James E. Gunn (writer)

James Edwin Gunn (born July 12, 1923) is an American science fiction writer, editor, scholar, and anthologist. His work as an editor of anthologies includes the six-volume Road to Science Fiction series. He won the Hugo Award for "Best Related Work" in 1983 and he has won or been nominated for several other awards for his non-fiction works in the field of science fiction studies.[3] The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made him its 24th Grand Master in 2007[4] and he was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2015.[5][6] His novel The Immortals was adapted into a 1969-71 TV series starring Christopher George.[2]

James E. Gunn
Gunn in 2005
BornJames Edwin Gunn
(1923-07-12) July 12, 1923
Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Pen nameEdwin James[1]
OccupationProfessor of English, critic, fiction writer
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
EducationB.S., Journalism; M.A., English
Alma materUniversity of Kansas
Period1948–present
GenreScience fiction
SubjectIsaac Asimov, history of science fiction
Notable works
Notable awards(below)
Gunn's novelette "Powder Keg" was the cover story for the April 1958 issue of If

Gunn is a professor emeritus of English, and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, both at the University of Kansas.[7][8]

Biography

Gunn comes from a publishing family; his father was a printer, two uncles were pressmen, a third a proofreader, and a grandfather was a newspaper editor. Born on 12 July 1923, Gunn served for three years in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He attended the University of Kansas, earning a Bachelor of Science in Journalism in 1947 and a Masters of Arts in English from Northwestern University in 1951.[9]

By 1958 Gunn was managing editor of University of Kansas Alumni Publications.[9] He became a faculty member of the university, where he served as the director of public relations and as a Professor of English, specializing in science fiction and fiction writing. 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 at the Campbell Conference in Lawrence, Kansas, every summer.

He served as President of the Science Fiction Writers of America[10] from 1971–1972 and was President of the Science Fiction Research Association from 1980–1982. SFWA honored him as a Grand Master of Science Fiction in 2007.[11]

On June 12, 2015, Locus announced the selection of Gunn and four others for induction into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, along with "a 'lightning-fast' fundraiser to cover [Gunn's] travel expenses so he can attend the June 27, 2015 induction ceremony in Seattle".[5][6]

Writing

Gunn became a professional writer in 1947 when he wrote a play produced by the University of Kansas, then wrote newspaper articles and radio scripts.[9] He began his career as a science fiction writer in 1949, making his first short story sale to Thrilling Wonder Stories.[11] He has had almost 100 stories published in magazines and anthologies and has written 28 books and edited 10. Many of his stories and books have been reprinted around the world.[8]

In 1948 Gunn wrote his first science fiction, ten short stories, and published nine from 1949 to 1952 as "Edwin James", a pseudonym derived from his full name.[9][8] The first two in print, "Communication" and "Paradox" (the first sale), were published in September and October 1949 by editor Sam Merwin in Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories.[1] Gunn's master's thesis, a critical analysis of the genre, was also published in a professional magazine.[9] His novels were first published by Gnome Press in 1955, Star Bridge, written by Gunn and Jack Williamson, and This Fortress World.[1]

Scribner's published Gunn's novel The Listeners in 1972[12] and it was runner-up for the first annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.[3] Carl Sagan called it "one of the very best fictional portrayals of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence ever written." According to the publisher of a 2004 edition, "this book predicted and inspired the creation of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)—the organization dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life."[13]

In 1996, Gunn wrote a Star Trek novel that was a novelization of "The Joy Machine", an unproduced episode of Star Trek scripted by Theodore Sturgeon.[14]

Adaptations

His stories also have been adapted into radioplays and teleplays.

  • NBC Radio's X Minus One – "Cave of Night", February 1, 1956
  • Desilu Playhouse's 1959 "Man in Orbit", based on Gunn's "The Cave of Night"
  • ABC-TV's Movie of the Week "The Immortal" (1969) and an hour-long television series The Immortal in 1970, based on Gunn's The Immortals[8]
  • An episode of the USSR science fiction TV series This Fantastic World, filmed in 1989 and entitled "Psychodynamics of the Witchcraft", was based on James Gunn's 1953 story "Wherever You May Be"[15]
  • Mystery drama If the bride is a witch (Russia, 2002) based on "Wherever You May Be"

Bibliography
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Novels
  • Star Bridge, Gunn and Jack Williamson (Gnome Press, 1955)
  • This Fortress World (Gnome, 1955)
  • The Joy Makers (Bantam, 1961)
  • The Immortal (Bantam, 1970) – novelization from the TV series The Immortal[1]
  • The Listeners (Scribner's, 1972), stories[12][13] – October 1972 collection of six novelettes, five previously published (September 1968 to September 1972); "The 'Computer Run's between each story average 8 pages long"[16]
  • The Magicians (Scribner's, 1976) – expanded from a novella, "Sine of the Magus" (Beyond Fantasy Fiction, May 1954)[1]
  • Kampus (Bantam, 1977)
  • The Dreamers (Simon & Schuster, 1981)
  • Crisis! (Tor Books, 1986) – fix-up of six stories published 1978 to 1985[1]
  • The Joy Machine (Star Trek, Book 80) (1996)
  • The Millennium Blues (e-reads.com, 2000; Easton Press, 2001)
  • Human Voices (Five Star Books, 2002)
  • Gift from the Stars (Easton, 2005)
  • Transcendental (Transcendental Machine #1) ISBN 9780765335012 (Tor, 2013)[11]
  • Transgalactic (Transcendental Machine #2) ISBN 9780765380920 (Tor, 2016)
  • Transformation (Transcendental Machine #3) ISBN 9780765386663 (Tor, June 2017)

Short fiction
Collections
  • Station in Space (Bantam Books, 1958), stories
  • Future Imperfect (Bantam, 1964), stories
  • The Immortals (Bantam, 1964), four stories; revised and expanded ed. comprising five stories, Pocket Books, 2004[1]
  • The Witching Hour (Dell, 1970), stories
  • Breaking Point (Walker & Co., 1972), stories
  • The Burning (Dell, 1972), stories
  • Some Dreams Are Nightmares (Scribner's, 1974), stories
  • The End of the Dreams (Scribner's, 1975), stories
Stories[17]
Title Year First published Reprinted/collected Notes
Patterns 2014 Gunn, James (September 2014). "Patterns". Asimov's Science Fiction. 38 (9): 18–23.
Anthologies (editor)

Gunn's other anthologies include The Road to Science Fiction, six volumes 1977 to 1998. The first four volumes, published by Mentor New American Library from 1977 to 1982, are organized chronologically and cover Gilgamesh to 1981 or "Forever" (volume 4, From Here to Forever). The last two volumes, published by White Wolf, Inc. in 1998, feature "The British Way" and "Around the World".[1]

Nonfiction
  • Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction (Prentice-Hall, 1975), ISBN 0-89104-049-8 – winner of the Locus Award and Worldcon Special Award[3]
  • Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Oxford, 1982); revised ed. (Scarecrow Press, 1996), ISBN 0-8108-3129-5[18] – Hugo Award winner[3]
  • The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, editor (Viking Press, 1988), 067081041X – Hugo finalist[3]
  • The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (Scarecrow Press, 2000), ISBN 1578860113 – "reflects on the science fiction process and how to teach it"
  • Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction, by Matthew Candelaria and Gunn (Scarecrow Press, 2005)
  • Inside Science Fiction (Scarecrow Press, 2006)
  • Reading Science Fiction, by Gunn, Marleen S. Barr, and Matthew Candelaria (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
  • Gunn, James (July–August 2011). "Science fiction imagines the digital future". Analog. 131 (7&8): 98–103.
  • — (2013). Paratexts : introductions to science fiction and fantasy. Lanham, Md.: The Scarecrow Press.
  • Star-Begotten: A Life Lived in Science Fiction (McFarland and Company, Inc., 2017)
  • Modern Science Fiction: A Critical Analysis: The Seminal 1951 Thesis, with a New Introduction and Commentary (McFarland and Company, Inc., 2018)

Awards

Gunn's 1972 novel The Listeners was runner-up for the 1973 Campbell Memorial Award.[3]

gollark: Just port the entire JVM to run on the TPU cores.
gollark: You should obviously* do that, then.
gollark: Is it really "on a TPU" unless you actually offload some of the game to the TPU itself?
gollark: 4 ARM cores and 24 GB of RAM.
gollark: You could use Oracle Cloud's free thing instead. I'm pretty sure they're okay with Minecraft servers on it, since they have a blog post on setting one up.

See also

References
  1. James E. Gunn at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved 2013-04-05. Select a title to see its linked publication history and general information. Select a particular edition (title) for more data at that level, such as a front cover image or linked contents.
  2. "Fiction Book Review: The Immortals by James Gunn, Author Pocket Books $21.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-671-53486-8". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved April 27, 2019.
  3. "Gunn, James". The Locus Index to SF Awards: Index of Literary Nominees. Locus Publications (locusmag.com). Archived from the original on October 16, 2012. Retrieved April 5, 2013.
  4. "Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master". Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (sfwa.org). Archived from the original on March 8, 2013. Retrieved April 5, 2013.
  5. "2015 SF&F Hall of Fame Inductees & James Gunn Fundraiser". June 12, 2015. Locus Science Fiction Foundation. Retrieved 2015-07-16.
  6. "James Gunn: The "triple threat": author, scholar, and teacher of science fiction" Archived June 24, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. EMP Museum (empmuseum.org). Retrieved 2015-09-10.
  7. "James Gunn: CSSF Founding Director". Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction (CSSF); University of Kansas (sfcenter.ku.edu). Updated December 2, 2014. Retrieved 2015-07-17.
  8. Niccum, Jon (April 11, 2008). "Top Gunn: Renowned science fiction author finds fresh ways to cultivate genre". Lawrence Journal-World. Lawrence, KS. Retrieved August 17, 2013.
  9. "Editor's Report". If (editorial). June 1958. pp. 3–5.
  10. The End of the Dreams, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, Book Club Edition, 1975 (jacket cover).
  11. Burnes, Brian (August 16, 2013). "For James Gunn, science-fiction's golden age has lasted eight decades". The Kansas City Star. Kansas City, MO: The McClatchy Company. Archived from the original on August 21, 2013. Retrieved August 17, 2013.
  12. "The listeners" (first edition). LC Online Catalog; Library of Congress (catalog.loc.gov). Retrieved 2015-07-16.
  13. "The listeners" (1st BenBella Books ed., 2004). LC Online Catalog. Retrieved 2015-07-16. With linked publisher description.
  15. (in Russian) State Fund of Television and Radio Programs Archived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  16. The Listeners (first edition) publication contents at ISFDB. Retrieved 2015-07-16.
  17. Short stories unless otherwise noted.
  18. "Isaac Asimov Novel Wins a Hugo Award". The New York Times. Associated Press. September 6, 1983. Retrieved March 29, 2010.
  19. "The Long List of Hugo Awards, 1976". New England Science Fiction Association (nesfa.org). 1976. Retrieved August 17, 2013.

Sources
  • Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. p. 195. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
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