The Scifi Diner Podcast Ep. 421 – Return to Farpoint with Marc Okrand and Steve Wilson; Bobalorian Awesomesauce.

The Scifi Diner Podcast Ep. 421 – Return to Farpoint with Marc Okrand and Steve Wilson; Bobalorian Awesomesauce.

Farpoint is an American science-fiction convention held since 1993 in Maryland. The convention is sponsored by the nonprofit Farpoint Foundation, and is fan-run, giving every attendee a VIP experience without the VIP-size price tag. Typical programming includes panel discussions, a competitive masquerade, independent film and fan videos, a dedicated gaming room, an art show and auction, charity auction, interactive live performances and celebrity guest appearances. It is a successor convention to ClipperCon (1984-1989) and OktoberTrek (1990-1992). The next Farpoint will be held on February 25-27, 2022. See less

Author Steven H. Wilson

Steven H. Wilson is an author, podcaster, and publisher. He has interviewed Jonathan Frakes and William Campbell for Starlog, written for DC Comics Star Trek classic and Warlord series, and, most recently, served as principal writer and director for Prometheus Radio Theatre and publisher of Firebringer Press. His original science fiction series, The Arbiter Chronicles, currently boasting nineteen full-cast audio dramas and the novel Taken Liberty, has won the Mark Time Silver Award and the Parsec Award for Best Audio Drama (long form). A second Arbiter Chronicles novel, Unfriendly Persuasion, was released in 2012, and a new series of episodes is currently in development. He is also a contributor to Crazy 8 Press’s ReDeus series edited by Bob Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg and Paul Kupperberg.

As a podcaster, besides hosting the Prometheus Radio Theatre podcast, Steve has recorded Lester Del Rey’s Badge of Infamy for podiobooks.com, multiple roles in J. Daniel Sawyer’s production of The Antithesis Progression, and Nobilis Reed’s upcoming Geek Love audio anthology. Steve entered SF fandom as a fanzine writer in 1984, and worked on the committees and Shore Leave, Clippercon and OktoberTrek before becoming founding co-chairman of Farpoint. He has now retired from convention organizing to focus on writing and publishing. He and his wife Renee and their two sons live in Elkridge, MD.

Marc Okrand is an American linguist. His professional work is in Native American languages, and he is well known as the creator of the Klingon language in the Star Trek science fiction franchise.

Marc Okrand

As a linguist, Okrand worked with Native American languages. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1970. His 1977 doctoral dissertation from the University of California, Berkeley, was on the grammar of Mutsun, an extinct Ohlone language formerly spoken in the coastal areas of north-central California. His dissertation was supervised by pioneering linguist Mary Haas. From 1975 to 1978, he taught undergraduate linguistics courses at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before taking a post-doctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., in 1978.

After that, Okrand took a job at the National Captioning Institute,