Category: Science Guest

A.M. Giddings

March 22, 2025 /

A.M. Giddings is a writer, scientist, and independent filmmaker from North Carolina. She has a PhD in Microbiology and authored multiple scientific articles in virology, cell line design, and gene therapy. She is the author of the futuristic dark fantasy series Dance of Ages, which begins with Shadow into Light. Recently, she has had short stories published in various anthologies and has written and directed a short horror film with Sick Chick Flicks. She is also the co-director of the Sick Chick Flicks Film Festival.  

Jason T. Graves

March 19, 2025 /

Jason is a writer of words, a doodler of drawings, and fixer of other peoples’ words and doodles. Many years ago, he founded Prospective Press. Before that, he slogged through University and earned a Master of Science degree in the Arcana of Genetics. Oh, and he was once punched—lightly—by Muhammad Ali. You should ask him about that last one, because no one ever does.

Robert E. Hampson

March 14, 2025 /

Dr. Robert E. Hampson is a neuroscientist, professor, and science fiction author who spends his days decoding how memories work and his nights trying to remember where he left his keys. With a PhD in Physiology & Pharmacology, he’s been on a lifelong quest to figure out what’s going on inside our heads—though he’s still baffled by how people can willingly watch bad sci-fi with terrible science. When he’s not mentoring students or conducting cutting-edge research on brain-computer interfaces, he’s crafting hard science fiction that’s as accurate as it is fun.

In 2015, Dr. Hampson turned his love for science fiction into a writing career, proving that yes, scientists can do more than just stare at lab equipment. His stories, which often involve futuristic medical tech and military adventures, have earned him praise for being “hard science fiction with a vengeance”—but he swears he’s really a nice guy.

As a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Dr. Hampson teaches science communication, ensuring young scientists know how to explain their research to the public without sounding like they’re from another planet. With over thirty short stories, several novels, and countless lost pens, he continues to explore the exciting—and sometimes baffling—worlds of both science and fiction.

Randall Hayes, PhD

March 14, 2025 /

Randall Hayes, “your friendly neighborhood neuroscientist,” studied stroke patients and built computer models of sea slugs’ neural networks before getting involved with teaching and science communication for the public. His first podcast, VSI: Variation Selection Inheritance, was funded by the National Science Foundation through the Beacon Center for the Study of Evolution in Action. He’s written probably three books’ worth of blog posts over the past decade, and for four years he was a science columnist for The Intergalactic Medicine Show. More recently he’s been publishing articles in Utopia Science Fiction, ParABnormal Magazine, and Trollbreath Magazine, among others. Even more recently he’s been publishing fiction with Lackington’s Speculative Fiction, The Storyletter, and Illustrated Worlds. Updates and fresh fiction are available at his free newsletter Doctor Eclectic, randallhayes.substack.com.

Sean Heare

March 11, 2025 /

Long-time Virginia convention icon and full-time purveyor of chaos, Sean Heare is back at RavenCon with his trivia game Alien Peril and his award-winning wandering room party. Armed with a rolling cooler of Lou Ann’s infamous Jell-O shots and other mysteries best left undisclosed, Sean brings the perfect mix of humor, intellect, and an uncanny ability to make deadpan sarcasm look effortless.

By day, Sean swaps his party hat for a serious one: he’s got a Juris Doctor from American University and graduate chops in Counterintelligence, Cybersecurity, and Emerging Technology. As the Information Director for National Security Counselors—a nonprofit dedicated to prying open the vaults of secrecy—Sean’s technical advice helps their attorneys keep the national security world on edge.

Formerly a casual conspiracy theory aficionado, Sean now dedicates himself to combating misinformation, one implausible rabbit hole at a time. Want to chat about the eschaton, singularities, or whether we’re all just NPCs in someone’s simulation? Sean’s your guy.

If Sean has a new book it will be out in December 2025.

Open High School Rocket Club

February 27, 2025 /

OHS Rocket Club is a model rocketry club in the city of Richmond, VA. Students compete in the American Rocketry Challenge, designing model rockets that safely launch and land 1-2 eggs while meeting specific altitude and flight duration requirements. The club also participated in NASA’s Cubes in Space program and designed an experiment in a 4×4 cm cube to test the effects of radiation on yeast. This cube was then launched in a sounding rocket and scientific balloon. The team is currently determining the feasibility of space pizza.

Alan Smale

February 25, 2025 /

Alan Smale writes alternate history, historical fantasy, and hard SF. His novella of a Roman invasion of ancient America, “A Clash of Eagles”, won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and his novels set in the same universe, Clash of Eagles, Eagle in Exile, and Eagle and Empire (2015-2017) are available from Del Rey. His “Roman baseball” collaboration with Rick Wilber, The Wandering Warriors, came out from WordFire Press in 2020. Hot Moon, his alternate-Apollo “technothriller with heart”, set entirely on and around the moon, was launched by Caezik SF & Fantasy in 2022, and the sequel Radiant Sky was released November 12, 2024. Alan has sold over fifty stories to Asimov’s and other magazines and anthologies, and his short story “Gunpowder Treason” earned him a second Sidewise Award in 2022. His non-fiction essays have appeared in Lightspeed, Journey Planet, and Galaxy’s Edge.

Alan grew up in Yorkshire, England, and earned degrees in Physics and Astrophysics from Oxford University. Until recently he performed astronomical research at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and served as director of an astrophysical data archive. He also sings bass with high-energy vocal band The Chromatics, and is co-creator of their educational AstroCappella project, spreading astronomy through a cappella in schools across the country.

Christopher Weuve

February 14, 2025 /

Christopher Weuve is a naval analyst and wargame designer. He spent six years at the Center for Naval Analyses (did you know the Combat Information Center of a Burke-class destroyer would make an excellent starship bridge?), and then five years on the faculty of the US Naval War College, of which he is a graduate. After a decade as an intelligence analyst, he’s now back to designing wargames, and is the co-founder of the Connections Online wargame conference, held every April.

Outside the day job, Chris is a co-founder of BuNine (David Weber’s Honorverse analytic visualization team), and has also consulted with Chuck Gannon, Walter Hunt, Alec Peters, Tom Harlan, John Lumpkin, and others. His work has been featured by Baen Books, the US Naval War College Review, Foreign Policy, and the Discovery Channel. Since May 2020 he’s been the co-host (with Pat Doyle) of Starfleet Tactical on the Ares Studio channel on YouTube.

Chris is (to the best of his knowledge) the only person ever interviewed (twice!) by the journal Foreign Policy about science fiction warships. His hobbies are naval history, science fiction, and not speaking for his employer.

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