Gandalf Award
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The Gandalf Award was awarded annually by the World Science Fiction Society from 1974 to 1980. It was named after Gandalf the wizard, who appears in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, and sponsored by Lin Carter and the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a group of prominent fantasy authors of which he was a member and guiding figure. Recipients were selected by the vote of the members of the World Science Fiction Convention.
Two types of Gandalf Awards were presented.
The Gandalf Grand Master Award for life achievement in fantasy writing was awarded every year from 1974 to 1980. J. R. R. Tolkien was the inaugural recipient of the award. Four of the six subsequent recipients of the Grand Master award, namely Fritz Leiber, L. Sprague de Camp, Andre Norton, and Poul Anderson, were SAGA members.
The Gandalf Award for Book-Length Fantasy was awarded only in 1978 and 1979. The award overlapped with the Hugo Award for Best Novel (which has often gone to fantasy books), and was thus felt by organizers of the Worldcon to be an unnecessary duplicate.
With the collapse of Carter’s health in the 1980s, the Gandalf award went into abeyance. Its primary purpose of recognizing merit in authors and works of fantasy continues to be fulfilled by the initially rival World Fantasy Awards, first presented in 1975, particularly the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, a cognate of the Gandalf Grand Master Award, and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, which mirrors the Gandalf Award for Book-Length Fantasy.
[edit] Gandalf Grand Master Award recipients
- 1974 - J. R. R. Tolkien
- 1975 - Fritz Leiber
- 1976 - L. Sprague de Camp
- 1977 - Andre Norton
- 1978 - Poul Anderson
- 1979 - Ursula K. Le Guin
- 1980 - Ray Bradbury
[edit] Gandalf Award for Book-Length Fantasy recipients
- 1978 - The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
- 1979 - The White Dragon, Anne McCaffrey
