Contact: mbourne@real.com

Website: www.markbourne.com

Mark is a writer based in Seattle, with pro bylines in science fiction books and magazines at used book stores everywhere, museums nationwide, and film writing that includes six years' worth of the late, esteemed DVD Journal.

A Master's in theater led directly to a career in astronomy (seriously), and he gave up a promising career in academia for all this. However, with a background in media big and small, he has written produced scripts for the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as (via Discovery, as in the Channel) the commander of Apollo 13 (the guy Tom Hanks played in the movie) and a former U.S. president. He is cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, and regrets once having to say no to Ray Bradbury.

No relation to Jason, although the resemblance is astonishing.

Favorite quotes:

"Jack Cole's 'Plastic Man' belongs high on any adult's How to Avoid Prozac list, up there with the best of S.J. Perelman, Laurel and Hardy, Damon Runyan, Tex Avery and the Marx Brothers." --­ Art Spiegelman in The New Yorker

"A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it." --­ Roger Ebert

Nora: "I read you were shot five times in the tabloids."
Nick: "It's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids."
--­ Myrna Loy and William Powell in The Thin Man

Harry Lime: "The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly."
--­ Orson Welles in The Third Man

"You'll be a far better critic for it in the long run as you figure out what people like and don't like."
--­ Advice from an Internet commenter responding to a movie reviewer whose opinion didn't lockstep with his own. As an illustrative Zen koan, it is a bottomless well that it is better peered into than drunk from.

Favorite sites: Boing Boing, Astronomy Picture of the Day, Andrew Sullivan, Talking Points Memo, xkcd, Making Light, TED.com, edge.org, The Daily Galaxy, Wired, The Onion, The New Yorker, DVD Savant, Culture Pulp