Filk music is a musical culture, genre, and community tied to science fiction, fantasy, and horror fandom and a type of fan labor. The genre has existed since the early 1950s and been played primarily since the mid-1970s. The genre has a niche but faithful popularity in the underground.
Thundarr the Barbarian is an American Saturday morning animated series, created by Steve Gerber and produced by Ruby-Spears Productions. The series ran for two seasons on ABC from October 4, 1980, to October 31, 1981, and was rerun on NBC in 1983.
Tom Smith is an American singer-songwriter from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who got his start in the filk music community. He is a fourteen-time winner of the Pegasus Award for excellence in filking, including awards for his "A Boy and His Frog", "307 Ale", and "The Return of the King (Uh-huh)", and was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2005.
Alexander James Adams is an American singer, musician and songwriter in the Celtic and world music genres who blends mythical, fantasy, and traditional themes in performances, switching between instrumental fiddle and songs accompanied by guitar, bodhrán, and fiddle-playing. Adams has also been an artist in the field of filk music and won multiple Pegasus awards.
Cynthia McQuillin was a filk singer and writer as well as an author and artist. She lived in the San Francisco Bay area. Her songs touched the usual filk topics of science fiction, fantasy, and cats, but also feminism, love, Paganism, and Sizeism.
Marcon is a full-spectrum fantasy and science fiction convention based in Columbus, Ohio, and was on Easter weekend in 2013 but moved to Mother's Day weekend starting in 2014. It is now operated by the Columbus-based Science Oriented Literature, Art, and Education Foundation, a non-profit educational corporation. The name was originally short for "March Convention," with the convention mascot the "March Hare," affectionately named "Marconi". After the date of the convention moved away from March, the name was re-designated as "Multiple Alternative Realities Convention".
Lee Gold is a member of California science fiction fandom and a writer and editor in the role-playing game and filk music communities.
Jordin T. Kare was a physicist and aerospace engineer who researched laser propulsion. He was responsible for Mockingbird, a conceptual design for an extremely small reusable launch vehicle, and was involved in the Clementine lunar mapping mission. Kare also conceived the SailBeam interstellar propulsion technique. In the science fiction fan community, he was a composer, performer and recording artist of filk music.
Michael Longcor is a folk and filk singer. His songs span a range of topics including military history, Indiana history, and humor. He has won six Pegasus Awards and has been nominated for six others. His music has appeared on Dr. Demento and on NPR's Folksong Festival, and has provided the background for a BBC documentary on Rudyard Kipling.
"Banned From Argo" is a filk song written and originally recorded by Leslie Fish, released in 1977 on the album Solar Sailors, and later as part of various compilations It won the 2003 Pegasus Award for Best Classic Filk Song.
Carla Ulbrich is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, author, and self-described "professional smart aleck" from Clemson, South Carolina.
MarsCon is a science fiction convention held in Bloomington, Minnesota, United States. It was first held in February 1999 with the goal of appealing to a diverse audience of fans in Minnesota and the vicinity. It is a mid-sized convention with a wide variety of events including panel discussions, guest of honor presentations, music of many kinds, art show, film room, science room, dealers room, charity auction, and a masquerade. Past guests have included actors, authors, artists, scientists, musicians, producers, and even the occasional pooka. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune describes MarsCon as "for the sci-fi serious nerds".
"The Female of the Species" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling originally published in 1911. Its title and refrain have inspired the titles of numerous subsequent works.
Dr. James Robinson is an American filk music songwriter and performer whose songs focus on scientific themes, particularly paleontology.
Robert T. Balder is a professional cartoonist and singer-songwriter. He graduated from Roanoke College with a major in English in 1993 and, after a variety of jobs, entered a seven-year career in IT, starting as a manager of database development, which he left for his current career.
FilKONtario is a fan-run convention in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario area dedicated to filk, the music of science fiction and fantasy fandom. Established in 1991, it is the only filk convention in Canada. In its fifth year (1995), the convention initiated the Filk Hall of Fame, which continues to recognize those who have made significant contributions to filk music and the filk community, worldwide. This international awards program is administered through FilKONtario, with an international jury.
Talis Kimberley is an English folk singer-songwriter, activist, and political figure based in Wiltshire, England. Her songs are narrative in nature and feature a mixture of mythology, green issues and everyday life approached from unexpected angles, among other things. She performs as a solo artist or with her floating band, and is managed by Marchwood Media. She has been an active contributor to the Occupy movement, and in 2015 was the parliamentary candidate for the Green Party for the South Swindon constituency, winning 1,757 votes.
Worm Quartet is a comedy music project created by Timothy F. Crist who uses the stage moniker ShoEboX and performs fast, synth-driven, pseudo-metal punk/pop. The band was formed in 1991 and its name is a reference to cartoons Crist used to draw.
Library Bards are a nerd parody band based in Los Angeles, California, consisting of reality personalities Bonnie Gordon and Xander Jeanneret. They are known for taking pop songs and re-writing them as nerd-centric parody songs. Topics of their songs include Sci-Fi, Cosplay, Gaming, and Fantasy.
DucKon was an annual science fiction convention held every May or June in the Chicago area between 1992 and 2014. The name is a shortening of DUpage CountyKONvention.
