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Kevin J. Anderson is the author of over a hundred books, nearly half of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists; he has over twenty million copies in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, the SFX Reader’s Choice Award and New York Times Notable Book. Anderson coauthored eleven books in the Dune saga with fellow WotF judge Brian Herbert, and eight high-tech thrillers with WotF judge Dr. Doug Beason. Anderson’s epic Saga of Seven Suns and his Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy (including two crossover rock CDs) are his most ambitious works. He has written numerous novels based on The X-Files, Batman and Superman and Star Wars (particularly the Young Jedi Knights series with his wife, Rebecca Moesta, who is also a WotF judge). He has edited seven anthologies (three of which are the bestselling SF anthologies of all time).
Living in Colorado, Anderson is an avid hiker and mountain climber; he has scaled all fifty-four of the state’s peaks higher than 14,000 feet and has walked more than 300 miles of the Colorado Trail. As a new author, he was an early WotF contestant, entering many times before he became a professional author in his own right, and thus ineligible for further submissions. He became a guest instructor in 1993 and a judge in 1996.
“When I was starting out, the Contest gave me a goal to shoot for: prize money, trophy, recognition and most of all the chance to participate in a marvelous writing workshop. The quarterly deadlines gave me goals, and I improved so much that I started making sales. I am now honored to be one of the judges for the Contest, and I enjoy sharing my knowledge and experience with each year’s winners.”
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Dr. Doug Beason is the author of fourteen books, eight with collaborator Kevin J. Anderson, including Ignition (fi lm rights purchased by Universal Studios) and Ill Wind, as well as two nonfi ction books and over one hundred short stories, journal articles and scientifi c papers. His novel Assemblers of Infi nity (with Anderson) was a Nebula Award fi nalist, and his short fi ction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies; he has written for publications as diverse as Analog, Amazing Stories, Physical Review Letters, Physics of Fluids and Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Science, Technology, and Society. He submitted to the Contest many times when he was an aspiring author, and though he didn’t win, his career has done quite well.
A Fellow of the American Physical Society and PhD physicist, Dr. Beason has over thirty years of research and development experience; he has conducted basic research, directed applied-science programs and formulated national policy. He was recently an associate laboratory director at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, responsible for programs that reduced the global threat of weapons of mass destruction. Prior to that, he completed a career as a US Air Force officer, retiring as a colonel. He has worked on the White House staff for the President’s Science Advisor under both the Clinton and Bush administrations. He currently serves as chief scientist for the USAF Space Command. He has lived in Canada, the Philippine Islands and Okinawa, as well as Washington DC, California, New Mexico and Colorado; he has been married for more than three decades and is the proud father of two daughters. He became a Writers of the Future judge in 1996. “When one considers the enormous impact the contestants and winners are having in publishing, in winning awards, and even in shaping the field of science fiction, the Writers of the Future Contest will benefit generations to come: the gift that keeps on giving.” —Dr. Doug Beason, Writers of the Future Contest Judge (Note: the views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the DOD or its components.)
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At the beginning of his career, Dr. Gregory Benford entered and won Second Place in a Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction contest, so it is fitting that he has served as a judge for the Writers of the Future Contest for all twenty-five years of its history. A PhD physicist, Dr. Benford is the author of such landmark SF novels as Timescape, In the Ocean of Night, Heart of the Comet (with David Brin), Artifact and Eater. He has been nominated for four Hugo Awards and twelve Nebula Awards (winning two). Dr. Benford proposed the “Library of Life” project in a groundbreaking paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and developed the proposal for conducting Arctic aerosol experiments to promote cooling. He is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine.
Who twenty-five years ago would have foreseen the impact of this program? The awards? The professional writers sent out to a welcoming world? The Contest has made so many writers into professionals, a list too long to include here. In the end, the best thing to learn from the teaching and encounters is a good general rule: good writing is not about knowing words, grammar or Faulkner, but having that rare ability to tell the truth—an ability that education and sophistication often serve to suppress. — Dr. Gregory Benford |
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Algis Budrys (1931–2008), known as “AJ” to his students and friends, was one of the most prominent forces behind the Writers of the Future Contest, workshop and anthology series. He was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, on January 9, 1931. He became interested in science fi ction at the age of six, shortly after coming to America when a landlady slipped him a copy of the New York Journal-American Sunday funnies. Algis began selling steadily to the top magazine markets at the age of twenty-one, while living in Great Neck, Long Island. He sold his fi st novel in 1953 and produced eight more novels, including Who?, Rogue Moon, Michaelmas and Hard Landing, and three short story collections. In addition to writing, he was renowned as an editor, serving as editor in chief of Regency Books, Playboy Press and all the titles at Woodall’s Trailer Travel publications. He also edited Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, where he published numerous new authors (many of them his students at WotF). In 1983, Algis was enlisted to help establish a new writing contest for aspiring writers. This was a request he took to heart. Not only did Algis assist with the judging, he used his well-known skills as editor for the annual anthology. He attended scores of science fi ction conventions, speaking on panels during the day about the Writers of the Future, and again at night discussing the Contest with many of the top names in science fi ction and fantasy, using his infl uence and charm to bring them on board as Contest judges. In 2001 Algis Budrys received the L. Ron Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts. Algis believed in the Contest and in what it would do for the field of science fiction and fantasy. After more than a quarter of a century, Algis’ faith has certainly proven itself. "We do not claim these writers would be unknown if it were not for us; we do claim that we found them and gave them a platform, in some cases years before anyone else would have. And we will continue to do so, fi nding new names, each year, to join with the old. That was L. Ron Hubbard’s plan, and it is a good one. “The artist injects the spirit of life into a culture,” he wrote. And “A culture is only as great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists.” He knew what he was talking about. — Algis Budrys
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Orson Scott Card is the author of the SF novels Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by both adults and younger readers and are increasingly used in schools. Card also writes contemporary fantasy, biblical novels, the American frontier fantasy series the Tales of Alvin Maker, poetry and many plays and scripts. He has won the John W. Campbell Award, the Nebula (twice), the Hugo (four times) and the 2008 Margaret A. Edwards Award for Young Adult Literature. Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona and Utah. He recently began a long-term position as a professor of writing and literature at Southern Virginia University. Since 2001, he has run an annual “literary boot camp,” an intensive critiquing workshop for aspiring writers; he has also written two books on writing. Orson Scott Card has been a judge of the Writers of the Future Contest since 1994, having earlier served as a guest instructor at the writers’ workshops, both at Sag Harbor, Long Island and at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles.
“The Writers of the Future Contest gets the best work of new writers with fresh ideas. Reading the winners is like the exhilaration of a brand-new thrill ride—you’ve never heard this voice before, never shared this vision. That’s why the annual anthology is always so good. . . . Writers of the Future simply is the best way to launch a career. It’s one of the forces that keep science fiction alive.” —Orson Scott Card |
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Hal Clement (1922–2003) was born Harry Clement Stubbs in 1922 and earned degrees in astronomy, chemistry and education. He was a multiengine pilot in World War II, and by that time, he was already publishing stories in Astounding Science Fiction with his own brand of “hard” SF: a combination of gripping story with meticulously worked-out scientifi c extrapolation of a totally alien environment. He is best known for his novels Mission of Gravity, Iceworld and Needle. A lifelong science fiction enthusiast, Clement was a proud member of First Fandom. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1998 and became a WotF judge in 2001. Hal Clement passed away in 2003. "Writing a science fiction story is fun, not work . . . treat the whole thing as a game. You are painting a word picture (or a series of them—the frames in a movie). Your pigment is your vocabulary, your brushes are the rules of grammar and your model is the universe—the known (and thinkable, if you’re extrapolating) laws of Nature." — Hal Clement
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Eric Flint's writing career began with the science fiction novel Mother of Demons. With David Drake, he has collaborated on the six-volume Belisarius series, as well as a novel entitled The Tyrant. His alternate history novel 1632 was published in 2000, and has led to a long-running series with several novels and anthologies in print. He recently began a new alternate history series set in North America with 1812: The Rivers of War and 1824: The Arkansas War. In addition, he’s written a number of science fiction and fantasy novels. Flint graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1968, majoring in history (with honors), and later received a masters degree in African history from the same university. Despite his academic credentials, Flint has spent most of his adult life as an activist in the American trade union movement, working as a longshoreman, truck driver, auto worker, steel worker, oil worker, meatpacker, glassblower and machinist. He has lived at various times in California, Michigan, West Virginia, Alabama, Ohio, and Illinois. He currently resides in northwest Indiana with his wife Lucille.
“I’d been chosen as the First Place winner for the winter quarter of 1992. That convinced me that I wrote well enough to try to become a professional writer. The panel of judges that year was Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Anne McCaffrey and A. J. Budrys, which was as prestigious and authoritative as any group of judges you could ask for. And, best of all, not one of them knew me from Adam, so I could be certain their assessment was impartial. In a very real sense, my writing career began that moment.” —Eric Flint |
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Brian Herbert, the son of Frank Herbert, is the author of multiple New York Times–bestselling novels coauthored with Kevin J. Anderson. After his father passed away, Brian stood in for him at the second WotF Awards ceremony at Norwescon in Seattle-Tacoma in 1986. In 2003, he published Dreamer of Dune, the Hugo-Award-nominated biography of Frank Herbert; the same year, he himself became a Writers of the Future judge. Brian Herbert is the winner of several literary honors and has been nominated for the highest awards in science fiction. His recent SF trilogy, the Timeweb Chronicles, was published by Five Star, and his earlier acclaimed novels include Sidney’s Comet; Sudanna, Sudanna; The Race for God and Man of Two Worlds (written with Frank Herbert). With Anderson, he is currently writing an original SF trilogy, Hellhole.
The benefit of the Writers of the Future Contest is not only to individuals; it is to the community of SF writers as a whole, for such a program elevates the quality of SF writing by bringing on board talented future professionals. WotF, and SF writers as a whole, are a community of caring individuals. Any new writer who has been helped by such a program or by an experienced writer in other (non-WotF) situations is likely to be a better, more generous person. He or she will keep the memory of being helped, and will in turn extend a helping hand to others. — Brian Herbert |
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Frank Herbert (1920–1986) was a reporter and editor on a number of newspapers before becoming a full-time writer. Although he had been publishing short fiction in various SF magazines since 1952, he became an “overnight” success in 1956 with his first novel, The Dragon in the Sea, which was serialized as Under Pressure in John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction magazine. Frank Herbert’s career took a major turn with the 1963 publication (also in Astounding) of the first Dune story. After that, the Dune series became world famous, sparking both a major motion picture adaptation by David Lynch and two miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel. Other seminal works include The Dosadi Experiment, The White Plague, Hellstrom’s Hive and Destination: Void. Frank Herbert was an uncompromising advocate for the solid storytelling principles and rigorous research that are a core SF tradition. He served as a Writers of the Future judge from 1985 until his death. The last essay Frank Herbert ever wrote was for the Contest, with the clear purpose of fulfilling what he saw as a paramount obligation to his art and craft. “I’m very happy to be able to lend my help to the Writers of the Future program. From time to time, though, people have come up to me and asked why I want to “create competition” by helping newcomers. Talking about “competition” in that way is nonsense! The more good writers there are, the more good readers there will be. We’ll all benefit—writers and readers alike!” |
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Over the past twenty-some years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold adult and young adult novels and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick and Endeavour Awards. Her fi rst novel, The Thread That Binds the Bones, won a Stoker Award, and her short story “Trophy Wives” won a Nebula Award in 2009. Her most recent novels are Fall of Light and Thresholds. Nina does production work for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and she also works with teen writers. She became a judge of the Writers of the Future Contest in 2000.
I was invited to judge the Contest some years ago, and I’ve really enjoyed having that opportunity. Each year the job gets harder, because the finalists chosen by K. D. Wentworth are more skillful; it’s hard to choose among them. It’s exciting to see what beginning writers are doing these days. They have access to so much more information than we did back in the eighties. I didn’t get my first modem until 1990. Before that, I was limited to what my local writers’ group knew or could find out at science fiction conventions, or by reading magazines and books. Today’s connectivity gives writers more scope to learn and grow, and many of them are using that. The Contest has continued to offer me the chance to make friends with new writers and reconnect with established writers at the Awards ceremonies every year. Writers and illustrators with exciting talents and new ideas show up every year, and it’s fun to see them go on to even greater things. — Nina Kiriki Hoffman |