Lars Pearson is founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of Mad Norwegian Press (www.madnorwegian.com) and one of the foremost experts on Doctor Who in North America. He thanks God that the new Doctor Who has finally silenced those who preferred to overlook the original show’s imagination in favor of giggling over how the spaceships looked like dish soap bottles. He’s also pleased that the new show has gotten his wife interested in Doctor Who. (Although her rabid interest in Doctor Who fanfic is slightly disturbing. It worries him when she starts randomly asking him under what conditions the TARDIS console pulsates.)
Pearson grew up on a horse farm in Story City, and is fairly certain he was a youngster at the very first DemiCon. At that event, he breathlessly watched The Curse of Fenric – then a new(ish) Doctor Who story – on grubby videotape in someone’s hotel room, but had to leave early to keep his parents from realizing that he was at one of those shows devoted to that weird Sci-Fi stuff.
As a Coe College graduate, Pearson cut his teeth as a newspaper editor (and reported on such stories as a burning brothel), then became an editor for Wizard Entertainment in New York (working on such magazines as Wizard: The Guide to Comics, ToyFare and InQuest Gamer) before a brief stint as one of two Sci-Fi/ Comics Writers at the doomed Thirsty.com in Los Angeles.
He founded Mad Norwegian Press — a publisher of SF reference guides, essay books and novels — in 2001. The company ethnically made less sense when it was based in New Orleans (he had the option of getting married by a voodoo priestess, if that tells you anything), but it now resides in Des Moines, where it is surrounded on all sides by corn and pastry-baking Scandinavians.
Along with Lance Parkin, Pearson is the co-author of Ahistory, a definitive Doctor Who text that’s 30,000 words longer than War and Peace, and incorporates 1400 Who-related stories into a single timeline. Despite the obvious impediment of having a Y chromosome, Pearson was the Editor-in-Chief on the company’s newly formed range of essay books pertaining to women and fandom. To date, these include Chicks Dig Time Lords (edited by Lynne Thomas and Tara O’Shea, 2011 Hugo Award Winner, Best Related Work), Whedonistas! (edited by Lynne Thomas and Deborah Stanish), Chicks Dig Comics (edited by Lynne Thomas and Sigrid Ellis, Hugo Award nominated, 2013), Chicks Unravel Time (edited by Deborah Stanish and L.M. Myles, Hugo Award nominated, 2013), the related Queers Dig Time Lords (edited by Sigris Ellis and Michael Thomas, Hugo Award nominated, 2014), Chicks Dig Gaming (edited by Jennifer Brozek, Robert Smith? and Lars Pearson, ENnie Award nominated, 2015) and Companion Piece (edited by L.M. Myles and Liz Barr).
All told, Pearson has written or edited more than 40 Sci-Fi guidebooks and novels through Mad Norwegian, and in 2016 alone processed (gulp) more than a million words of Sci-Fi analysis. Having lived in the biggest and second biggest cities in America (and the most voodoo-flavored), he can personally attest that Des Moines is the best of all of them.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Pearson
Publications
- I, Who: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who Novels, 1999 ISBN 0-9673746-0-X
- I, Who 2: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who Novels and Audios, 2001 ISBN 1-57032-900-1
- Prime Targets: The Unauthorized Story Guide to Transformers, Beast Wars & Beast Machines, 2001 ISBN 1-57032-901-X
- Now You Know: The Unauthorized Guide to GI Joe TV & Comics, 2002 ISBN 1-57032-902-8
- I, Who 3: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who Novels and Audios, 2003 ISBN 0-9725959-1-0
- Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (with Lawrence Miles and Christa Dickson) 2003 ISBN 0-9725959-0-2
- AHistory: An Unauthorized History of the Doctor Who Universe (written by Lance Parkin with additional material by Pearson), 2006 ISBN 0-9725959-9-6
- Redeemed: The Unauthorized Guide to Angel (with Christa Dickson), 2006 ISBN 0-9725959-3-7
- AHistory: An Unauthorized History of the Doctor Who Universe [Second Edition] (written by Lance Parkin with additional material by Pearson), 2007 ISBN 0-9759446-6-5
- About Time 3: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who (Seasons 7 to 11) (2nd Edition) (written by Tat Wood, Lawrence Miles, Lars Pearson (Editor)), 2009 ISBN 978-0-9759446-7-7
- About Time 6: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who (Seasons 22 to 26, the TV Movie) (written by Tat Wood with additional material by Pearson), 2007 ISBN 0-9759446-5-7
- Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to X-Files, Millennium and The Lone Gunmen (written by Robert Shearman, with additional material by Pearson), 2009 ISBN 978-0-9759446-9-1
- AHistory: An Unauthorized History of the Doctor Who Universe [Third Edition] (co-written with Lance Parkin), 2012 ISBN 978-1935234111