James Gunn (author)

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James Edwin Gunn (born 1923 in Kansas City, Missouri) is an American Science Fiction author, editor, scholar, and anthologist. His work from the 1960s and 70s is considered his most significant fiction, and his Road to Science Fiction collections are considered his most important scholarly books. He won a Hugo Award for a non-fiction book in 1983 for Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction. He has been named the 2007 Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Gunn served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, after which he attended the University of Kansas, earning a Bachelor of Science in Journalism in 1947 and a Masters of Arts in English in 1951. Gunn went on to become a faculty member of the University of Kansas, where he served as the university's 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 July.

He served as President of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1971-72 and was President of the Science Fiction Research Association from 1980-82.

Gunn began his career as a science fiction author in 1948. He has had almost 100 stories published in magazines and anthologies and has authored 26 books and edited 10. Many of his stories and books have been reprinted around the world.

His stories also have been adapted into radioplays and teleplays:

NBC radio's "X Minus One"
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 in 1970, based on Gunn's The Immortals
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". ^[1]

Most notable work:

This Fortress World (1955)
The Joy Makers (1961)
The Immortals (1964)
The Listeners (1972)
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982), Scarecrow Press, 2nd ed (1996) ISBN 0-8108-3129-5

Anthologies include The Road to Science Fiction (now a total of 6 volumes, from 1977 to 1998).

In 1996, Gunn wrote a novelization of the unproduced Star Trek episode "The Joy Machine" by Theodore Sturgeon.

[edit] Reference

^ (Russian) State Fund of Television and Radio Programs

[edit] Further reading

James E. Gunn (2004) The Listeners Benbella Books ISBN 1-932100-12-1 (Carl Sagan stated about The Listeners: "One of the very best fictional portrayals of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence ever written.")