The Second Occasional LoneStarCon Science Fiction Convention and Chili Cook-off, Variously known as the 55th World Science Fiction Convention and LoneStarCon 2, the 1997 Worldcon, To be held from August 28th through September 1st, in the year 1997, in San Antonio, Texas. Algis Budrys Guest of Honor lgis Budrys (aka A.J.) is a genuine triple-threat: a renowned SF writer, critic and editor. His best-known novels include Rogue Moon, Michaelmas, Who? and Falling Torch. In the mid-1960s, he began doing regular book reviews, many of which appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. During the 1980s and early 1990s, he was involved with the Writers of the Future project, a contest that introduced such writers as Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Reed and David Zindell to the field. He has also served as an administrator for the Philip K. Dick Award, and now edits Tomorrow SF magazine.   Reprinted from LoneStarCon 2's Progress Report #5 lgis Budrys by Himself lgis Budrys became an SF reader at the age of six, with Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Brick Bradford and his Time Top in the Sunday funnies for the New York Journal-American. It was not easy, because he had to sneak the paper. In fact, he was opposed by his parents in all SF pursuits, this not mitigating until several years after he began selling stories. He has been a professional science fiction writer since 1952. His first magazine story sale was to Astounding Science Fiction. He sold repeatedly to most of the SF magazines, and others, and has published a number of books, including Who?, Rogue Moon, Michaelmas, and Hard Landing, all of which have been nominated for the Hugo or the Nebula, or both. Who? has also been made into a film, and Rogue Moon has been made as a student film at USC. He has published approximately 200 short stories, most of them science fiction, a respectable number of which have also been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, or both. He holds a Mystery Writers Edgar Special Award for "The Master of the Hounds", which was later made into a film. He has won the Locus award for the best non-fiction book of the year, Benchmarks, a collection of all his book review columns for Galaxy Magazine, and has been a Hugo nominee for that work. He has won numerous other awards in a number of categories. For the past several years, he has been editor and publisher of his own magazine, Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, which has been nominated for the Hugo award twice. He has now taken the magazine into electronic format. He has also pursued several full-time careers in and outside the SF field, usually under his own name or a variation of it. He wrote a regular book review column in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for years, and the Chicago Sun-Times for approximately the same length of time. Another book of his reviews is in preparation at Southern Illinois University Press, the publisher of Benchmarks. He has taught in innumerable writing workshops, at Harvard, BYU, Pepperdine, 11 straight years at Clarion East, The Library of Congress, Rice University and NASA in Houston, the Charles Dickens House in London, and elsewhere. From the late 1980s to date, his work is often under the auspices of L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of The Future program. He was for many years the Co-ordinating Judge of the Contest that is another part of the program, and the advisor to L. Ron Hubbard's Illustrators of The Future Contest. He has now retired as Coordinating Judge, in favor of Dave Wolverton whom he first discovered as a contestant. He continues to judge quarterly entries in the Contest from time to time. He continues to teach the annual workshop for winners in the program, with Dave Wolverton. About 150 graduates of the program are now regular contributors to the SF field, having authored over 200 novels. He has also pursued editorial work outside the field, working in various subordinate capacities at a number of varied shops, including as editor-in-chief for Regency Books, Inc. (1962-63), and Playboy Press (1963-65), and operations manager of the Woodall Publishing Company (1974-75). He has also been in advertising and public relations, ending as account supervisor for Public Relations on the International Truck account, at Young & Rubicam, Chicago (1969-74). His principal hobbies have included directing four-wheel-drive racing teams, which competed successfully in the 1970s. He also was a high-performance bicycle mechanic at one time. He still rides a machine of his own assembly an early Japanese streamlined frame with an Italian crank set and brakes, French pedals, and a Sturmey-Archer four-speed rear hub, controlled by a selector system partly of his own manufacture. (His wife rides a 10-speed French mixte Reynolds 531 frame with Italian shifters, which he also built. At one time, each of his four sons had at least two bicycles he built, one for serious riding and one to take to school. His oldest and youngest sons also were racers.) In addition to his SF novels and three short story collections, he is the author of Truman and The Pendergasts, Bicycles ... How They Work and How To Fix Them, and, most recently, Writing to The Point. The latter is a book on all the necessary basics of writing SF, and any other kind of fiction, published by his own company, Unifont. He holds a Locus Invisible Little Man award. He is also a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, though he is not clear on what that means.

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