Barry Childs-Helton HoF

Barry passed the height limit for astronauts in seventh grade, stopped well short of the stratosphere, and hasn't played basketball for several decades. He started writing science-fiction-tinged folk-rock in college -- though unaware, as yet, of the filk tradition. He spent grad school at Indiana University (M.A. in creative writing and Ph.D. in folklore), and has subsidized his arty habits by working as a computer-book editor since 1991.

He and co-conspirator/spouse Sally began going to cons in 1982; their first fannish activity as a creative team was as masquerade costumers. Then Midwestern Filk Grandmistress Juanita Coulson invited Barry to join an onstage bardic semicircle at InConJuncTion V; he's been fusing SF, folk-rock, and space travel (with all the blues and jazz he could muster) ever since, often with Sally's percussion and a vintage Guild 12-string.

The Childs-Heltons released two studio filk recordings in the heyday of the chromium-dioxide cassette, a live CD with the Black Book Band in the 1990s, and (so far) three CDs with Wild Mercy (the most recent, Dream of a Far Light, is Barry's space-migration song cycle).

Warning: Pegasus nominations for his musical activities over the years (as songwriter, band member, and performer) have only served to encourage him; he'll probably play to fannish audiences as long as he can pick up a guitar. (He's picked up quite a few of those over the years, thanks to chronic Guitar Acquisition Syndrome, joneses for doublenecks, baritone guitars, fretless basses, and 12-strings, and a very patient spouse.) For occasional mischief, he still enjoys perplexing Indy-area bar audiences on open-mic nights with abstruse lyrics and unrepentant speculative humor.