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Rotsler Award to Ulrika O’Brien

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Exhibit of 2022 Rotsler Award winner Ulrika O’Brien’s art at Loscon.

By John Hertz: The Rotsler Award for 2022 has been given to Ulrika O’Brien of Kent, Washington.

The annual Award, begun in 1998 after the death of Bill Rotsler and in his memory, is for long-time wonder-working with graphic art in amateur publications of the science fiction community.  It is decided by a three-judge panel and carries an honorarium of US$300.  Rotsler was, among much else, one of the great fanartists.

O’Brien might be called a triple-threat player among us.  She’s an important fanwriter; she’s published her own fanzine Widening Gyre, and currently co-edits Beam with Nic Farey; she was the 1998 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF) delegate, attending, among much else, the 42nd Eastercon (United Kingdom national convention, held annually over Easter weekend) —I guess that and her fanart make her quadruple.

“Fanzine” was coined by Russell Chauvenet in the 1940s for the periodicals by and for fans that are so characteristic of fandom.  We long took for granted that they’d be on paper, although tales mention slices of bologna, or worse; today there are electronic media too, as well as fannish conventions’ fliers, program and souvenir books, and other such companions.

You can see some current fanzines electronically here.  Some, not all, of course — did you expect we’d all march to the same drummer?

O’Brien arrived after the age of the mimeograph stylus and correction fluid.  By then, fanzines were mostly produced with photocopiers; after that, scanners and computer printers.  Lately some fanzines have been able to use color.  O’Brien has done that too.

The Rotsler Award is announced at Loscon, the long-running Los Angeles convention held on the U.S. Thanksgiving weekend.  The Award is sponsored by the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests, Inc.  The current judges are Suzanne Tompkins, John Hertz, and Sue Mason.

Here are some photos of this year’s Rotsler Award exhibit at Loscon XLVIII, showing fanart by O’Brien and by previous winners.

PHOTOS BY KENN BATES.

Alan White Is 2020 Rotsler
Award Winner

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By John Hertz: The Rotsler Award for 2020 has been given to Alan White of Las Vegas.

The annual Award, begun in 1998 after the death of Bill Rotsler and in his memory, is for long-time wonder-working with graphic art in amateur publications of the science fiction community.  It is decided by a three-judge panel and carries an honorarium of US$300.  Rotsler was, among much else, one of the great fanartists.

Alan White has contributed to these publications since the 1970s – mainly the periodicals by and for fans that fans call fanzines (coined by Russell Chauvenet in the 1940s), also fannish conventions’ fliers, program and souvenir books, and other such companions.

When this drawing

was used to decorate Matters Passed On to This Year’s Business Meeting in the 1984 World Science Fiction Convention (“L.A.con II”) Program Book, White was already well known.

This one

appeared earlier in Scientifriction 9 (1977).

As other media became available, he used them.  Here is his cover for File 770 138 (2001).

Caricatured at left are (top to bottom) Mike Glyer, Bruce Pelz, Larry Niven.

Here is another drawing of about the same date which appeared some years later – as happens in Fanzineland – in Vanamonde 1403 (weekly; 2020).

Here is an even more elaborate cover for File 770 155 (2009).

Here is a recent image from This Here 35 (2020).

Fanart comes in many forms.  Good artists choose what will best suit what they wish to do – line drawings or computer-aided compositions, monochrome or color.  White is very good.

The Rotsler Award is sponsored by the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests, Inc., a nonprofit California corporation (yes, that’s what the initials spell, in this case pronounced “skiffy”).  The current judges are Mike Glyer, John Hertz, and Sue Mason.

WFC 2019 Attending Membership Rate Goes Up 11/4

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World Fantasy Con 2019 will be held in LA at the Marriott Los Angeles Airport Hotel from October 31 – November 3.

The current membership rates are:

Attending Membership: $200.00
Supporting Membership: $50.00

The Attending Membership Rate will increase November 4 at 11:59 pm PST.

WFC 2019’s guests of honor are author Margo Lanagan, editor Beth Meacham, and artist Chris McGrath, with Robert Silverberg as Toastmaster.

Writer Guest of Honor

Tad Williams is a California-based fantasy superstar. His genre-creating (and genre-busting) books have sold tens of millions worldwide, in twenty-five languages. His considerable output of epic fantasy and science fiction book-series, stories of all kinds, urban fantasy novels, comics, scripts, etc., have strongly influenced a generation of writers.

Special Guest Author

Margo Lanagan, who lives in Sydney, Australia, has been publishing fiction for nearly thirty years.

Her second collection, Black Juice, containing the story “Singing My Sister Down”, attracted wide attention, winning a Victorian Premier’s Award, two Aurealis and two Ditmar awards, two World Fantasy Awards (for Best Short Story and Best Collection), was a Michael L Printz Honor Book and made the Tiptree honor list, and was shortlisted in two other premier’s awards, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Stoker, International Horror Guild and Seiun awards.

She published a novella about selkies, “Sea Hearts”, in Coeur de Lion’s X6 novellanthology in 2009, which won her a fourth World Fantasy Award. She later developed the story into the novel Sea Hearts, published as The Brides of Rollrock Island in the US and the UK.

From 2015 to 2018 she published, in collaboration with Scott Westerfeld and Deborah Biancotti, the New York Times-bestselling YA fantasy action adventure series Zeroes (Zeroes, Swarm, and Nexus).

Special Guest

Beth Meacham has been a science fiction and fantasy editor for more than 30 years. She has worked for Ace Books, Berkeley, and Tor, where she was editor in chief from 1985 through 1989. She now works as an Executive Editor for Tor, from her home in Arizona.

Toastmaster

Robert Silverberg has been a professional writer since 1955, widely known for his science fiction and fantasy stories. He is a many-time winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards, was named to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1999, and in 2004 was designated as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

WFC 2019 is run by the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests, Inc., past sponsor of three Worldcons (1984, 1996 and 2006), the 1999 NASFiC, and several Westercons.

The WFC 2019 theme will be Fantasy Noir.

Fantasy Noir is a relatively new genre and has gained significant popularity in recent years.  Sometimes described as “magical cities in decay,” noir’s combination of urban grime and sleazy glamour brings a realistic and deliciously nasty flavor to the fantasy genre.  Fantasy Noir blends the setting, characters and plot structure of a Hardboiled Detective/Occult Detective mystery story with the more colorful elements of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Noir heroes are often extremely flawed or bad people or – on occasion – an honest cop or hero figure whose morality is distinctly at odds with the way the world works. Flawed protagonists are often motivated by greed, lust, anger, and revenge as much as higher motives. When they do something genuinely noble, it can be with great reluctance. A hero’s honesty and nobility often results in horrific personal consequences for himself and others.

Hotel reservations will open early 2019.

Party reservations will be taken in the Fall of 2018. Party Packets will be available at the 2018 World Fantasy Con in Baltimore.