Tony was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. He attended Southern Connecticut State University and graduated in 1974. After that he went on to attend Temple University in Philadelphia, graduating in 1977 with a Master of Fine Arts Degree.
In 1978 he decided to make the move to Los Angeles to find work in film and television. Though this move was originally meant to be temporary, he lives there with his wife to this day.
Tony is a theater-trained actor, and he has a long history of stage performances. Some of these include: American Buffalo, as Teach; Othello, as Iago; Filumena, as Domenico; and Taming of the Shrew, as Petruchio. Mr. Amendola is known best to TimeGate attendees as Master Bra'tac in Stargate SG-1, but fans will also remember him from his many roles in series such as Star Trek: Voyager, Charmed, The X-Files, Angel, Alias, Space: Above and Beyond, and many others.
Doctor Who Guest of Honour:
John Levene
Though Mr. Levene is best known for his role as Sergeant Benton on Doctor Who from 1969 - 1975, the good sergeant wasn't John's first role on the show. Nor his second. John first appeared (uncredited and unrecognizable) in the series in 1967's "The Moonbase" in the guise of a Cyberman. His first credited appearance was as a Yeti in 1968's "The Web of Fear". He made his debut as Corporal Benton later the same year in the Cybermen epic "The Invasion". Levene portrayed Sgt. Benton alongside three classic Doctors: Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, and Tom Baker. In addition to Doctor Who, Levene has appeared in series like Z-Cars, UFO, Adam Adamant Lives!, and Carry on Laughing. His recent work includes the role of Reverend Bernie Shanks in CanniBallistic! (2002) , as the Communications Captain in Automatons (2006) and is currently in preproduction on Satan Hates You, reprising his role as Bernie Shanks. This is Mr. Levene's first appearance in Atlanta.
Dr. Kevin Grazier, PhD is the science advisor on two Sci-Fi Channel hit shows, Battlestar Galactica and Eureka, and is the editor of two upcoming books: The Science of 'Dune' and The Science of Michael Crichton, published by BenBella Books in January and March, 2008, respectively. He earned B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Geology from Purdue University, and a B.S. in Physics from Oakland University, as well as M.S. degrees in physics from Purdue and Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA. He did his Ph.D. in Planetary Physics at UCLA, and his dissertation title was "The Stability of Planetesimal Niches in the Outer Solar System: A Numerical Investigation". He currently works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Cassini/Huygens Mission to Saturn. In addition to that he is teaching classes in astronomy, planetary science and cosmology at UCLA and Santa Monica College, and is a planetarium lecturer at LA's Griffith Observatory.
Lars Pearson is one of the foremost experts on Doctor Who in North America. He thanks God that the new series has finally silenced those who preferred to overlook the original show's imagination in favor of giggling over how the spaceships looked like dish soap bottles. He's also pleased that the new show has gotten his wife interested in Doctor Who.
Pearson cut his teeth as an editor for Wizard: The Guide to Comics, then founded Mad Norwegian Press—a publisher of SF reference guides and novels—in 2001. The company ethnically made less sense when it was based in New Orleans (he had the option of getting married by a voodoo priestess, if that tells you anything), but it now resides in Des Moines, Iowa, where it is surrounded on all sides by corn and pastry-baking Scandinavians.
Pearson has authored, edited or published 11 books on Doctor Who (with something like nine more on the way), plus guidebooks on Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Transformers and more. He served as editor of Faction Paradox, a series of science-fiction novels that recently concluded with a young woman traveling back in time to do her thesis on Sherlock Holmes, only to wind up sleeping with him. Pearson wishes his own thesis had been half as exciting.
Christa Dickson spends her nights thinking far too hard about the Whedon-verse. While this trait is not especially useful in her nine-to-five existence, it does make for interesting bar conversation. It also has the side benefit of resulting in books with elaborate subtitles like Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Redeemed: The Unauthorized Guide to Angel, which she co-authored with her delightfully wordy husband Lars Pearson and professional madman Lawrence Miles.
There are times when she wonders why she continues to subject herself to this madness, since it tends to dull the shininess of her hobbies. But then she'll find herself in a conversation about cosmology of demons and get all giddy like a schoolgirl. When she's not pondering the intricacies of the vampire invitation rule or wondering how fast Spike's hair grows, she enjoys yoga, whipping grass and cooking things that contain no meat.
She currently spends her days making web sites go for Iowa Public Television. Occasionally she dreams in code. She wishes she wouldn't, as it tends to make her mornings more pixellated around the edges.
Louis Robinson currently makes his living as a professional singer/songwriter and can be found regularly performing and working with other singer/songwriters in the area. Before coming to America, he worked for the BBC for many years, in a number of capacities in both television and radio. He wrote, produced, composed and directed many different productions. In the '70s, he worked in the film editing department, contributing to such shows as The Brothers (starring Colin Baker and Kate O'Mara), The Onedin Line, Doomwatch (created by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, famous for also creating the Cybermen), and of course, Doctor Who. After leaving the BBC for two years, he returned in 1984 as Program Associate of the hit show Telly Addicts. He worked on the entire run of that show, from the development of its pilot in 1984 to the final episode in 1996. Robinson is also a Sherlock Holmes expert, and enjoys giving presentations on that subject.
Jana Oliver is an Iowa native who now enjoys the sunny winters in Georgia. The writing virus caught up with her 1998 and hasn't let loose since. When she submitted an idea to Dragon Moon Press for a genre-blended novel involving time travelers, shape-shifters and Jack the Ripper, the Time Rovers™ series was born. The first novel, Sojourn, was nominated for the prestigious Compton Crook Award, won the Gold Medal for Science Fiction/Fantasy in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and was selected for ForeWord Magazine's Editor's Choice Award for Fiction, the first time a science fiction novel was chosen for this honor. It also won four romance awards, including the Prism for Best Time Travel. The second book in the series, Virtual Evil, was published in Oct. 2007, to be followed by Madman's Dance in Fall 2008. A lover of single malt scotch and expensive chocolate, Jana lives in Atlanta with her husband and the occasional feline. Visitors are always welcome at her websites: www.janaoliver.com and at www.timerovers.com
David Harmer has been active in game design since 1988. His newest works are The Survivors Guide to the Apocalypse. This RPG supplement details the steps required to survive the collapse of civilization in the Aftermath! World, covering 8 different collapse scenarios (due out 9/2008 from Fantasy Games Unlimited); Aftermath! Technology! 2.0, a revision of the high-tech supplement to the Aftermath! Game (due out 1/2008 from Fantasy Games Unlimited). Recent works include Aftermath! Magic!, a set of expansion magic rules for the Aftermath! Role-playing game (available soon from FGU), The Four Horsemen: Hand of Death, a gothic horror card game, work on the new release of the role-playing game Requiem for Dark December Designs, and the card game Faerie Haven (now available from FGU). Harmer's previous works include the Legacy Live Action Role-playing game and expansion rules for Aftermath! by Fantasy Games Unlimited, the Chrome Book for Cyberpunk by R. Talsorian Games, rules and scenarios for the NERO Live Action Role Playing game, and design work for Quintessential Mercy Studios. He was on NERO-Atlanta's Campaign Committee for five years and directed Dinosaur Games from 1988-1993. David is also an experienced costumer, bodypaint artist, and prop maker, having won his first costume contest 30 years ago. David ran the Masquerade at Chattacon for 15 years, and he teaches classes on Resin casting, bodypainting, and other costuming topics.
Virtual Guests: [This section is for folks who can't attend TimeGate this year but still wanted to be involved]
Although currently a resident of central Ohio, Elizabeth Christensen still considers Novi, Michigan, to be her hometown. A civilian engineer with the U.S. Air Force, she works on propulsion and aircraft subsystems projects at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. She received two aerospace engineering degrees and witnessed five seasons of stellar football from the University of Michigan. When not dodging Nerf balls thrown by her coworkers, she shares pilot-in-command time in a Grumman Tiger airplane with her husband. She is the author of four Stargate Atlantis novels and two short stories, and is currently working on the manuscript for her first original novel.
Please read our exclusive interview with Elizabeth here!
Performers:
Atlanta Radio Theatre Company — Since 1984, ARTC has been performing, recording, and broadcasting dramatic audio—fully dramatized, fully sound-scaped audio drama, far beyond the readings and "audio books" you can find in every bookstore. Think of it as classic "old-time radio", as it would sound with today's technology and dramatic techniques.
The Mighty Rassilon Art Players is a local theatre company performing original plays with a science fiction beat to them. Well known for their continuing saga of a group of superhuman crime fighters, the Brothehood of Damn Sassy Mutants (that's BDSM for short!), MRAP will be performing a brand new work for TimeGate called "From TARDIS With Love" by William Alan Ritch and Shawn Carter. More details forthcoming.
Hyperdrive—Hyperdrive is an Atlanta-based rock band comprised of science fiction / fantasy geeks. The initial spark from which Hyperdrive was eventually born was a conversation between guitarist Edward deGruy and drummer Alan Siler about rock and pop music that employed science fiction, fantasy and horror imagery. From that plus the desire to play some of this music at parties, conventions, etc. a new band was formed. Since that time, the band has expanded its repertoire and its performing schedule, with upcoming gigs in Florida and Tennessee in 2008.
Tony was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. He attended Southern Connecticut State University and graduated in 1974. After that he went on to attend Temple University in Philadelphia, graduating in 1977 with a Master of Fine Arts Degree.
In 1978 he decided to make the move to Los Angeles to find work in film and television. Though this move was originally meant to be temporary, he lives there with his wife to this day.
Tony is a theater-trained actor, and he has a long history of stage performances. Some of these include: American Buffalo, as Teach; Othello, as Iago; Filumena, as Domenico; and Taming of the Shrew, as Petruchio. Mr. Amendola is known best to TimeGate attendees as Master Bra'tac in Stargate SG-1, but fans will also remember him from his many roles in series such as Star Trek: Voyager, Charmed, The X-Files, Angel, Alias, Space: Above and Beyond, and many others. 
Though Mr. Levene is best known for his role as Sergeant Benton on Doctor Who from 1969 - 1975, the good sergeant wasn't John's first role on the show. Nor his second. John first appeared (uncredited and unrecognizable) in the series in 1967's "The Moonbase" in the guise of a Cyberman. His first credited appearance was as a Yeti in 1968's "The Web of Fear". He made his debut as Corporal Benton later the same year in the Cybermen epic "The Invasion". Levene portrayed Sgt. Benton alongside three classic Doctors: Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, and Tom Baker. In addition to Doctor Who, Levene has appeared in series like Z-Cars, UFO, Adam Adamant Lives!, and Carry on Laughing. His recent work includes the role of Reverend Bernie Shanks in CanniBallistic! (2002) , as the Communications Captain in Automatons (2006) and is currently in preproduction on Satan Hates You, reprising his role as Bernie Shanks. This is Mr. Levene's first appearance in Atlanta. 
Dr. Kevin Grazier, PhD is the science advisor on two Sci-Fi Channel hit shows, Battlestar Galactica and Eureka, and is the editor of two upcoming books: The Science of 'Dune' and The Science of Michael Crichton, published by BenBella Books in January and March, 2008, respectively. He earned B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Geology from Purdue University, and a B.S. in Physics from Oakland University, as well as M.S. degrees in physics from Purdue and Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA. He did his Ph.D. in Planetary Physics at UCLA, and his dissertation title was "The Stability of Planetesimal Niches in the Outer Solar System: A Numerical Investigation". He currently works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Cassini/Huygens Mission to Saturn. In addition to that he is teaching classes in astronomy, planetary science and cosmology at UCLA and Santa Monica College, and is a planetarium lecturer at LA's Griffith Observatory. 
Lars Pearson is one of the foremost experts on Doctor Who in North America. He thanks God that the new series has finally silenced those who preferred to overlook the original show's imagination in favor of giggling over how the spaceships looked like dish soap bottles. He's also pleased that the new show has gotten his wife interested in Doctor Who.
Pearson cut his teeth as an editor for Wizard: The Guide to Comics, then founded Mad Norwegian Press—a publisher of SF reference guides and novels—in 2001. The company ethnically made less sense when it was based in New Orleans (he had the option of getting married by a voodoo priestess, if that tells you anything), but it now resides in Des Moines, Iowa, where it is surrounded on all sides by corn and pastry-baking Scandinavians.
Pearson has authored, edited or published 11 books on Doctor Who (with something like nine more on the way), plus guidebooks on Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Transformers and more. He served as editor of Faction Paradox, a series of science-fiction novels that recently concluded with a young woman traveling back in time to do her thesis on Sherlock Holmes, only to wind up sleeping with him. Pearson wishes his own thesis had been half as exciting. 
Christa Dickson spends her nights thinking far too hard about the Whedon-verse. While this trait is not especially useful in her nine-to-five existence, it does make for interesting bar conversation. It also has the side benefit of resulting in books with elaborate subtitles like Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Redeemed: The Unauthorized Guide to Angel, which she co-authored with her delightfully wordy husband Lars Pearson and professional madman Lawrence Miles.
There are times when she wonders why she continues to subject herself to this madness, since it tends to dull the shininess of her hobbies. But then she'll find herself in a conversation about cosmology of demons and get all giddy like a schoolgirl. When she's not pondering the intricacies of the vampire invitation rule or wondering how fast Spike's hair grows, she enjoys yoga, whipping grass and cooking things that contain no meat.
She currently spends her days making web sites go for Iowa Public Television. Occasionally she dreams in code. She wishes she wouldn't, as it tends to make her mornings more pixellated around the edges.
Louis Robinson currently makes his living as a professional singer/songwriter and can be found regularly performing and working with other singer/songwriters in the area. Before coming to America, he worked for the BBC for many years, in a number of capacities in both television and radio. He wrote, produced, composed and directed many different productions. In the '70s, he worked in the film editing department, contributing to such shows as The Brothers (starring Colin Baker and Kate O'Mara), The Onedin Line, Doomwatch (created by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, famous for also creating the Cybermen), and of course, Doctor Who. After leaving the BBC for two years, he returned in 1984 as Program Associate of the hit show Telly Addicts. He worked on the entire run of that show, from the development of its pilot in 1984 to the final episode in 1996. Robinson is also a Sherlock Holmes expert, and enjoys giving presentations on that subject. 
Jana Oliver is an Iowa native who now enjoys the sunny winters in Georgia. The writing virus caught up with her 1998 and hasn't let loose since. When she submitted an idea to Dragon Moon Press for a genre-blended novel involving time travelers, shape-shifters and Jack the Ripper, the Time Rovers™ series was born. The first novel, Sojourn, was nominated for the prestigious Compton Crook Award, won the Gold Medal for Science Fiction/Fantasy in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and was selected for ForeWord Magazine's Editor's Choice Award for Fiction, the first time a science fiction novel was chosen for this honor. It also won four romance awards, including the Prism for Best Time Travel. The second book in the series, Virtual Evil, was published in Oct. 2007, to be followed by Madman's Dance in Fall 2008. A lover of single malt scotch and expensive chocolate, Jana lives in Atlanta with her husband and the occasional feline. Visitors are always welcome at her websites: 
David Harmer has been active in game design since 1988. His newest works are The Survivors Guide to the Apocalypse. This RPG supplement details the steps required to survive the collapse of civilization in the Aftermath! World, covering 8 different collapse scenarios (due out 9/2008 from Fantasy Games Unlimited); Aftermath! Technology! 2.0, a revision of the high-tech supplement to the Aftermath! Game (due out 1/2008 from Fantasy Games Unlimited). Recent works include Aftermath! Magic!, a set of expansion magic rules for the Aftermath! Role-playing game (available soon from FGU), The Four Horsemen: Hand of Death, a gothic horror card game, work on the new release of the role-playing game Requiem for Dark December Designs, and the card game Faerie Haven (now available from FGU). Harmer's previous works include the Legacy Live Action Role-playing game and expansion rules for Aftermath! by Fantasy Games Unlimited, the Chrome Book for Cyberpunk by R. Talsorian Games, rules and scenarios for the NERO Live Action Role Playing game, and design work for Quintessential Mercy Studios. He was on NERO-Atlanta's Campaign Committee for five years and directed Dinosaur Games from 1988-1993. David is also an experienced costumer, bodypaint artist, and prop maker, having won his first costume contest 30 years ago. David ran the Masquerade at Chattacon for 15 years, and he teaches classes on Resin casting, bodypainting, and other costuming topics.
Although currently a resident of central Ohio, Elizabeth Christensen still considers Novi, Michigan, to be her hometown. A civilian engineer with the U.S. Air Force, she works on propulsion and aircraft subsystems projects at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. She received two aerospace engineering degrees and witnessed five seasons of stellar football from the University of Michigan. When not dodging Nerf balls thrown by her coworkers, she shares pilot-in-command time in a Grumman Tiger airplane with her husband. She is the author of four Stargate Atlantis novels and two short stories, and is currently working on the manuscript for her first original novel. 
Atlanta Radio Theatre Company — Since 1984, ARTC has been performing, recording, and broadcasting dramatic audio—fully dramatized, fully sound-scaped audio drama, far beyond the readings and "audio books" you can find in every bookstore. Think of it as classic "old-time radio", as it would sound with today's technology and dramatic techniques.
The Mighty Rassilon Art Players is a local theatre company performing original plays with a science fiction beat to them. Well known for their continuing saga of a group of superhuman crime fighters, the Brothehood of Damn Sassy Mutants (that's BDSM for short!), MRAP will be performing a brand new work for TimeGate called "From TARDIS With Love" by William Alan Ritch and Shawn Carter. More details forthcoming. 
