Eileen Gunn

Last updated
Eileen Gunn
Eileen Gunn in Toulouse in 2014.jpg
Gunn in Toulouse, 2014
Born (1945-06-23) June 23, 1945 (age 78)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation
  • Author
  • editor
Education Clarion Workshop
Genre Science fiction
Notable awards Nebula Award for Best Short Story (2005)
Sense of Gender Award (2006)
Website
eileengunn.com

Eileen Gunn (born June 23, 1945, Dorchester, Massachusetts) is an American science fiction author and editor based in Seattle, Washington, who began publishing in 1978. Her story "Coming to Terms", inspired, in part, by a friendship with Avram Davidson, won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 2004. Two other stories were nominated for the Hugo Award: "Stable Strategies for Middle Management" (in 1989) and "Computer Friendly" (1990).

Contents

Background

Gunn has a background in high-tech advertising and marketing; she wrote advertising for Digital Equipment Corporation in the 1970s and was Director of Advertising at Microsoft in 1985. [1] She is a graduate of the Clarion Workshop and is on the board of directors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop.

Writing

A collection of her short stories, Stable Strategies and Others (2004, published by Tachyon Publications), was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award and short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the World Fantasy Award. The Japanese translation was awarded the Sense of Gender Award at the 2007 World Science Fiction Convention in Yokohama, Japan. [2]

About the stories: "Stable Strategies for Middle Management" has generally been interpreted as a pastiche of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis , with satiric relevance to late-20th-Century high-tech corporate culture. "Fellow Americans" (1991) posits an alternate history in which Barry Goldwater hired Roger Ailes to run his 1964 presidential campaign, and Richard Nixon became the host of a TV game show called Tricky Dick.

Green Fire (1998), a collaborative novella by Gunn, Michael Swanwick, Pat Murphy, and Andy Duncan, is an homage of sorts, in which Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Grace Hopper take part in the Philadelphia Experiment, with the assistance of Nicola Tesla and the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl.

In March 2014 an anthology, Questionable Practices: Stories by Eileen Gunn was published by Small Beer Press. [3]

In August 2022 an anthology, Night Shift was published by PM Press. [4]

Websites

She is also the editor/publisher of the webzine The Infinite Matrix . Her website The Difference Dictionary is an online concordance to The Difference Engine , a novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

Bibliography

Nonfiction

As editor

'The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 2: Provocative essays on feminism, race, revolution, and the future' with L.Timmel Duchamp. Aqueduct Press. 2008.

Short fiction

Collected

Spring Conditions. 1983

Stable Strategies and Others. Tachyon Publishers. 1988, 2012. Hugo nominee. Philip K. Dick nominee. World Fantasy nominee.

Computer Friendly. 1989. Hugo nominee.

Questionable Practices: Stories. Small Beer Press. 2014

Night Shift (Outspoken Authors Book 29), PM Press, 2022

Short stories and novellas

'Speak, Geek: Every Dog will Have Its Day' Nature, Vol 442,24. August 2006.

'No Place to Raise Kids' Flurb #3. 2007.

'Zeppelin City' with Michael Swanwick. Tor.com. 2009.

'The Armies of Elfland' with Michael Swanwick. Asimov's SF Magazine. 2009.

'The Trains that Climb the Winter Tree' with Michael Swanwick. Tor.com. 2010.

'Steampunk Quartet' a Tor.Com Original. 2011.

'After the Thaw' Flurb #12. 2011.

'Phantom Pain' Lightspeed Magazine. 2017.

'Nightshift' in Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities: A Collection of Space Futures. Arizona State University, Center for Science and the Imagination. 2017

'What are Friends For?' Fantastic Fiction. 2021


TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotes
'Fellow Americans'1992 Alternate Presidents
'Shed that guilt! Double your productivity overnight!'2008Swanwick, Michael; Gunn, Eileen (Sep 2008). "'Shed that guilt! Double your productivity overnight!'". F&SF . 115 (3): 129–136.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack McDevitt</span> American science fiction author

Jack McDevitt is an American science fiction author whose novels frequently deal with attempts to make contact with alien races, and with archaeology or xenoarchaeology. Most of his books follow either superluminal pilot Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins or galactic relic hunters Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath. McDevitt has received numerous nominations for Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell awards. Seeker won the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Swanwick</span> American science fiction author (born 1950)

Michael Swanwick is an American fantasy and science fiction author who began publishing in the early 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James E. Gunn</span> American science fiction author (1923–2020)

James Edwin Gunn was an American science fiction writer, editor, scholar, and anthologist. His work as an editor of anthologies includes the six-volume Road to Science Fiction series. He won the Hugo Award for "Best Related Work" in 1983 and he won or was nominated for several other awards for his non-fiction works in the field of science fiction studies. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made him its 24th Grand Master in 2007, and he was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2015. His novel The Immortals was adapted into a 1970–71 TV series starring Christopher George.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Kress</span> American science fiction writer (born 1948)

Nancy Anne Kress is an American science fiction writer. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo- and Nebula-winning novella Beggars in Spain (1991), which became a novel in 1993. She also won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 2013 for After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, and in 2015 for Yesterday's Kin. In addition to her novels, Kress has written numerous short stories and is a regular columnist for Writer's Digest. She is a regular at Clarion Workshops. During the winter of 2008/09, Nancy Kress was the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellen Klages</span> American writer (born 1954)

Ellen Klages is an American science, science fiction and historical fiction writer who lives in San Francisco. Her novelette "Basement Magic" won the 2005 Nebula Award for Best Novelette. She had previously been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell awards. Her first (non-genre) novel, The Green Glass Sea, was published by Viking Children's Books in 2006. It won the 2007 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Portable Childhoods, a collection of her short fiction published by Tachyon Publications, was named a 2008 World Fantasy Award finalist. White Sands, Red Menace, the sequel to The Green Glass Sea, was published in Fall 2008. In 2010, her short story "Singing on a Star" was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. In 2018 her novella Passing Strange was nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Patrick Kelly</span> American science fiction author (born 1951)

James Patrick Kelly is an American science fiction author who has won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David G. Hartwell</span> American fantasy and science fiction publisher, editor, and critic (1941–2016)

David Geddes Hartwell was an American critic, publisher, and editor of thousands of science fiction and fantasy novels. He was best known for work with Signet, Pocket, and Tor Books publishers. He was also noted as an award-winning editor of anthologies. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes him as "perhaps the single most influential book editor of the past forty years in the American [science fiction] publishing world".

Tim Pratt is an American science fiction and fantasy writer and poet. He won a Hugo Award in 2007 for his short story "Impossible Dreams". He has written over 20 books, including the Marla Mason series and several Pathfinder Tales novels. His writing has earned him nominations for Nebula, Mythopoeic, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker awards and has been published in numerous markets, including Asimov's Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, and Strange Horizons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leslie What</span> American author

Leslie What is a Nebula Award-winning writer of speculative, literary fiction and nonfiction with three books and nearly 100 short stories and essays to her credit. An attendee of Clarion Workshop, she lives in Oregon. She won the Nebula in 1999 for the short story, The Cost of Doing Business, and in 2005, she was a finalist for the Nebula, along with Eileen Gunn, for their co-written novelette, Nirvana High.

<i>The Periodic Table of Science Fiction</i>

The Periodic Table of Science Fiction is a collection of 118 very short stories by science fiction author Michael Swanwick. Each story is named after an element in the periodic table, including the then-undiscovered element 117.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vylar Kaftan</span> American speculative fiction writer

Vylar Kaftan is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. A Clarion West Writers Workshop graduate, she lives on the U.S. West Coast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nisi Shawl</span> African-American writer, editor, and journalist

Nisi Shawl is an African American writer, editor, and journalist. They are best known as an author of science fiction and fantasy short stories who writes and teaches about how fantastic fiction might reflect real-world diversity of gender, sexual orientation, race, physical ability, age, and other sociocultural factors.

<i>Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present</i> 2006 collection of short stories and novellas by Cory Doctorow

Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present is a collection of previously published science fiction short stories and novellas by Canadian writer Cory Doctorow. This is Doctorow's second published collection, following A Place So Foreign and Eight More. Each story includes an introduction by the author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Gibson bibliography</span>

The works of William Gibson encompass literature, journalism, acting, recitation, and performance art. Primarily renowned as a novelist and short fiction writer in the cyberpunk milieu, Gibson invented the metaphor of cyberspace in "Burning Chrome" (1982) and emerged from obscurity in 1984 with the publication of his debut novel Neuromancer. Gibson's early short fiction is recognized as cyberpunk's finest work, effectively renovating the science fiction genre which had been hitherto considered widely insignificant.

"The Dog Said Bow-Wow" is a science fiction short story by American writer Michael Swanwick, published in 2001. It won the 2002 Hugo Award for Best Short Story and was nominated for the 2002 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. The Dog Said Bow-Wow is the title story of his 2007 short story collection, published by Tachyon Publications, and was reprinted in the same year in Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology.

"Stable Strategies for Middle Management" is a science fiction short story published in 1988 by Eileen Gunn.

<i>The Years Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection</i> 1989 science fiction anthology edited by Gardner Dozois

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection is a science fiction anthology edited by Gardner Dozois that was published in 1989. It is the 6th in The Year's Best Science Fiction series and winner of the Locus Award for best anthology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daryl Gregory</span> American science fiction, fantasy and comic book author

Daryl Gregory is an American science fiction, fantasy and comic book author. Gregory is a 1988 alumnus of the Michigan State University Clarion science fiction workshop, and won the 2009 Crawford Award for his novel Pandemonium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam J. Miller</span> English science fiction, fantasy and horror short fiction author

Sam J. Miller is an American science fiction, fantasy and horror short fiction author. His stories have appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Asimov's Science Fiction, and Lightspeed, along with over 15 "year's best" story collections. He was finalist for multiple Nebula Awards along with the World Fantasy and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. He won the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award for his short story "57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides." His debut novel, The Art of Starving, was published in 2017 and his novel Blackfish City won the 2019 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

"Nirvana High" is a science fiction short story by Eileen Gunn and Leslie What. It was first published in Gunn's 2004 collection Stable Strategies and Others.

References

  1. Eileen Gunn: Exploring the Edge Locus Magazine, October 2004.
  2. Science Fiction Award Watch, p=268
  3. Questionable Practices website
  4. "Night Shift". pmpress.org. Retrieved 2022-11-27.