Country United States Official website sfwa.org | First awarded 1974 | |
Awarded for Excellence in science fiction and fantasy writing, literary achievements Presented by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America | ||
The Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award is a lifetime honor presented annually by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America to no more than one living writer of fantasy or science fiction. It was inaugurated in 1975 when Robert Heinlein was made the first SFWA Grand Master and it was renamed in 2002 after the Association's founder, Damon Knight, who had died that year.
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The presentation is made at the annual SFWA Nebula Awards banquet, commonly during May, but it is not one of the Nebulas—which recognize the preceding calendar year's best works of SF and fantasy, selected by vote of all Association members. SFWA officers and past presidents alone submit Grand Master nominations and the final selection must be approved by a majority of that group. The recipient is announced in advance, commonly during the preceding calendar year, which is the publication year and official award year for the Nebulas.
History
The Grand Master Award was originally limited to six per decade and six were presented in the ten years to 1984; twelve in the twenty years to 1994. All were 67 years old (Isaac Asimov) to 75 years old (Lester del Rey) at the time of presentation; Alfred Bester had died at 74. Andre Norton was the only woman until Ursula K. Le Guin was made the 20th Grand Master and first "Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master" in 2003. From 1995 the award has been conferred annually with exceptions only in 2002 and 2011 (2001 and 2010 Nebula award years). Anne McCaffrey and Connie Willis made four women among the first 30 Grand Masters, with C. J. Cherryh as the 32nd; Joe Haldeman and Willis were the youngest to receive the honor, age 66.
Also from 1995, SFWA has annually named as many as one Author Emeritus, "as a way to recognize and appreciate senior writers in the genres of science fiction and fantasy who have made significant contributions to our field but who are no longer active or whose excellent work may no longer be as widely known as it once was." The Author Emeritus is invited to speak at the annual Nebula Awards banquet. Fourteen were created in 16 years to 2010 (the 2009 Nebula award year), none of whom had been named Grand Master—as remains true through 2013/2014. Its status as a consolation prize was one matter of controversy and by October 2013 the Author Emeritus webpage had been unpublished by SFWA.
Grand Masters
A total of 33 SFWA Grand Masters have been created in 43 years from 1974/1975 to 2016/2017.
Recognition
There have been three anthologies honoring recipients of the Grand Master Award and collecting some of their short works, The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 1 (1999), The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 2 (2000), and The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 3 (2001), all edited by Frederik Pohl. Collectively, they honor the first fifteen recipients of the award.