James Ford “Butch” Allen is best known as the “God of MarsCon”, having become involved in its infancy and helping to keep it alive for over twenty years.  He recently chaired his fifth straight MarsCon. He began working on SF conventions in 1982 when he joined HaRoSFa (The Hampton Roads Science Fiction Association). He attended Sci-Con 4,
walked into the Con Suite to volunteer and was hooked. During the years of Sci-Con, he was instrumental in improving many areas of the con, as well as chairing Sci-Con 8 and serving as vice-chair on three others. Over his lifetime, he has assisted many other local cons, by helping them fill voids in whatever area needed help. During his active years in HaRoSFa, he served several terms as President and Vice-President of the club, and revived the clubs fanzine “The Liberated Quark”, where he split the duties of editor and writer, and is best known for his “Redneck’s in Space” short stories.

Butch was born in Shelby NC, attended Crest High School, and joined the US Coast Guard in an effort to avoid the Draft and Viet Nam. After serving for four years, one month and nineteen days as a Radioman, copying morse code and monitoring the International Distress Frequencies, he attended The College of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City NC,
where he graduated Summa Cum Laude and was Vice-President of the Student Council. He parlayed his armed service background and Associate Degree into his current position at NASA Langley in Hampton Virginia where he has been employed as an Electrical Engineering Technician since 1978. When not involved in running Science Fiction Conventions, Butch is an avid fan of Atlanta Braves Baseball and UNC Tarheels basketball.

He currently lives in Hampton Virginia, where he resides with his beautiful wife Beverley and their slightly neurotic cat Priscilla.

James Fulbright’s first introduction to fannish activities was gaming.  He met a new friend in 1978, who owned something called AD&D.   James joined his first gaming group that year, and began a long, slow decent into a larger world.

Through gaming, James met up with some folks who convinced him to attend StellarCon 8.  He had such great time interacting with the fans at the convention that he began attending meetings ofStellarCon’s parent organization, the Science Fiction Fantasy Federation.  He was an active member of that group for 25 years.

Interacting with fans also introduced James to another fannish pursuit, running conventions.  Most of his con-running experience has been withStellarCon, where he’s been the Con Manager (same thing as a Con Chair), Marketing Director, Operations Manager,… basically, he was involved in the running the con on one level or another from 1983-2007, when he finally said “enough,” and retired.

In addition to his involvement withStellarCon, James has worked VIP Registration at DragonCon, has served as the Assistant Programming Director for RavenCon, was part of the founding board of ConCarolinas, served on the BidCom for DeepSouthCon 46, and served as an advisor for the founding board of Trinoc-coN.

As one might expect, attending conventions also led to costuming, more specifically, pirate costuming. James has been the captain of the Greensboro chapter of the Buccaneers of the Atlantic Coast since 1999.  As part of that group, he gives historical lectures on the Golden Age of Piracy, participates in events for children and performs stage combat routines with his crew.