| Van Allen Plexico | |
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| Born | January 12, 1968 Sylacauga, Alabama |
| Occupation | Writer/Editor and Educator |
| Nationality | American |
| Genres | Science fiction, Superhero fiction, Pulp Adventure, Comics Commentary |
| Subjects | History, Political Science |
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www.plexico.net |
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Van Allen Plexico (born January 12, 1968) is an American professor of Political Science and History and a science fiction and fantasy author.
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Born in Sylacauga, Alabama, United States, Van Allen Plexico graduated from Auburn University with Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in 1990 and 1994, doing additional graduate work at Georgetown University and at Emory University. From 1995 through 2006 he lived and worked in the Atlanta, Georgia metro area, teaching at Georgia Perimeter College and at Shorter University. In 2006 he became Assistant Professor of Political Science and History at Southwestern Illinois College, near St. Louis, Missouri.
Plexico has lectured, written, and spoken professionally on space science, alternate history, and the historical roots of contemporary comic books and science fiction and fantasy literature. He has been published in print and online in the areas of book, television, film, and comics criticism and commentary (often by RevolutionSF.com), and has moderated discussion panels and emceed trivia tournaments at science fiction conventions around the US, beginning in 1998.
He is the author of the Sentinels series of Superhero fiction / pulp adventure novels and stories, published (volumes one-three) by Swarm Press and (beginning with volume four) by White Rocket Books. Artist Chris Kohler has provided five full-page interior illustrations for each volume. Sentinels short stories also have been published in A Thousand Faces magazine.
A member of the Pulp Factory writers' and artists' group, Plexico's classic pulp revival novels and novellas are being published by Airship 27 Productions. His Kerry Keen/The Griffon novella, "Conspiracy of Terror," was published by Adamant Entertainment in Thrilling Tales #1 and reprinted in Airship 27's Lance Star - Sky Ranger, Vol. 2. His science fiction novel, Lucian: Dark God's Homecoming, was published by Airship 27 in summer 2009. Additionally, two of his short stories were featured in Airship 27's bestselling and multiple award winning anthology, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, Vol. 1, also in 2009 (Winner of the 2010 Pulp Factory Awards for Best Pulp Cover Art, Best Pulp Interior Art, and Pulp Short Story of the Year for Andrew Salmon's "Mystery of the Locked Room.") Plexico also serves as an editor for White Rocket Books and has served as assistant editor on multiple projects for Airship 27.
An inductee of the Heroes Magazine Hall of Fame for his early work in the comics fandom community, he was founder (in 1995) and is executive editor of the Avengers-related comic book archives and reference site, AvengersAssemble. He has also contributed to the Wizard Magazine archives and was chosen by the Rittenhouse Archives to write the text for the backs of Upper Deck's commemorative The Complete Avengers, 1963-Present trading card set, chronicling the year-by-year history of the team. In 2007 he edited ASSEMBLED!, a critically acclaimed collection of essays analyzing and commenting upon Marvel's Avengers comics, with profits going to the HERO Initiative. A sequel, ASSEMBLED! 2, was published in July 2009.
As a member of the Spectacled Seven, Plexico is a founding editor of All-Pulp, a pulp fiction-themed online magazine and blog.
In September 2010 Plexico became a contributing columnist for the Auburn University sports and popular culture commentary site, The War Eagle Reader. His columns, written with John Ringer, were collected in a single volume, Season of Our Dreams, published in January 2011. In July 2011, that book made Amazon.com's Top 20 Bestsellers list for books about American football.
In early 2011 Plexico was nominated for the "Writer of the Year" Award by the membership of PulpArk, an Arkansas-based pulp convention, and for "Story of the Year" (for his story, "The Red Flame of Death," in Gideon Cain - Demon Hunter, Vol. 1) by the members of the Pulp Factory, awarded at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback Convention in Chicago each spring.
Writer Kurt Busiek introduced the character of Detective Plexico to the pages of Marvel's Iron Man comic book series in 1999 as a reference to Van Plexico and the Avengers Assemble! Web site. In 2001, writer Keith R. A. DeCandido included a reference to the name Plexico in his Farscape novel, House of Cards, as a nod to Plexico.
Beginning in 2006, Plexico began writing a multi-volume series of Superhero fiction novels and anthologies. The books are set in the modern day, but include major elements of space opera. The central character of the series is a teen-aged Asian-American woman who discovers she possesses electromagnetic powers and becomes involved with a US government-run organization known as Project: Sentinel. Each volume of the series stands alone as a single adventure but the books can be read together as an ongoing, continuous narrative in which the characters grow and change. As of 2011, the series stands at seven volumes (six novels and one anthology). The most recent volume, the novel Stellarax, was published by White Rocket Books in late June 2011.