Andrew Liptak
Tor.com
Wed Jul 7, 2021
The Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction revealed the the finalists for this year’s Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award earlier this week!
The award comes from the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at Kansas University, and was established by the center’s founder, the late James Gunn. The award was first handed out in 1987, and seeks to honor the best short fiction published in the last year. The center assembles a jury of authors who take a look at a pile of nominations from reviewers, editors, readers, and the jurors themselves, and then whittle down the list to the final candidates.
Here’s the full list of finalists (linked where online):
- “If You Take My Meaning,” Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com 2/20)
- “An Important Failure,” Rebecca Campbell (Clarkesworld 8/20)
- “The Translator, at Low Tide,” Vajra Chandrasekera (Clarkesworld 5/20)
- “The Pill,” Meg Elison (Big Girl)
- “The Mermaid Astronaut,” Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/20)
- “50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know,” Ken Liu (Uncanny 11/20)
- “Yellow and the Perception of Reality,” Maureen McHugh (Tor.com 7/20)
- “A Mastery of German,” Marian Denise Moore (Dominion)
- “Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon,” Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (Dominion)
- “A Guide for Working Breeds,” Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Tor.com 3/20)
- “AirBody,” Sameem Siddiqui (Clarkesworld 4/20)
The awards are usually presented during an event in the fall, although it’s unclear if that in-person event will take place this year: The center says that it will be announcing the winner of the award this fall. Last year’s winner was Suzanne Palmer, for her story, “Waterlines.”
Meg Elison is a San Francisco Bay Area author. Her debut novel, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award and was a Tiptree longlist mention that same year. It was reissued in 2016 and was on the Best of the Year lists from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, PBS, and more. Her second novel was also a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. Elison was the spring 2019 Clayton B. Ofstad endowed distinguished writer-in-residence at Truman State University, and is a coproducer of the monthly reading series Cliterary Salon.
