Lifetime Achievement Awards: World Fantasy Con has announced its 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award winners – Ellen Datlow and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

Datlow is a 40-time nominee for the World Fantasy Awards and 9-time winner. Yarbro has been nominated for 5 World Fantasy Awards.

Toastmaster: Jane Yolen has withdrawn as WFC 2014 Toastmaster due to upcoming back surgery.

Mary Robinette Kowal has taken over the duties. Here’s how she led into the announcement on her blog —

Last week, I got a phone call from Peggy Rae Sapienza, who is one of the co-chairs of World Fantasy. She had a favor to ask. I like it when she asks me for favors. The one before this was, “Would you mind running the Whiskey tasting with Guy Gavriel Kay on the Wednesday before WFC starts?”

The new favor Kowal was asked to do was to become the Toastmaster for WFC 2014 and she enthusiastically accepted.

Finlay Collection: This year is the centennial of three events which are themes of the 2014 World Fantasy Con. One of them is the birth of famed prozine illustrator Virgil Finlay in 1914. The artist’s daughter, Lail Finlay, is coming to WFC as a Special Guest of honor.

Upon hearing the news, Robert T. Garcia was inspired to carry out his unfulfilled ambition to publish a book of Virgil Finlay art from the collections of Robert Weinberg, Doug Ellis, Glynn Crain, and Robert K. Wiener.

I wanted to to do a book…. But to do that, I needed to ask these guys to take these (sometimes very fragile) pieces down from the wall, remove them from frames (some sealed decades ago), trust me to handle them, and then take the time to scan them properly. Not likely to happen.

But I was wrong. At the 2012 SF Worldcon in Chicago, World Fantasy Convention Chairman Michael J. Walsh came up to me and told me that the WFC would be having a special commemoration celebrating the Centenary of Virgil Finlay’s birth. His daughter Lail Finlay would be attending in a very rare convention appearance. With such a very rare opportunity to celebrate the career and work of the artist we three loved, Doug Ellis, Bob Weinberg and I decided to publish a book featuring not only their incredible collections, but also those of Glynn Crain and Robert K. Wiener as well. 

Garcia’s Kickstarter appeal to fund The Collectors Book of Virgil Finlay has already surpassed its goal with two weeks left to run. (The web page has some great Finlay images.)

This will be the first new Virgil Finlay art book in 20 years, the first to have Finlay art scanned in high resolution directly from originals, and with 35 full color paintings by the artist, will offer the largest collection of Finlay’s color work ever assembled in print.

Virgil Finlay is regarded by many as the finest line artist in the sf/fantasy genre. He worked from 1936 until his death in 1971 illustrating pulp fiction and astrology magazines, and also the Hearst Sunday supplement The American Weekly.

He won the 1953 Hugo Award for Best Interior Illustrator, and in 1996 was voted a Retro Hugo as Best Professional Artist of 1945. Finlay was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.