John R. Douglas Dies

John R. Douglas

Editor John R. Douglas, who is being honored with a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award this year, died August 3.

Douglas, an influential editor in the sff field for several decades, began his career at Berkley in 1978. He later worked at Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, Avon Books and HarperCollins. He was responsible for acquiring and editing hundreds of sf and fantasy titles as well as mysteries, thrillers, other genre fiction and many kinds of non-fiction. He had been an editorial freelancer since 1999, continuing to work with words in many different ways.

Stephen R. Donaldson, David Hartwell, and John R. Douglas at World Fantasy Con 2000. Photo by Keith Stokes.

He also served as editor of the newzine SF Chronicle after it was sold by founder Andrew Porter.

John R. Douglas, born in Toronto, Canada in 1948, started reading sf when he was about 14. He went to his first convention in 1969 while he was in college — LunaCon in New York. A year later he met fellow fan, Ginjer Buchanan. In 1975 he moved to the United States and they married.

He was among the fans who co-founded the Ontario Science Fiction Club in 1966. The group later sponsored TorCon 2, the 1973 Worldcon; Douglas was the treasurer.

John is survived by Ginjer; they were married for 48 years.

John R. Douglas at Worldcon 76 in 2018. Photo taken as part of Fanac.org project. Sign shows he had been in fandom for 49 years at that time.

[Thanks to Steven H Silver for the story.]

2023 World Fantasy Awards Final Ballot

The World Fantasy Awards administrator announced the final ballot for this year’s awards, and the Lifetime Achievement award winners, on July 25.

 LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

  • Peter Crowther
  • John Douglas

2023 WORLD FANTASY AWARD FINALISTS

NOVEL

  • Saint Death’s Daughter by C. S. E. Cooney (Solaris)
  • Spear by Nicola Griffith (Tordotcom Publishing)
  • The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings (Redhook/Orbit UK)
  • Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R. F. Kuang (Harper Voyager)
  • Siren Queen by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom Publishing)

NOVELLA

  • The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia (Tachyon Publications)
  • The House of Drought by Dennis Mombauer (Stelliform Press)
  • Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk (Tordotcom Publishing)
  • Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum (Undertow Publications)
  • Pomegranates by Priya Sharma (Absinthe Books)

SHORT FICTION

  • “The Devil Don’t Come with Horns” by Eugen Bacon (Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology)
  • “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge” by Tananarive Due (Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology)
  • “The Morning House” by Kate Heartfield (PodCastle, July 5 2022)
  • “Telling the Bees” by Kat Howard (The Sunday Morning Transport, Jan. 30 2022)
  • “Douen” by Suzan Palumbo (The Dark magazine, March 2022)


ANTHOLOGY

  • Screams from the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Ellen Datlow (Tor Nightfire)
  • Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, eds. Vince Liguano and Rena Mason (William Morrow)
  • Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror, ed. John F. D. Taff (Tor Nightfire)
  • Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, eds. Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight (Tordotcom Publishing)
  • Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue, eds. Sheree Renée Thomas, Pan Morigan, and Troy Wiggins (Third Man Books)

COLLECTION

  • Dark Breakers by C. S. E. Cooney (Mythic Delirium Books)
  • Breakable Things by Cassandra Khaw (Undertow Publications)
  • All Nightmare Long by Tim Lebbon (PS Publishing)
  • Boys, Beasts & Men by Sam J. Miller (Tachyon Publications)
  • A Different Darkness and Other Abominations by Luigi Musolino (Valancourt Books)

ARTIST

  • Kinuko Y. Craft
  • Galen Dara
  • Matt Ottley
  • Lauren Raye Snow
  • Charles Vess

SPECIAL AWARD – PROFESSIONAL

  • Irene Gallo, for Tor.com
  • Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link, for Small Beer Press
  • Tim Lebbon and Daniele Serra, for Without Walls (PS Publishing)
  • Fiona Moore, for Management Lessons from Game of Thrones: Organization Theory and Strategy in Westeros (Edward Elgar Publishing)
  • Matt Ottley, for The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness (Dirt Lane Press)

SPECIAL AWARD – NON-PROFESSIONAL

  • Michael Kelly, for Undertow Publications
  • Cristina Macía, for The Celsius Festival
  • Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, for Uncanny Magazine
  • Dave Ring, for Neon Hemlock Press
  • E. Catherine Tobler, for editing The Deadlands

Judges: Dale Bailey, Kelly Robson, Ginny Smith, A. C. Wise, and Ian Whates.

Update 08/09/2023: At the request of this year’s World Fantasy Convention co-chair the year of the award has been changed to 2023. (We had reported 2022 based on the WFC’s press release and past experience with the award.)

2017 Endeavour Award Finalists

Five books written by writers from the Pacific Northwest are finalists for the 19th annual Endeavour Award. The Award comes with an honorarium of $1,000. The winner will be announced November 17 at OryCon in Portland, Oregon.

  • Arabella of Mars by Portland, OR, writer David D. Levine, Tor Books;
  • Dreams of Distant Shores by North Bend, OR, writer Patricia McKillip, Tachyon;
  • Eocene Station by Victoria, BC, writer Dave Duncan, Five Rivers Publishing;
  • Lovecraft Country by Seattle, WA, writer Matt Ruff, Harper; and
  • Waypoint Kangaroo by Portland, OR, writer Curtis Chen, Thomas Dunne Books/St Martin’s Press

The Endeavour Award honors a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book, either a novel or a single-author collection, created by a writer living in the Pacific Northwest. All entries are read and scored by seven readers randomly selected from a panel of preliminary readers. The five highest scoring books then go to three final judges, who are all professional writers or editors from outside of the Pacific Northwest.

The judges for the 2017 Award are.

  • Ginjer Buchanan

In the early 1970s, Ginjer Buchanan moved from Pittsburgh, PA. to New York City where she made her living as a social worker, while doing freelance editorial work. In 1984, she took a job as an editor at Ace Books. She was promoted several times over the years and in 2007, became Editor-in-Chief, Ace/Roc Books. In April of 2014, she retired. She is now enjoying sleeping late, reading a lot, watching an inordinate amount of television, and polishing the Hugo she won at Loncon, for Best Editor–Long Form.

  • John R. Douglas

John R. Douglas was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He moved to the United States and married fellow fan, Ginjer Buchanan in 1975. In 1978, he stumbled into a job in publishing and spent over twenty years working as an editor for four different major mass market publishers. Although he handled Science Fiction and Fantasy for all of them, he also edited mysteries, thrillers and other genre fiction and many kinds of non-fiction. He has been an editorial freelancer since late 1999 continuing to work with words in many different ways.

  • Andy Duncan

Andy Duncan’s stories have been honored with a Nebula Award, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and three World Fantasy Awards. His third collection, An Agent of Utopia: New and Selected Stories, is upcoming from Small Beer Press. A native of Batesburg, S.C., and an alumnus of Clarion West 1994, he teaches writing at Frostburg State University in Maryland.

Award Eligibility for 2018: To be eligible for next year’s Endeavour Award the book — either a novel or a single-author collection of stories — must be either science fiction or fantasy. The majority of the book must have been written, and the book accepted for publication, while the author was living in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, British Columbia, or the Yukon.)

The deadline to enter books published during 2017 is February 15, 2018. Full information on entering the Award is available on the Endeavour Web site. Click on Entry Form in the left-hand column for a fill-in PDF of the form.

The Endeavour Award is sponsored by Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. (OSFCI), a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation.

[Thanks to Jim Fiscus for the story.]