Tag Archives: Science Fiction Hall of Fame

2014 SF Hall of Fame Inductees

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This year’s additions to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame have been announced.

  • Leigh Brackett
  • Frank Frazetta
  • Stanley Kubrick
  • Hayao Miyazaki
  • Olaf Stapledon

The Hall of Fame is now part of the Icons of Science Fiction exhibit at the Experience Music Project Museum in Seattle.

Hall of Fame nominations are submitted by EMP members. The final inductees are chosen by a panel of award-winning science fiction and fantasy authors, artists, editors, publishers, and film professionals.

Founded in 1996, the Hall of Fame was relocated from the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to its permanent home at EMP in 2004.

The full press release, including short bios of the new Hall of Fame members, follows the jump.

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Halls of Stfnal Fame

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ESPN The Magazine primarily covers sports, so I was surprised to see a page in its recent “Hall of Fame” theme issue devoted to a list of miscellaneous pop culture halls of fame, two of which may be of interest to readers.

(1) The Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour Hall of Fame, was created in 2005. This was the first I’d heard that the game had a Pro Tour, let alone a Hall of Fame, yet for some reason I still expected to recognize someone on list of inductees. I guess I’ve grown accustomed to finding fans in every niche activity ever spawned by the sf/fantasy genre, from running blood drives to competing in the Space Elevator Games.

I looked particularly for Drew Sanders’ name, remembering how he used to preside over Magic games at the LASFS clubhouse. He even wrote an introductory article about collecting the cards in File 770. But no Drew. And I’ve never heard of any of others, either.

(2) The Robot Hall of Fame began online. It was established in 2003 by CarnegieMellonUniversity’s School of Computer Science and honors both real and fictional robots. Then, in 2009, CarnegieScienceCenter in Pittsburgh incorporated a physical Robot Hall of Fame display into roboworld™, the world’s largest permanent robotics exhibit.

Inductees to the Robot Hall of Fame in 2012, selected by popular vote, were Aldebaran Robotics’ NAO humanoid, iRobot’s PackBot bomb disposal robot, Boston Dynamics’ four-legged BigDog and WALL-E, the fictional robot in the Pixar movie.

Making my own search, I found one more hall worth mentioning in this post:

(3) The International Space Hall of Fame at the New MexicoMuseum of Space History in Alamogordo, NM. Lots of astronauts and engineers are in this hall, created in 1976 to “recognize the imagination, efforts, and achievements of those who have endeavored to advance man’s knowledge of the universe, and his ability to explore space.”

As for the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, transferred in 2004 from the GunnCenter for the Study of Science Fiction to Seattle’s Science Fiction Museum, not even Paul Allen’s money could sustain the place as originally conceived.

For awhile the impressive Gehry-designed building near the Space Needle housed coequal science fiction and rock music museums. But the Science Fiction Museum was de-installed in 2011 and the EMP has been reorganized as a pop culture museum that includes science-fiction-themed exhibits.

Ellison’s Health Overshadows
Hall of Fame Induction

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Harlan Ellison will be inducted into the SF Hall of Fame tomorrow, June 25. Neil Gaiman will accept on his behalf. Ellison had not been expected to attend, however, a new CNN report says the reasons are dire:

Ellison, who had been extremely ill for several months, said in a telephone interview that he’s in the “last stages of something.”

“And I don’t have a cold,” he sarcastically noted.

Editor Gardner Dozois and artists Vincent Di Fate and Jean “Moebius” Giraud are also being inducted.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Ellison Added to SF Hall of Fame

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For Harlan Ellison it never rains but it pours. Lucky for him it’s raining honors this week.

He learned from the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle that he’ll be inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame this June.

His editor at IDW greeted him with the news that his hardcover graphic book Phoenix Without Ashes entered the New York Times Bestseller List at #6 in its first week of publication – Harlan’s first-ever appearance on that list.

And the Encyclopaedia Britannica has created an entry about him. According to Harlan, “I am right next to Ralph Ellison, just following Ellis Island. What a wonderful thing.” Call it a story of requited love. Harlan has been irresistibly attracted to the encyclopedia since he was a kid.

When he accepted the 1970 Forry Award Harlan told those of us at the banquet about his times as a young fan in Cleveland. Harlan joined the first local sf club (Andre Norton was also a member). He started collecting. Then… “I went into the phase I called ‘liberating’ volumes from my high school library. I stole the first 23 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They never suspected a thing. But then I got greedy, and they finally caught me when I tried to stuff both the Index and the World Gazetteer under my jacket…” So now the circle has closed in a way his high school librarian would not have predicted. It’s a well-deserved accolade.

Locus reports that the full list of 2011 inductees to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame includes Ellison, Vincent Di Fate, Moebius, and Gardner Dozois.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame was founded in 1996 by the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society (KCSFFS) in conjunction with the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. Four individuals are added each year, chosen on the basis of their continued excellence and long-time contribution to the science fiction field.

Nancy Pearl to Interview William Gibson
at ClarionWest Benefit

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Nancy Pearl, Seattle’s rock star librarian, will interview author William Gibson at a benefit for ClarionWest’s 25th Anniversary on Friday, June 20.

This event coincides with Locus Awards Weekend and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.

Nancy Pearl appears on Book Lust on the Seattle Channel. She’s the only librarian with her own action figure! William Gibson is the author of Spook Country, Pattern Recognition, and Virtual Light.

The interview takes place from 7:30 – 8:45 p.m. in Kane Hall, Room 120, on the University of Washington campus in Seattle. University Book Store will sell pre-signed books before the interview. Current Clarion West members and Locus Awards attendees will be admitted for free; all others will pay $10.

From 9 – 10:30 p.m. Clarion West will host a star-studded limited attendance reception for Nancy Pearl and William Gibson in Kane Hall’s Walker Ames Room. Current Clarion West members and Locus Awards attendees will be admitted to the reception for a $15 donation, all others for a $25 donation. To buy full price tickets or find out more, visit the ClarionWest website.