In January 2012, the 2012 SFWA Grand Master was announced (Willis)
In December 2012, the 2013 SFWA Grandmaster was announced (Wolfe)
In December 2013, the 2014 SFWA Grandmaster was announced (Delany)
It’s late February 2015 and I haven’t seen an announcement for 2015 Grand Master. I know that Grand Masters aren’t designated every year - is 2015 going to be a skip year?
P.S.
If the SFWA Officers and Past Presidents want my opinion (unlikely), I’d say
Larry Niven, Vernor Vinge, and C. J. Cherryh are a good short list to choose from…
I was actually thinking of his work in the 80s when he started to become known and successful. I first read the parts of The Peace War and Marooned in Real Time that were published in Analog. I know he had modest success before then but that is when gained popular success.
Yeah, he came to my attention in the 80s, too (I got a college friend started on SF with Peace War); I was surprised when I realized how far back his writing career started.
When they picked Delany, they lost all credibility with me. Dude sucks as an author. On all accounts a decent human being, but that isn’t what’s being voted on here.
I haven’t heard anything about it, and the Neb voting just finished its first round, so there’s a good chance there won’t be a nominee.* They tend to announce it early these days (it used to be announced at the Nebula Awards, though the honoree knew about it. Alfred Bester had been notified, but died before the Awards; SFWA decided (for good reason) to ignore the rule that the grand master could only go to living authors)…
Of those mentioned, Niven seems the most likely choice. He started sooner than the other two and was a major name in the field before either entered it. Cherryh would be the next; she was at the top longer than Vinge and there is a push to have more female Grand Masters.
*The Damon Knight Grand Master award (ironically, Damon hated the very concept of Grand Master) is not chosen like a Nebula; the President makes a choice with the advice of the past presidents and the Board, but I don’t think either of the the two latter groups ever shot down a nomination. (I was on the SFWA Board for three years; we named two grand masters, Farmer and Leguin).
Delany was clearly the best author in the field in the 60s and 70s. His later work is spotty (his last really good novel was Stars in My Pocket), but his influence on the field is enormous; without Delany, there would be not William Gibson, for instance. His nomination was long overdue and Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection and even Dhalgren (which, I’ll admit isn’t for everyone) are deeper and more challenging than nearly everything that’s been written before or since. Naming him Grand Master was way overdue.
Yes to all that. (Except maybe the Best part. There were a lot of Bests in those days.) And I would double down with his shorter work. His *Driftglass *collection contains essentially his first ten published short fictions, and half of them were award nominees. “Time, Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” is one of the best works in the genre. I’ve argued that “The Star Pit” is even better.
The Grandmaster Award was designed to honor writers whose best work came before the Nebulas were established. In real world terms nobody could stop it once it started and so it’s lead to arguments like these. The big problem with it is the requirement that the recipient must be alive. That cuts such a giant hole into who’s eligible that the Award has become, well not quite meaningless, but greatly devalued.
