Quote:
Originally Posted by carld
I see, thank you. I was puzzled somewhat, as I assumed being a published author disqualified one for such an award. Also, and showing my ignorance here  , I was conflating "Fan Writer" with "Fan Fiction Writer", which is apparently not what they're talking about. |
Nope, not at all.
Best Fan Writer dates from the old days. In the earliest days of SF fandom, most communication among fans was written. (The first SF convention took place in the late 20's, when a group of New York fans took the train to Philadelphia to meet with fans there.) Fans contacted each other through the letter columns in places like Hugo Gersbach's "Amazing Stories" magazine, and published fanzines which they mailed to other fans.
The old publications were normally mimeographed (though some used hecktography or ditto, and a very few were offset printed.) A number of SF pros had their earliest appearances in fanzines, and a number had used the connections they established through fandom to assist them when they decided to try their hand at writing professionally.
Technology and economics have changed the landscape. There are still a lot of fanzines published, but most get issued in electronic form as a PDF or the like and distributed by email, to save printing and mailing costs, and a lot of fan writing now takes place on blogs, like Scalzi's.
It's quite possible to be an established pro writer and qualify for a fan award. The late Hal Clement was once Writer, Artist,
and Fan GoH at a small convention. As Hal Clement he was writer GoH. As Harry Stubbs (his real name) he was Fan GoH, and "George Richards", a name drawn from the names of his sons, and the one he used for his artwork) was Artist GoH.
(I miss Harry a great deal. He considered himself a fan, whose writing simply paid the way to the conventions he liked to attend, and I can more easily list the cons I've attended where Harry
wasn't a guest. He was a private school science teacher till he retired, and a mainstay of convention programming for years. Give him a room where he could talk to people about science or science fiction, and he was delighted.)
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Dennis