"James Patrick Kelly - On the Net" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

On the Net
James Patrick Kelly
MASTERY

lifetimes

Have you ever read Henryk Sienkiewicz [nobel prize.org/literature/laureates/ 1905/index.html],
one of Po-land's most famous writers? His most famous novel was Quo Vadis, but his collected works
fill sixty volumes! He won the Nobel Prize for Literature [nobel prize.org/literature] in 1905.

How about Pearl Buck [ nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/ 1938/index.html]? In her day she was
arguably the most popular author in the United States. The movie version of her novel, The Good Earth,
won a couple of Oscars in 1937. Her Nobel came in 1938.

Eugenio Montale [nobel prize.org/literature/laureates/1975 /index.html], the existentialist poet and
essayist, was made a lifetime member of the Italian Senate to honor his courageous opposition to
Fascism. He was awarded the prize in 1975.

No science fiction writer has ever won the Nobel Prize for literature, unless you count William Golding
[www.william-golding.co. uk] who was honored in 1983. However, the author of Lord of the Flies [
www.gerenser. com/lotf] and The Inheritors [www.depauw.edu/sfs/back
issues/14/alterman14art.htm] is at best tangential to our enterprise, it says here; he is more of an
allegorist than an extrapolator.

In 1975, the same year that Senatore Montale received his gold medal, the Science Fiction Writers of
America [www. sfwa.org] awarded the first Grand Master Award. Like the Nobel, it celebrates
lifetime achievement rather than endorsing any single work. The Grand Master awards process is simple:
the President of SFWA proposes a candidate for Grand Master and then a majority of the sitting officers
must approve the nomination. Originally the Grand Master Award was called just that, but in 2002 the
name was changed to the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award to honor the founder of
SFWA. While the Grand Master Award looks just like a Nebula Award [ www.sfwa.org/awards],
and is given at the Nebula banquet, it is not, in fact, a Nebula. Originally SFWA's plan was to name six
Grand Masters every decade, but the pace has picked up of late, in part because so many worthy
candidates are advancing in age. And there's the rub: you can't win the Grand Master posthumously.
Thus ideal candidates like Jules Verne [jv.gilead.org.il] and H. G. Wells [www.hgwellsusa.
50megs.com] or more recently Cyril Kornbluth [www. luna-city.com/sf/cmk.htm], James Blish [
www.en.wikipedia. org/wiki/JamesBlish] and James Tiptree, Jr. [mtsu32. mtsu.edu:11072/Tiptree
] will never be Grand Masters.

I set out to write this column with some trepidation, worried that the genre greats that I read growing up
would have little or no web presence. But I was pleasantly surprised: with a few exceptions, most of our
Grand Masters have sites of some sort├втВмтАЭand many of them are very wonderful indeed. So here, in
chronological order, is a count up of science fiction's Grand Masters.

count up

1975: In the same way that George Washington had to be the first President of the United States, Robert
A. Heinlein had to be our first Grand Master. It's no surprise that Heinlein is all over the net; he even has
his own web-ring [http: //www.ringsurf.com/netring?ring=Heinlein;action=list] of eleven sites.
Oddly enough, the official and possibly the best Heinlein site, The Heinlein Society [