/
Richard Stallman
 Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU Project, launched in 1984 to
develop the free operating system GNU (an acronym for ``GNU's Not Unix''),
and thereby give computer users the freedom that most of them have lost. GNU
is free software: everyone is free to copy it and redistribute it, as well
as to make changes either large or small.
Today, Linux-based variants of the GNU system, based on the kernel Linux
developed by Linus Torvalds, are in widespread use. There are estimated to
be some 20 million users of GNU/Linux systems today.
Richard Stallman is the principal author of the GNU C Compiler, a portable
optimizing compiler which was designed to support diverse architectures and
multiple languages. The compiler now supports over 30 different
architectures and 7 programming languages.
Stallman also wrote the GNU symbolic debugger (GDB), GNU Emacs, and various
other GNU programs.
Stallman graduated from Harvard in 1974 with a BA in physics. During his
college years, he also worked as a staff hacker at the MIT Artificial
Intelligence Lab, learning operating system development by doing it. He
wrote the first extensible Emacs text editor there in 1975. In January 1984
he resigned from MIT to start the GNU Project.
Stallman received the Grace Hopper Award for 1991 from the Association for
Computing Machinery, for his development of the first Emacs editor. In 1990
he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and in 1996 an honorary
doctorate from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. In 1998 he
received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award along with Linus
Torvalds. In 1999 he received the Yuri Rubinski Award. Stallman is invited
all over the world to give lectures and presentations.
Homepage: http://www.stallman.org/
Johanna Sinisalo
Johanna Sinisalo, born in Sodankylä, now living in Tampere, a freelance
writer and advertising designer, has for long been known as a strong,
influential character in Finnish science fiction.
In addition to Finlandia Award (2000) in literature for the novel 'Ennen
päivänlaskua ei voi', she has also won the national Atorox Prize for the
best science fiction short story in years 1985, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1993 and
1996. Her versatility as a comics script writer is described by prizes won
in Kemi National Comics Competition from works with Hannu Mänttäri, in
years 1984, 1985 and 1986.
Her science fiction publications consist of about 30 short stories, which
have been published in sf-magazines, other magazines and several antologies.
'Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi' (2000) is Sinisalo's first novel. She is also
known for writing for television and radio, and for the numerous articles,
reviews and essays, also in scientific publications. She has also lectured
on tv-script writing and science fiction writing in several occasions.
Sinisalo graduated in University of Tampere in 1986 in general literature,
specializing in drama, announces her personal interests being in
(g)astronomy, hiking, literature and comics.
Ahrvid Engholm
Ahrvid Engholm, the fandom Guest of Honour, was born in 1959 in Stockholm where he has lived all his life. He works as a free-lance journalist, mainly writing about computers. He has been a very active member of Swedish and international fandom ever since visiting his first sf-con in 1976. He is the publisher of sf-newsletter “Science Fiction Journalen”, he has written about 40 sf short stories and he has co-organized a number of cons, including the first con in Finland, King-Con in 1982, which was a joint effort of Finnish and Swedish fandoms. And Ahrvid has been to all main Finnish cons - only a few people has done that! Baltcon series was started from his initiative and he has been an invaluable help in organizing and promoting this years Baltcon in Jyväskylä.
Guy Windsor
 Guy Windsor, MA (hons), BAF, BFHS, DDS is a registered instructor of swordsmanship with the British Academy of Fencing, the British Federation for Historical Swordplay, the Amateur Martial Association, and the Dawn Duellists Society.
Having practised sport fencing, and various Oriental martial arts, for six years, Mr. Windsor met Paul Macdonald, during his first year at Edinburgh University. Together, they agreed that they only did sport fencing because it was the closest thing they could find to "real" swordfighting, and so they started practising together, trying to make the moves as realistic as possible. Not "what will score a touch", but "what will save my life if these were sharp". After many months of this, adding various weapons to their repertoire, they decided to form the Dawn Duellists Society. As they practised harder, and the DDS grew, they started coming across treatises on European swordfighting, in libraries and in the private collections of like-minded people. They quickly realised that they didn't really know what they were doing, and so started to practise the techniques and approaches they found in these books. And suddenly, the weapons started to make sense.
Homepage: http://www.swordschool.com/
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