Andrea sits down with author Steve Mollmann and Oz Encyclopedia webmaster Dr. William Wright to discuss the merry old land of Oz as portrayed in the Oz series by writer/creator L. Frank Baum. Leave your thoughts on this episode in our forum or by calling 888-866-9010.
Dr. William R. Wright has been serving as a consultant to the Department of Homeland Security since 2006, serving in an organization focused on protecting the nation from nuclear terrorist attack. Previously Dr. Wright was the CEO of Computas NA, a software startup company providing visual object modeling tools to major corporations and government agencies. Before taking the helm at Computas, Wright was President of Trans-X, Inc, where he provided knowledge-based system analysis and design, development and implementation. Much of this work was with European clients principally in the off-shore gas and oil industry. Dr. Wright’s involvement with the fantasy world of Oz came at the urging of his children to whom he had read all the Baum Oz books before they reached school age. In response, he developed the Oz Encyclopedia and created a website in the early days of the Internet to digitize Oz and make it freely available to children young and old world-wide – Oz without borders. Wright holds a Ph.D. in computing science from Texas A&M University, and a B.S. in Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Steve Mollmann is a Ph.D. student at the University of Connecticut, where he studies literature that deals with science and technology, especially in the late 19th century. He has published on The War of the Worlds and was the recipient of the 2010 Inge Award for Comics Scholarship for a presentation on Marvel Comics's Killraven. He is also the co-author (with Michael Schuster) of several works of Star Trek fiction, including The Future Begins, which will be reprinted this August in the collection Corps of Engineers: What's Past.
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