World Horror Convention 2007 announced Thursday, January 25, that Joe R. Lansdale has been voted the winner of the 2007 Grand Master Award.

The number of votes cast this year by members of the convention was the highest in the history of the seventeen-year-old award. Previous Grand Masters included Robert Bloch, Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz.

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than thirty novels in all genres, including crime, western, horror and pulp adventure. He has also written scripts for comic books and animated television shows, and his novella Bubba Ho-Tep, about an aged Elvis Presley and black John F. Kennedy battling a soul-sucking mummy, was filmed by Don Coscarelli in 2002. His short story, “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” was adapted as the first episode of the first season of TV’s Masters of Horror series.

Joe R. Lansdale has received six HWA Bram Stoker Awards, the British Fantasy Award, the MWA Edgar Award, the American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, the “Shot in the Dark” International Crime Writer’s Award, the Booklist Editor’s Award and the Critic’s Choice Award.

For the first time in its seventeen-year history, The World Horror Convention is being held outside the United States. With a theme exploring “The Diversity of Horror”, World Horror Convention 2007 will take place over March 29-April 1 at the Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre, located in the heart of Toronto, Canada.

The 2007 Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Awards Presentation will be held at the convention on the Saturday evening. For details about how to purchase your tickets to this very special event, please consult the Stoker Banquet page.

[via SFWA]

David Guy Compton will be participating in the 2007 Nebula Awards^® Weekend as Author Emeritus.

Born in the United Kingdom, Compton moved to the United States in 1981. Writing as D G. Compton, Guy Compton, or Frances Lynch, he published over 20 SF, romance and mystery novels between 1965 and 1996. His better known works include The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe which was filmed as La mort en direct (Deathwatch); and The Steel Crocodile which was a 1971 Nebula Best Novel nominee.

SFWA began its Author Emeritus program in 1995 as a way of recognizing senior writers who have made significant contributions to our field. Previous participants were Emil Petaja, Wilson “Bob” Tucker, Judith Merril, Nelson S. Bond, Philip Klass (William Tenn), Daniel Keyes, Robert Sheckley, Katherine MacLean, Charles L. Harness, and William F. Nolan.

The 2007 Nebula Awards Weekend will be held Friday, May 11th through Sunday, May 13th at the Marriott in the Financial Center, New York City, 85 West Street, New York, NY 10006. The awards will be presented at a gala banquet on Saturday, May 12th. The Nebula Awards is open to the general public.

Source: D G Compton selected as Author Emeritus

Buried at the tail end of Mark Sarvas’ interview with Jonathan Lethem comes news of one project on the novelist’s plate: “I’m helping preside over the utter and irreversible canonization of one of my formerly outsider heroes, Philip K. Dick: I’m writing endnotes for The Library of America, which is doing a volume of four of his novels from the sixties, which I also helped select.” Unless I’m overlooking somebody, that would make Dick the Library’s first science fiction writer—unless you count H.P. Lovecraft, but I’m filing him under fantasy/horror. So which novels are they? Sure, we could always email Lethem and ask, but its much more fun to guess. Three of the four slots are no-brainers: The Man in the High Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Ubik. But that fourth…there’s a few good candidates, but I’m going to go with The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. And then I’m going to cross my fingers that this all works out, so that the Library will then go back and publish an omnibus edition of the VALIS trilogy, the three mind-blowing novels Dick wrote at the end of his career.

I’d say Stigmata is a good guess but I wouldn’t dismiss Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said which was awarded the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and is the only Dick novel nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula Award.

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Update 11/30: The LOA announced the book today with a June ‘07 release date. Stigmata is, indeed, the fourth title that will be included. Ron has a follow-up article with some interesting responses from various SF professionals regarding who else they think should be so honored.

Gunn was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America for 1971-72, president of the Science Fiction Research Association from 1980-82 and has been guest of honor at many regional SF conventions.  He is now a professor emeritus and director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, which awards the annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction of the year.

The title "Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master" is bestowed upon a living author for a lifetime’s achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy. While it is not a Nebula Award, the Grand Master honor is conferred as part of the Nebula Awards Banquet. This year’s ceremony will take place on May 11-13, 2007, in New York City.  Gunn is the twenty fourth writer recognized by SFWA as a Grand Master.

Previous SFWA Grand Masters

• Robert A. Heinlein (1974)
• Jack Williamson (1975)
• Clifford D. Simak (1976)
• L. Sprague de Camp (1978)
• Fritz Leiber (1981)
• Andre Norton (1983),
• Arthur C. Clarke (1985)
• Isaac Asimov (1986)
• Alfred Bester (1987)
• Ray Bradbury (1988)
• Lester del Rey (1990)
• Frederik Pohl (1992)
• Damon Knight (1994)
• A. E. van Vogt (1995)
• Jack Vance (1996)
• Poul Anderson (1997)
• Hal Clement (1998)
• Brian Aldiss (1999)
• Philip Jose Farmer (2000)
• Ursula K. Le Guin (2003)
• Robert Silverberg (2004)
• Anne McCaffrey (2005)
• Harlan Ellison (2006)

• Fritz Leiber
  Creator of the seminal sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Leiber is also considered as one of the forerunners of the modern urban horror story. Notable stories include the short story The Girl with the Hungry Eyes as well as his novels Conjure Wife†, Our Lady of Darkness† and A Specter Is Haunting Texas†. For many, Fritz Leiber stands as one of the greatest writers of fantasy and horror. His popularity amongst both fans and his fellow writers continues to be considerable and his works highly collectible.

• H.P. Lovecraft
  Creator of the Cthulthu Mythos Lovecraft is the undisputed master of the paranoid horror story. His works have been subject to serious scholarly study and remain highly influential among writers and fans of modern horror fiction. Most famous among his creations are the dread tome Necronomicon and the Elder Gods Cthulthu and Yog-Sothoth, frequently referenced by other writers of supernatural horror.

• C.L. Moore
  One of the pioneers of women’s science fiction writing, Moore is best known for two seminal short stories, Shambleau and Black God’s Kiss (which featured one of the first female heroes in sword-and-sorcery fiction Jirel of Joiry). She later married author Henry Kuttner and the two published a number of collaborations under a number of pen-names. Probably the most famous of these pseudonyms are Lewis Padgett and Keith Hammond. She stopped writing SF after Kuttner’s death in 1956 but continued to pen mysteries and television screenplays. Her early genre work and the collaborations with Kuttner are very collectible.

• Michael Moorcock
  Moorcock may be most famously known for the Elric novels featuring his anti-hero Elric of Melniboné. Many of his fantasy novels, including the Elric stories, make reference or are directly connected with his concept of the “Eternal Champion,” who has potentially multiple identities across multiple dimensions of reality and alternative universes. His work remains very popular and is highly collectible.

• Andre Norton
  Best known for her Witch World series, Norton’s work has been highly influential in both the science fiction and fantasy genres. A highly prolific writer her work spans sixty years of science fiction and fantasy. Particularly popular among women, her work deserves serious consideration by collectors.

• Frederick Pohl
  Awarded the Nebula Grand Master Award by the Science fiction Writers of America in 1993 Pohl may be as well known as an editor and literary agent as he is for his essential fiction. His early writings feature his dystopian satire collaboration with C. L. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants†. Highlights of his later work include Jem† in which human colonists interact destructively with each other and three native species of alien, Man Plus† in which a cyborged human explores a realistic Mars, and the Heechee series beginning with the award winning Gateway†.

• Terry Pratchett
  Pratchett is renowned for his fantastically popular satirical parody series Discworld which according to The Internet Speculative Fiction Database currently numbers thirty-five books. Appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature, in recent years his books have been nearly as popular as J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien. One British television host called him “Britain’s most shoplifted author”. His young adult trilogy, The Bromeliad has been recently optioned for a film adaptation.

• Theodore Sturgeon
  Featured in the first of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction’s “special author” issues in 1962, Sturgeon is best known for his novel More Than Human† and the adage often cited as Sturgeon’s Law but properly called Sturgeon’s Revelation. It states “Ninety percent of science fiction is crud, but that’s because ninety percent of everything is crud.” His work has had admittedly noted influence on such writers as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Harlan Ellison.

• Jack Vance
  An extremely prolific writer, Vance is highly regarded by both readers and his fellow peers. He is renowned for his command of prose and his ability to create strange future worlds and eccentric, outlandish societies. He is credited with helping to define the genres of “science fantasy” and “planetary romance”. Among his more significant series are The Dying Earth, Lyonesse and Gaean Reach. Very popular among collectors.

• Roger Zelazny
  Zelazny is best known for his Amber series, his award winning novel Lord of Light† and his short stories A Rose for Ecclesiastes and The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth. He was one of the most influential writers of the New Wave era. Zelazny introduced the concept of integrating classic mythologies with technologically produced magics, creating works which he termed “Science-Fantasy”. Popular among discerning readers and collectors.

There are, of course, a great number of authors not on this list. I’d love to hear some of your suggestions and why you think they should be included.

“…perhaps the best indication is the strength of the author’s vision and the quality of the writing … If the themes are timeless, or very important or new and ground-breaking, then it’s a good bet the work will be highly influential.”

I’ve selected twenty authors who I consider to be “highly influential” and therefore worthy of collecting. The list crosses the three genres of Science Fiction , Fantasy and Horror and is in no way meant to be conclusive. However all the authors listed here are considered giants in the field whose work will continue to be collected and read in the years to come.

I may do other such lists in the future. In fact I probably will, they are fun to do and give me an opportunity to do a little exploring and reminiscing. Of the authors here you know, it may be time to go back and take another look at them, of those you don’t, it may serve as an excuse to look them up.

Here are the first ten. I’ll post the remainder tomorrow.

• Isaac Asimov
  Asimov is considered by many to be one of the greatest science fiction writers and continues to be one of the most popular. He is probably best known for his famous Foundation series and the Robot stories featuring the Three Laws of Robotics. For a more in depth look at Asimov you can take a look at my article, Focus on Isaac Asimov.

• Robert Bloch
  A contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft, Bloch wrote a large body of work that first appeared in Weird Tales magazine. He is probably most popularly known as the author of Psycho† and is considered to be one of the most distinguished writers in the horror and mystery field.

• John Brunner
  Brunner’s best known works are his novels The Sheep Look Up†, Stand on Zanzibar†, and The Shockwave Rider†. The later was one of the first SF novels to describe the information technology revolution and is credited by some to have predicted the Internet and computer viruses with the term “data worm”.

• Edgar Rice Burroughs
  Creator of the world famous character of Tarzan, Burroughs is also well known for his science fiction series Barsoom (John Carter of Mars), the lost island stories of The Land Time Forgot series and his hollow earth stories in the Pellucidar series. He continues to be extremely popular and highly collectible.

• C.J. Cherryh
  Though most popularly known for her hard SF novels Downbelow Station† and Cyteen†, Cherryh’s work spans a number of science fiction and fantasy subgenres. She is one of today’s best-selling and most critically acclaimed writers of fantasy and science fiction with a steadfast and growing readership.

• Glen Cook
  Best known for his fantasy series, The Black Company, Cook’s fiction is often labeled “gritty”. Blending dark fantasy with sharp, realistic dialogue and film-noir sensibilities his protagonists are most often soldiers, cops or private detectives caught in a conflict which highlight their failings as well as their virtues. His work is particularly popular with military personnel.

• Philip K. Dick
  Though hailed during his lifetime by his peers Dick received little public recognition until after several of his works were adapted to film. These include Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)†, Minority Report†, Total Recall (based on the short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale), and most recently A Scanner Darkly†. Much of his early work explored sociological and political themes while his later work tackled drugs and theology. The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States

• Harlan Ellison
  The “enfant terrible” of science fiction, Ellison is undoubtedly one of the most talented and celebrated writers in speculative fiction today. Though preferring not to have his work classified in any particular genre, Ellison’s most famous stories fit easily into the science fiction and fantasy categories. He is hugely popular and extremely collectible. Many of his works are released in limited and special printings in addition to the trade editions.

• Robert Heinlein
  Like Asimov, Heinlein is considered one of the “greats” in science fiction. He was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of “hard” science fiction in his day and is considered the first SF writer to break into mainstream magazines. The novel Variable Star†, written by Spider Robinson from Heinlein’s outline and notes, published this year, may stimulate a revival of his work.

• William Gibson
  Gibson is credited with creating the Cyberpunk subgenre with his first novel Neuromancer† as well as coining the term “cyberspace”. Many of his tropes have infiltrated the modern electronic culture. His work has given rise to other subgenres such as Steampunk and Biopunk (aka Ribofunk). He continues to write significant books and his body of work will remain important for it’s influence on the culture of the 1990s and early 21st Century.

That’s it for the first ten. Look for the rest tomorrow.

Asimov’s early career, dominated by Science Fiction short stories, began in 1939. Eleven years later saw the publication of his first SF novel Pebble In The Sky (Doubleday 1950). Arguably Asimov’s most famous works are the Foundation Series, the Galactic Empire Series and the Robot Series. Much later in his career he ended up tying both the Empire and Robot series into the Foundation Series. In addition to his numerous works in the Science Fiction field he wrote a number of wonderful fantasies and a prodigious amount of lay science and non-fiction work.

Two and a half years after publishing his first short story, “Marooned Off Vesta”, in the March 1939 issue of Amazing Stories, he published the short story “Nightfall” in the September 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It has been described as one of the most famous science-fiction stories of all time. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted “Nightfall” the best science fiction short story ever written. It is an archetypical example of social science fiction, a term coined by Asimov to describe a new trend, led by authors such as himself and Robert Heinlein, away from hardware and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.

The Foundation Series is among Asimov’s most famous fiction work and some scholars consider the collected works to be the most influential science fiction series in the genre. The stories recount the collapse and rebirth of a vast interstellar empire in a universe of the far future. The series features Asimov’s fictional science of Psychohistory in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted by a series of complex metrics.

The first of the stories, “Foundation” appeared in Astounding Science Fiction (May 1942). The stories were later collected in the Foundation Trilogy books – Foundation (Gnome Press 1951), Foundation and Empire (Gnome Press 1952), and Second Foundation (Gnome Press 1953).

Many years later, he continued the series with Foundation’s Edge (Doubleday 1982) and Foundation and Earth (Doubleday 1986) and even later wrote two novels preceding the original trilogy, Prelude to Foundation (Doubleday 1988) and Forward the Foundation (Doubleday 1993).

His Robot Series stories began with the publication of “Strange Playfellow” in the September 1940 issue of Super Science Stories. The story was originally titled “Robbie” by Asimov and subsequent republishing now uses this title. Many of the Robot stories were later collected in I, Robot (Gnome Press 1950).

The Robot stories are perhaps most famous for the set of rules of ethics for robots and intelligent machines known as the Three Laws of Robotics. Asimov’s Three Laws influenced almost all subsequent writers and thinkers in their treatment of robots, androids and artificial intelligence to such an extent that even today such stories are examined with them in mind.

The Galactic Empire Series consist of three novels and one short story, Pebble In The Sky (Doubleday 1950), The Stars, Like Dust (Doubleday 1951), The Currents of Space (Doubleday 1952) and “Blind Alley” (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1945). They are a set of loosely connected stories set in the same universe as the Foundation tales. Asimov created an additional connection between all three series of stories in Robots and Empire (Doubleday 1985).

On Collecting Asimov

The sheer volume of Isaac Asimov’s work makes any attempt to own a complete collection of his work practically impossible by an individual collector. A good alternative to attempting a complete collection is to limit your acquisitions to a particular subset of the author’s work. Restricting yourself to those works of Asimov’s that won Hugo or Nebula Awards is one option and would provide an excellent cross-section of his works as well as providing a roadmap of hard science stories in the genre during his career.

Limiting a collection to a single publisher of first editions is another possibility. A collection restricted to Doubleday first editions of Asimov’s science fiction and fantasy works, for example, would consist of about forty books, a very manageable number that would still include some rare and harder to find volumes.

Fortunately finding many of his books in good condition is relatively easy but early editions and first editions can be expensive. Even so, searching on abebooks.com for first editions with dust jackets, under $100.00 and limited to the keywords “science and fiction” yielded over 2000 entries! A similar search limited to under $25.00 returned about 1600 entries. Most collectors will be able to find a number of interesting volumes within their budget.

Fri 27 Oct 2006,

• Judith Moffett reads at Barnes and Noble, 1805 Walnut St, Philadelphia PA PA, US, 7:30 p.m. (a Philadelphia Fantastic event)

Sat 28 Oct 2006,

• Ellen Kushner (Thomas the Rhymer) reads at Stone Soup Coffeehouse, Pawtucket RI, US, 8 p.m. (reading and singing, accompanied by reknowned fiddler Joe Kessler)

Sun 29 Oct 2006,

• Harlan Ellison appears at Skylight Books, 1818 North Vermont Ave, Los Feliz CA, US, 5 p.m. (info 323-660-1175)
• Syd Mead appears at Society of Illustrators, 128 East 63rd Street, New York City NY, US, 6:30 p.m. (lecture; admission $20)

Thu 2 Nov 2006,

• Neal Asher, James Barclay, Chaz Brenchley, Mike Carey, Mark Chadbourn, Steve Cockayne, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Sam Enthoven, John George, Amanda Hemingway, Erin Hunter, Heulwen Jones, Paul Kearney, Juliet E. McKenna , Eoin McNamee, Stan Nicholls, Phillip Reeve, Justina Robson, Mark Robson, SF Said, Matthew Skelton appear at Heffer’s Bookshop, Grafton Centre, Cambridge, UK, 6:30 p.m. (second annual science fiction and fantasy author event; free

And a couple of Science Fiction Conventions this weekend:

• 10-27 thru 10-29 Tampa FL
  Necronomicon – General horror and scifi con
• 10-27 thru 10-29 Orlando FL
  Orlando Star Trek Vulkon – Celebrating Star Trek’s 40th Anniversary

Also of note The SF Site reports:

The Geffen Awards, presented in Israel for the best SF published there, were presented at Icon on October 12. The award, given by the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy, is named after Amos Geffen. This year’s winners are listed below.

• Best Translated Science Fiction Book: Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson
• Best Translated Fantasy Book: Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
• Best Original Israeli SF/Fantasy Short Story: East of Eden, by Higal Averbach

Today I ran across another article addressing the same issue, this time exploring the physicality of books. Writer, editor and publisher Jeff VanderMeer polled over eighty authors asking them to weigh in on five questions.

1. What do you most like about the book as a physical object?
2. Do you have any rituals or procedures you go through after acquiring a new (or used) book? (Some writers indicate they bite or smell books.)
3. Is it necessary for books to exist as physical objects in our increasingly electronic world? If so, why?
4. What recent examples stand out for you as exemplar of well-designed, well-made books?
5. Do you have any memory connected to books that you would like to share.

The answers are varied and interesting. For example Michael Moorcock responded to the question of books existing as physical object by saying, in part,

“I suspect that the emergence of the book as a work of art, as in the case of Savoy and others, is in response to the availability of electronic reading material. This suggests that the book will continue to be bought, alongside other methods of delivery!”

Tanith Lee recounted a memory of actually kissing a copy of a rare book she had been trying to find for over fifteen years. Shelly Jackson responded that she has a ritual of hitting herself in the mouth with each new book until she draws blood…but I suspect she was kidding.

How about you? Care to answer these questions yourself? I’d love to hear about it. I’m working on my answers and will post them a little later.

“There are now 35 statewide celebrations, and that has gone up tremendously in recent years,” said John Y. Cole, director of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress. Mr. Cole arranges for authors to appear at the annual National Book Festival, which drew 100,000 literature lovers to the National Mall in Washington last month. The center also helps organizers put together local book fairs.

The article lists a number of fairs happening next month in various cities across the country including Miami, Las Vegas, Chicago and Wooster, Ohio. Wooster, Ohio? Who am I to quibble? The Miami fair alone, reports Greenfield, draws about 300,000 people for its weeklong event. Not bad for a bookish crowd.

Along a similar line Science Fiction and Fantasy author signing events are also alive and well. Locus magazine list 38 author appearances between now and this time next month. Notables include Peter Beagle, Spider Robinson, Ellen Kushner, R. A. Salvatore, Harlan Ellison and illustrator Syd Mead among many others.