Author Deborah Miller died on May 7. Miller, who published under the name Miller Lau, founded and administered the David Gemmell Legend Award. A protege of Gemmell’s, she published The Last Clansman trilogy. More recently, she published the first volume of the Swarmthief Trilogy and the stand-alone novel The Sin Eater.
Special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen (b.1920) died on May 7. Harryhausen created a type of stop-motion animation known as Dynamation and used it in films ranging from The Clash of the Titans to Mighty Joe Young to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Harryhausen was inspired by the film King Kong and became close friends with Ray Bradbury and Forrest Ackerman, joining the Los Angeles Science Fiction League. In later years, Harryhausen wrote several books showcasing his techniques and models. Harryhausen was a Worldcon Guest of Honor in 1987 in Brighton and in 2005, Harryhausen was inducted in to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, one of the first non-authors so honored.
The FAAN Awards were announced at Corflu XXX on May 5 in Portland, OR.
The Shirley Jackson Awards were established to recognize outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. The winners will be announced on July 14 at Readercon 24 in Burlington, Massachusetts.
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The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has announced the results of their board election. The new board will be seated on July 1 and will serve a one year term. An * indicates that the person is an incumbent and was re-elected. A # indicates that a person was running unopposed.
The Ditmar Awards were presented at Conflux 9 – the 52nd Australian National SF convention. The winners are listed below.
Pittsburgh convention Confluence 25 has been cancelled due to a lack of hotel. Confluence selected a new hotel this year after their previous hotel raised their rates. Unfortunately, the new hotel has announced plans to close four days before Confluence’s scheduled dates. A quick look was unable to find an available hotel, so the committee has cancelled this year’s event and plans to continue the convention in 2014.
For more information…
The winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award was announced during Sci-Fi-London 9: The Ninth Annual International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film. This year, the award included a prize of £2013. The winner is Chris Beckett for the novel Dark Eden.
Author andrew j. offutt (b.1934) died on April 30. Many of his early works were fantasies in the Robert E. Howard style, including the Cormac mac Art series, the War of the Gods on Earth trilogy, and the War of the Wizards trilogy. He also created the character Hanse Shadowspawn for the Thieves’ World shared universe and wrote three novels about the character. In addition to writing Conan novels, he also wrote numerous science fiction novels under his own name and the house name John Cleve and edited the Swords Against Darkness anthology series. He served two terms as President of SFWA. His son is author Christopher Offutt.
Actor Jack Shea (b.1928) died on April 28. Shea is best known for directing television sit coms and was the president of the Directors Guild of America for five years from 1997-2002. His one foray into science fiction was the 1969 comedy The Monitors.