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LAWRENCE -- This year's Campbell and Sturgeon awards were presented Friday, July 5, at the University of Kansas, James Gunn, director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, announced today.
The Theodore Sturgeon Award for the best short science fiction of the year went to stories published in June issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois. The winning story was Andy Duncan's "The Chief Designer." Second place was awarded to "Lobsters" by Charles Stross, and third place went to "Undone" by James Patrick Kelly.
Two novels tied for the John W. Campbell Award for the best science-fiction novel of the year. They were Jack Williamson's "Terraforming Earth" and Robert Charles Wilson's "The Chronoliths." Nancy Kress's "Probability Sun" took third place. All three novels were published by Tor Books.
The award to Duncan was presented by Frederik Pohl, one of the Sturgeon Award final judges; the award to Wilson was presented by Chris McKitterick, a member of the Campbell jury.
Williamson, who is 94, was unable to attend but sent a message of appreciation, saying that the award was particularly welcome because "Terraforming Earth" would be his final novel. His writing career was closely associated with John Campbell's "Astounding."
The awards were presented at a dinner on the KU campus July 5. Duncan came from Alabama to accept his award; Wilson came from Concord, Ontario, Canada.
The awards are presented as part of the July 5 to 7 annual Campbell Conference sponsored by the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at KU. The center also sponsors an intensive science fiction course July 8 to 19.
At the conference dinner four people were inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, sponsored by the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society and the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. The posthumous inductions went to Donald A. Wollheim and James Blish; living authors inducted were Samuel R. Delany and Michael Moorcock.
The Campbell Conference will begin July 6 with a forum discussion of "Where do we go from here? How did the future depart from the science-fiction vision and what can we do about it?" Author Pat Forde, a member of Gunn's first summer writers' workshop in science fiction, will attend. Forde's first story, written in the workshop, was published in Analog. His second story, about the Sept. 11 catastrophes, is being published in the September 2002 issue of Analog.
The Sturgeon Award stories are nominated by a committee of some two dozen reviewers and editors chaired by McKitterick, and the winners are chosen by Pohl, Gunn and Kij Johnson, with the assistance of Andros Sturgeon, from a group of about a dozen finalists.
The Campbell Award novels are nominated by publishers, and the winners are selected by a committee of seven academics and authors chaired by Gunn and consisting of Gregory Benford, Paul A. Carter, Elizabeth Anne Hull, McKitterick, Pamela Sargent, T.A. Shippey and Brian Stableford.
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