BenBella

Michelle Gardner

Michelle K. Gardner, if sorted, would be designated to the noble House of Ravenclaw. Although she has never read Hogwarts, A History (but would welcome such an opportunity), she is considered the Hermione of her generation. Michelle’s research areas include all things Harry Potter with side diversions into wizards from other worlds. Commonly referred to as the woman who “loves ladybugs and all things imaginary,” Michelle is the mother of a beautiful and inventive seven-year-old girl, wife of a very tolerant and loving husband and located in the world’s largest destination for theme-park entertainment. Comments on the above article are always welcome, enelya.oronar@gmail.com.

The Psychology of Harry Potter

Richard Garfinkle

Richard Garfinkle is the author of two science fiction novels: Celestial Matters (which won the 1996 Compton Crook Award for best first novel in science fiction) and All of an Instant. At present he is engaged in the more dubious practice of writing nonfiction science popularization. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children.

Mapping the World of the Sorcerer's Apprentice

Star Wars on Trial

Totally Charmed

Susan M. Garrett

Susan M. Garrett is a lifelong television addict with a fascination for bizarre television trivia. Okay, so who else knows that Jaime Sommers and Jim Rockford had the same telephone number but different area codes? A long history of writing fan fiction resulted in the assignment of a TV tie-in novel—Forever Knight: Intimations of Mortality was published by Boulevard Books, a division of Berkeley/Penguin/Putnam, in 1997.

Alias Assumed

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is the vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the author of My Year Inside Radical Islam.

Jack Bauer for President

Amy Garvey

Amy Garvey is a former editor who now works on the other side of the desk as an author. Writing romance spiced with mystery gives her a chance to make up stories featuring dead people, hot sex and humor, which seems like a pretty good way to make a living to her. Check out her Web site at www.amygarvey.com.

Perfectly Plum

Whitney Gaskell

Whitney Gaskell briefly—and reluctantly—practiced law before publishing her first book, Pushing 30. She is also the author of True Love (and Other Lies), She, Myself & I and the forthcoming Testing Kate. Whitney lives on the Treasure Coast of Florida with her husband and son. She is currently at work on her fifth book. Whitney wishes she could be more like Bree—or, at least, she’d like to have an immaculate house and serve a gourmet meal every night—but sadly doesn’t have the time or energy to do much more than run the vacuum once a week and order take-out.

Welcome to Wisteria Lane

Bear Jack Gebhardt

Bear Jack Gebhardt has been a front-line, belly-to-belly stop-smoking coach for more than 15 years. He currently works full time with a northern Colorado health district not only directly helping smokers quit in both individual and group settings but also training local doctors, nurses, therapists and front-line health workers to more gracefully help their smoking clients. As an award-winning journalist, he has written for several publications, such as Fitness, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor and Reader’s Digest. He also has written two other books, The Manager’s Magic Method, Finding and Keeping Good Help for Your Entry-Wage Jobs and Help Your Smoker Quit—A Radically Happy Strategy for Nonsmoking Parents, Kids, Spouses, and Friends.

The Enlightened Smoker's Guide to Quitting

Roberta Gellis

Roberta Gellis has a varied educational background—a master’s degree in biochemistry and another in medieval literature—and working history: 10 years as a research chemist, many years as a freelance editor of scientific manuscripts and well over 30 years as a writer. One of the most successful writers of historical fiction of the last few decades, she has published about 25 meticulously researched historical novels since 1964. She has been the recipient of many awards, including the Silver and Gold Medal Porgy for historical novels from West Coast Review of Books, the Golden Certificate and Golden Pen from Affaire de Coeur, The Romantic Times Award for Best Novel in the Medieval Period and Lifetime Achievement Award for Historical Fantasy, and Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mapping the World of the Sorcerer's Apprentice

Judy Gelman

Judy Gelman is co-author of The Book Club Cookbook: Recipes and Food for Thought from Your Book Club’s Favorite Books and Authors (Penguin, 2004), the first cookbook designed for book discussion groups. The second edition of The Book Club Cookbook will be published in 2012.

She is also co-author The Kids’ Book Club Book: Reading Ideas, Activities, and Smart Tips for Organizing Terrific Kids’ Book Clubs (Penguin, 2007) and Table of Contents: From Breakfast with Anita Diamant to Dessert with James Patterson - a Generous Helping of Recipes, Writings and Insights from Today’s Bestselling Authors (Adams, 2010). She is co-creator of bookclubcookbook.com and kidsbookclubbook.com. She speaks about cooking, food and reading to book and food enthusiasts across the country.

The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook

Richard J. Gerrig, Ph.D.

Richard J. Gerrig, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University. He received his B.A. from Yale in 1980 and his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1984. Gerrig’s primary research focuses on readers’ experiences of narrative worlds. He considers both the basic cognitive psychological processes that enable readers to understand discourse and the broader consequences of readers’ experiences of being transported to narrative worlds. With Philip Zimbardo, he is the author of the introductory textbook Psychology and Life.

The Psychology of Survivor

David Gerrold

David Gerrold is the author of numerous television episodes including the legendary “Trouble With Tribbles” episode of “Star Trek.” He has also written for “Land of the Lost,” “Babylon 5,” “Twilight Zone,” “Sliders” and other series. He has published 45 books, including two on television production. He taught screenwriting at Pepperdine University for two decades. He has won the Hugo, the Nebula and the Locus award. A movie based on his autobiographical novel, The Martian Child, is now in production.

Finding Serenity

King Kong is Back!

Taking the Red Pill

Stepping Through the Stargate

The War of the Worlds

Andrew R. Getzfeld, Ph.D.

Andrew R. Getzfeld, Ph.D., received his B.A. in psychology from Vassar College, his M.S.S.W. from the University of Wisconsin, and his Ph.D. in school psychology from the University of Tennessee. An associate professor in psychology at New Jersey City University and an adjunct associate professor at New York University, Andrew’s areas of interest include eating disorders and the addictions, abnormal psychology and psychopharmacology. He has written two books: Abnormal Psychology Casebook: A New Perspective (Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2004) and Essentials of Abnormal Psychology (Wiley, 2006). Andrew loves international travel and writing, and grew up with Spider-Man and Superman, often wishing he too could bend steel with his bare hands.

The Psychology of Superheroes

Natasha Giardina

Natasha Giardina is a lecturer and senior research assistant at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. She is currently investigating the ways young people engage with new media technologies and the kinds of online and offline spaces they inhabit. She wears her “Geek Pride” badge with honor and encourages others to come out of the server room.

Navigating the Golden Compass

James Bond in the 21st Century

King Kong is Back!

Revisiting Narnia

Serenity Found

So Say We All

Todd Gilchrist

Todd Gilchrist is a Los Angeles–based writer who has worked for more than 10 years as a film, music and TV critic. Currently employed by IGN.com as the DVD Editor-in-Chief, he has previously contributed to numerous Web sites and print publications, including the Miami New Times, Filmstew.com, Starburst Magazine and Scifi.com among others. Todd’s reviews have also appeared in collegiate-level textbooks such as Reading Culture: Contexts For Critical Reading and Writing, and he is a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

Grey’s Anatomy 101

Kieron Gillen

After leaving PC Gamer magazine after reaching deputy editor, Kieron Gillen has since been working as a freelance journalist for organs as varied as Eurogamer and the Escapist, Wired and the Guardian. He makes a living, of sorts.

Halo Effect

Karin Gillespie

Karin Gillespie is the author of the Bottom Dollar Girl series. Her latest release is Dollar Daze (Simon and Schuster, August 2006). Karin maintains a Web site and a popular publishing industry blog called Southern Comfort at www.karingillespie.com. She is also the founder of the Girlfriends’ Cyber Circuit, a virtual tour for women novelists.

This is Chick-Lit

Nick Gillespie

Nick Gillespie joined Reason’s staff in 1993 as an assistant editor and ascended to the top slot in 2000. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon and many other publications. He is a frequent commentator on radio and television networks such as National Public Radio, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. Prior to joining Reason, he worked as a reporter at several New Jersey newspapers and as an editor at several Manhattan-based music, movie and teen magazines. He is almost certainly the only journalist, living or dead, to have interviewed both Ozzy Osbourne and the 2002 Nobel laureate in economics, Vernon Smith. In 1996, Gillespie received his Ph.D. in English literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He holds an M.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing from Temple University and a B.A. in English and psychology from Rutgers University. He lives in the Washington D.C. area with his wife and two sons.

Choice

Laura Anne Gilman

Laura Anne Gilman is the author of more than 20 short stories, three nonfiction books for teens, several nonfiction essays, two “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” tie-in novels and a forthcoming original novel, Staying Dead, out in August 2004, with the follow-up, Curse the Dark, scheduled for July 2005. For more information, go to www.sff.net/people/lauraanne.gilman.

Five Seasons of Angel

James Gilmer

James Gilmer is a radiographer (which is a fancy way of saying he takes x-rays) at Sparrow Regional Medical Center, a Level 1 Trauma hospital in Michigan, and is also a part-time writer. He is a graduate of Michigan State University and also the Clarion 2000 Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop. His short fiction has appeared in Webzines such as Ideomancer and book anthologies such as Mota 3: Courage. He has also been a newspaper stringer and contributed to magazines such as Variants from Variance Press. He currently lives with his wife, Elise, and is awaiting the day when he can retire thanks to her new nursing degree and spend his days writing in a hammock. Until that day, he is still pursuing both his fiction and nonfiction writing when he’s not distracted by watching “House M.D.”

House Unauthorized

Tracy R. Gleason, Ph.D.

Tracy R. Gleason, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the department of psychology at Wellesley College, which is where Buffy, and particularly Willow, should have gone to college. She received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota in 1998. Her contributions to this essay provided a lovely forum for combining her research interests in relationships and imagination.

The Psychology of Joss Whedon

Mitch Golant, Ph.D.

Mitch Golant, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and the coauthor of six books, including What to Do When Someone You Love Is Depressed. He lives in Los Angeles.

The Total Cancer Wellness Guide

Christie Golden

Award-winning author Christie Golden has written 22 novels and several short stories in the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Though best known for tie-in work, Golden is also the author of two original fantasy novels from Ace Books, King’s Man & Thief and Instrument of Fate, which made the 1996 Nebula Preliminary Ballot. Under the pen name of Jadrien Bell, she wrote a historical fantasy thriller titled A.D. 999, which won the Colorado Author’s League Top Hand Award for Best Genre Novel of 1999. She wrote “The White Doe” for the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” anthology The Longest Night. Her latest “treks” include “Voyager” novels Homecoming and The Farthest Shore. The two-part storyline takes place immediately after the “Voyager” finale, in which she takes familiar friends in new directions. Golden lives in Denver, Colo., with her artist husband Michael Georges and their two cats. Her Web site is www.christiegolden.com.

Seven Seasons of Buffy

Alex Goldfayn

Alex L. Goldfayn advises some of the biggest brands in the world, helping clients like TiVo, T-Mobile, and Logitech develop passionate and loyal consumers. CEOs, CMOs, and vice presidents from companies like Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Netflix, and Costco attend his Evangelist Marketing Think Tanks to develop groundbreaking marketing and branding techniques.

Alex is a former syndicated technology columnist for the Chicago Tribune and currently broadcasts the daily, nationally distributed “Technology Tailor Minute,” which has an audience of over 50 million listeners annually. His work also appears online at the Harvard Business Review, at HBR.org.

Evangelist Marketing

P. Gardner Goldsmith

P. Gardner Goldsmith worked in the script departments of “Outer Limits” and “Star Trek: Voyager.” He received the Writers’ Guild Fellowship in 1998 and the Institute for Humane Studies Fellowship in 1996. His articles have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, The Freeman, Human Events, SFX (U.K.), Naked (U.K.), Manchester Union Leader, TechcentralStation.com, FEE.org, Mises.org and LewRockwell.com. Gard was 2006 NH Libertarian of the Year, runs www.libertyconspiracy.com and his first book, Live Free or Die, is due in July 2007. He would like to thank Leah and Jill… And to let you know that he owns a handsome brown coat.

Serenity Found

Jennifer Goltz

Jennifer Goltz teaches voice and music theory at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif. She specializes in performing new music and writes about music of the turn of the last century and the relationship between performance and analysis. She can be heard on “Cold Water, Dry Stone: The Music of Evan Chambers” (Albany Records, 2001) and “American Grab-Bag: Songs by Logan Skelton” (Centaur Records, forthcoming). In her spare time, she sings with the Ann Arbor-based klezmer band Into the Freylakh, with which she has released two CDs: “Into the Freylakh” and “The Shape of Klez to Come.”

Finding Serenity

Debra Gonsher

Dr. Debra Gonsher is the Chairperson of the Communication Arts & Sciences Department and former coordinator of the Humanities Division at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. A three-time Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker, she is the author of the college textbook CareerSpeak: Articulation and Presentation.

Community College Guide

Wind Goodfriend

Wind Goodfriend, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of psychology at Buena Vista University. She earned her Ph.D. in social psychology in 2004 from Purdue University. Her areas of research expertise are gender stereotypes and romantic relationships, focusing specifically on positive and negative predictors of relationship stability over time. In her final year of graduate school, Dr. Goodfriend received both the Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award and the Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year Award for her research. Since then, she has been nominated for and won several more research and teaching awards.

The Psychology of the Simpsons

The Psychology of Harry Potter

The Psychology of Joss Whedon

The Psychology of Superheroes

Andrew Gordon

Andrew Gordon is an English professor and director of the Institue for Psychological Study of the Arts (ISPA) at the University of Florida. He has been a Fulbright lecturer in American literature in Spain, Portugal and Serbia, and a visiting professor in Hungary and Russia. He teaches contemporary American fiction, Jewish-American fiction and science fiction literature and film. His publications include An American Dreamer: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Fiction of Norman Mailer; Psychoanalyses/Feminisms (co-edited with Peter L. Rudnytsky) and Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness (co-authored with Hernan Vera; the book discusses many films including the science fiction or fantasy films “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Men in Black” and “The Matrix”). He has written numerous essays on science fiction and science fiction film, including the films of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, in Science-Fiction Studies and other journals.

Taking the Red Pill

Bill Gordon

Bill Gordon is a lifelong fan of “Battlestar Galactica.” Thirteen years old when the series first aired, Bill joined the revival effort at age 14. While he has given up on a continuation, he holds out hope for a faithful remake. Bill is co-owner of the Tombs of Kobol (www.tombsofkobol.com), the Internet’s premier site for original series information, as well as information on “X-Men” producer Tom DeSanto’s derailed 2001 continuation effort. In 2003, Bill served as president of the Colonial Fan Force, a group that raised $12,000 to take out pro-continuation ads in Daily Variety, Cinescape and Dreamwatch. In his non-Galactica life, Bill serves as a communications specialist at the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington D.C. He climbs onto the stages of various theatres in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area himself from time to time, and he believes that “Firefly”/“Serenity” (which he’d also like to see continued) constitutes the most innovative science fiction franchise since the original “Star Trek.” He subscribes to the following axiom, put forth by legendary television director/writer/producer Kenneth Johnson: “… execs need to re-imagine because they can’t simply imagine.”

So Say We All

Nicole P. Gotlin

Nicole P. Gotlin first met the Backstreet Boys one week after their formation in 1993. She spent the next nine years working with them. During that time she served as their managerial assistant as well as the operations manager of their Orlando-based home office. Nicole had a front row seat as they rose from a baby band to international superstars. She currently lives near Orlando, Fla., with her husband Douglas, a physician, and their son, Max Stuart.

Backstreet Mom

Rebecca Grado

Rebecca Grado is a licensed spiritual psychotherapist and author. She holds a Master’s degree in counseling and a Bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology. For the past twenty-five years she has maintained a thriving private practice helping thousands of individuals discover their power and expand their awareness through the techniques taught in her books and seminars. A true visionary in her approach, she skillfully blends her intuitive gift with traditional psychotherapeutic techniques, enabling her clients to rapidly transform limitations and awaken their greatest potential. Rebecca’s inspiring message reaches thousands monthly through her Enlightened Living Newsletter. She has been quoted in several news articles including aol.com and momlogic.com. She is a contributing author to two books with bestselling authors Dr. Wayne Dyer and Anthony Robbins. Rebecca resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her son, Alex and daughter, Brianna.

Taming Your Alpha Bitch

Kevin Grazier

Kevin R. Grazier, Ph.D., is a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., where he holds the dual titles of Investigation Scientist and Science Planning Engineer for the Cassini/Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan. There he has won numerous JPL- and NASA-wide awards for technical accomplishment. Dr. Grazier holds undergraduate degrees in computer science and geology from Purdue University, and another in physics from Oakland University. He holds an M.S. degree in physics from, again, Purdue, and he did his doctoral work at UCLA. His Ph.D. research involved long-term, large-scale computer simulations of Solar System evolution, dynamics and chaos—research which he continues to this day. Kevin is also currently the science adviser for the PBS animated series “The Zula Patrol” and for the Sci-Fi Channel series “Eureka,” as well as the Peabody Award–winning “Battlestar Galactica.” Commited to astronomical education, Dr. Grazier teaches classes in stellar astronomy, planetary science, cosmology and the search for extraterrestrial life at UCLA, Cal State LA and Santa Monica College. He has served on several NASA educational product review panels, and is also a planetarium lecturer at LA’s landmark Griffith Observatory. He lives in Sylmar, Calif.—and occasionally Mesa, Az.—with a flock of cockatiels and a precocious parrot.

Halo Effect

The Science of Dune

The Science of Michael Crichton

Melanie C. Green

Melanie C. Green, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She received her bachelor’s degree (in psychology and literature) from Eckerd College and her Ph.D. in social psychology from Ohio State University. She wishes she could have attended Hogwarts as well, but the owl with her admission letter must have gone astray. Her research explores the persuasive power of narratives, which gives her a perfect excuse to read books such as the Harry Potter series.

The Psychology of Harry Potter

Susan Green

Susan Green is an award-winning journalist. She freelances for Vermont Life, a quarterly magazine; the Burlington Free Press, the state’s major daily newspaper; and Seven Days, an alternative weekly. She also has reviewed films for BoxOffice magazine and written entertainment stories for the Hollywood Reporter. Her articles have appeared in Rolling Stone, Premiere and USA Today, among other national periodicals.

With Kevin Courrier, Green co-authored two editions of Law & Order: The Unofficial Companion (Renaissance/St. Martin’s Press, 1998 and 1999). Her coffee-table book about Bread & Puppet Theater came out in 1986 (Green Valley Media). She contributed a chapter to Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the ’60s (University of California Press, 1997) and her short fiction has been published in several literary journals.

Law & Order: SVU

Robert Greenberger

Robert Greenberger is a writer and editor with extensive credits in fiction and nonfiction. Having grown up watching too much television, he feels eminently qualified to contribute to Smart Pop’s collections, this being his third offering. By day, he is production manager at Weekly World News, where the stories are even more outrageous than anything witnessed at Seattle Grace. He makes his home in Connecticut.

Grey’s Anatomy 101

Webslinger

Eric Greene

Eric Greene is a graduate of the Religious Studies department at Wesleyan University and of Stanford Law School. Hailed as “groundbreaking,” his first book was the critically acclaimed Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics and Popular Culture. Eric recently examined “Star Trek” and Cold War politics in BenBella’s Boarding the Enterprise and wrote about “Battlestar Galactica’s” treatment of September 11/Iraq War anxieties in BenBella’s So Say We All. Greene works as a civil rights activist in Los Angeles, where his professional hats have also included actor and commentator on politics and the arts.

Boarding the Enterprise

Serenity Found

So Say We All

Dr. J.R. Gribbin

John Gribbin trained as an astrophysicist but makes his living writing science books for non-scientists. His best known is In Search of Schroedinger’s Cat, and his latest is Deep Simplicity. His science fiction books are less well known and mostly out of print, but older readers may have come across The Sixth Winter (co-written with Douglas Orgill). Gribbin lives in his county of East Sussex, in England, and has an honorary post at the University of Sussex, which provides him with agreeable company and involves no duties at all.

Stepping Through the Stargate

Benny Gruenfeld

Beny Gruenfeld was born in 1928 in Cluj (or Kolozvar, in Hungarian) in what is today Romania. After miraculously surviving the Holocaust, he and his brother Herman arrived in Sweden in mid-July 1945. To be able to remain with his brother, Benny turned down an offer to enter senior high school and instead became a blue-collar worker, first working for a glass cutter and then in a factory. After three years in Sweden, first in Landskrona and then in Stockholm, Benny enlisted as a volunteer in the Israeli Armed Forces and participated in the Arab-Israeli War. In Israel he was trained as an aircraft mechanic. After four years in Israel he returned to Sweden and, by virtue of the skills he had acquired in Israel, managed to get a job in Sweden’s then-budding civil aviation industry. Between 1952 and 1962 he lived and worked in Stockholm. From 1962 until his retirement in 1993, he was employed at the Kallinge airfield outside Ronneby in southern Sweden. After his retirement Benny began visiting schools in order to relate his experiences during the Holocaust, and since then has travelled to schools throughout the country. In fact, this soon grew into a second career, and in recent years he has given roughly 100 talks a year in school auditoriums across Sweden, reaching out to some 10,000 high school students every year. Given that an age cohort in Sweden is around 100,000, this number is substantial. Benny obtained his pilot’s license in 1958, and throughout the 1960s flying was one of his favorite hobbies. It was also during this period that he took up painting. He paints in oil and he finds his inspiration outdoors, mostly in landscapes. Benny has had many exhibitions in the province of Blekinge where he lives. Benny is married to Solveig and they have three children together. He also has eleven grandchildren.

A Teenager in Hitler’s Death Camps

Steven Gulie

Steven Gulie is a writer, poet and photographer. He lives in Oakland, Calif., with his angelic wife and two enchanting daughters, two and a half cats, tanks full of fish, a couple of snakes and some crickets and preying mantises. Some of the animals eat each other; he tries not to worry about it. He works for Apple, where his job is to take very complex things and explain them simply. He still rides his bike and occasionally body surfs.

The Science of Michael Crichton

James Gunn

James Gunn is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Kansas, and director of its Center for the Study of Science Fiction. He is the author of a dozen novels, half a dozen collections of stories and a dozen books about science fiction, as well as the editor of nearly a dozen anthologies.

King Kong is Back!

Mapping the World of the Sorcerer's Apprentice

Taking the Red Pill