The Swede

Name: Gary W. Olson

Age: 28 (born August 16th, 1969, seven years to the day that Elvis died. Coincidence? I think not.)

M00se Name: Svedishm00se

IRC/Chatserver/Yada/Yada/Yada Nickname: the_Swede

Subtle pattern: He's Swedish. I mean, duh.

E-mail address: swede@acd.net

WWW URL: http://userdata.acd.net/swede

Things you must know so that your life will be complete: Gary W. Olson was posting on the POLITICS list, minding his own business, when he carelessly let slip a comment about the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. This was the opening that Bill Dickson, otherwise known as Pickle, founder of the M00se Illuminati,the secretest, most inscrutible conspiracy that ever was, needed. He contacted Gary regarding his comment on the game. Gary, his suspicions lulled by the fact that he had already encountered Pickle on the POLITICS list, replied, completely unaware that he was being drawn into a web of anarchy, beer, fast cars, loose morals, and antlers. Really. We're talking babe in the woods,here.

Pickle used the extensive, secret file on Gary that the M00se Illuminati had built up since his birth (his referring to Gary, not Pickle) to discover and discuss common items of interest, among them: anarchy, beer, fast cars, and loose morals. No mention of antlers was made at this point. That would come later, when it was too late to escape.

After a short while, Pickle "casually" commented that Gary should write something for "Superguy," which he described in completely innocuous terms as a place to write humorous, satirical superhero-oriented fiction. Gary, who still had no idea that he was a pawn of the most stunningly confusing and yet strangely compelling secret organization the world had ever witnessed (or would have witnessed, had it been allowed to), said "yeah, sure." In his mind, he was thinking back to a Villains and Vigilantes game that he was currently involved in, which involved a well-tanned superhero who could shoot psychokinetic bolts. Hence, in late November of 1989, he wrote the first episode of Rad.

And thus, his fate was sealed.

Gary has written a startling number of series, includingRad, CalForce,Radian & Shadebeam, and Renegade Anarchists I, II, III, and IV. He has written many more miniseries, such as Blood Season, Kent!, and Blow the House Down (co-written with Pickle), and has been involved in the Round Robin, Round Robin II, Rialto, Raconteur, Risk, and Rolmworld multi-author projects. Since he concluded the CalForce series in May 1996 with episode #150, he has considered himself more or less retired from writing for Superguy, and is currently working on two novels, several short stories, and other projects he hopes will pave the way to a full-time writing career. Nevertheless, he does do projects here and there for Superguy (the aforementioned Kent!, the Election Night Special 1996 one-shot collaboration, and the Now It's Your Turn Sfstory anthology), and plans to continue with those until his ship comes in.

He also maintains the Sfstory archives (Sfstory being the humor sci-fi forerunner to Superguy that still survives today, so go read up on it already). As of this update (December 1997), he's had one serial published in Mythic Heroes and has sold two short stories to small press publications. For more information, check out his writings page.

Things you don't need to know to make your life more complete: Yogurt is made partially from stuff that is emitted by cows.

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