James Patrick Kelly

Last updated

James Patrick Kelly
James Patrick Kelly.jpg
Born (1951-04-11) April 11, 1951 (age 72)
Mineola, New York
OccupationWriter, editor
Period1975–present
Genre Science fiction, Fantasy
Notable works Think Like a Dinosaur (1995)
10^16 to 1 (1999)
Burn (2005)
Website
www.jimkelly.net

James Patrick Kelly (born April 11, 1951 in Mineola, New York) is an American science fiction author who has won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.

Contents

Biography

Kelly made his first fiction sale in 1975. [1] He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 1972, with a B.A. in English Literature. After graduating from college, he worked as a full-time proposal writer until 1977. He attended the Clarion Workshop twice, once in 1974 and again in 1976.

Throughout the 1980s, he and his friend John Kessel became involved in the humanist/cyberpunk debate. While Kessel and Kelly were both humanists, Kelly also wrote several cyberpunk-like stories, such as "The Prisoner of Chillon" (1985) and "Rat" (1986). His story "Solstice" (1985) was published in Bruce Sterling's anthology Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology .

Kelly has been awarded several of science fiction's highest honors. He won the Hugo Award for his novelette "Think Like a Dinosaur (1995) and again for his novelette 1016 to 1 (1999). Most recently, his 2005 novella, Burn , won the 2006 Nebula Award. Other stories have won the Asimov's Reader Poll and the SF Chronicle Award. He is frequently on the final ballot for the Nebula Award, the Locus Poll Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

He is currently on the Popular Fiction faculty for the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Maine. He also frequently teaches and participates in science fiction workshops, such as Clarion and the Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop. He has served on the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts since 1998 and chaired the council in 2004.

He is a frequent contributor to Asimov's Science Fiction and for the past several years has contributed a non-fiction column to Asimov's, "On the Net." He has had a story in the June issue of Asimov's for the past twenty years. In addition to his writing, Kelly has recently turned his hand to editing (with John Kessel), with several reprint anthologies: Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology and The Secret History of Science Fiction. Through these anthologies, Kelly and Kessel have brought together a wide spectrum of both traditional genre authors and authors who are considered to be more mainstream, including Don DeLillo, George Saunders, Jonathan Lethem, Aimee Bender, Michael Chabon and Steven Millhauser.

Bibliography

Novels

Mariska Volochkova series
Messengers Chronicles

Short fiction

Collections
Anthologies (edited)
Stories
TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotes
Dea ex machina1975"Dea ex machina". Galaxy Science Fiction. April 1975.
The prisoner of Chillon1986"The prisoner of Chillon". Asimov's Science Fiction. June 1986.
Rat1986"Rat". F&SF . June 1986.
Glass cloud1987"Glass cloud". Asimov's Science Fiction. June 1987.
Mr. Boy 1990"Mr. Boy". Asimov's Science Fiction. June 1990.Novella
Choosing sides2006Choosing sides (e-Book). Fictionwise. 2006.Kelly, James Patrick (2007). "Choosing sides". In Resnick, Mike (ed.). The omega egg (e-Book). Fictionwise.Chapter 11 of a 'round-robin' novel. See ISFDB entry for details.
Declaration2014"Declaration". Asimov's Science Fiction. 38 (3): 89–106. March 2014.
Someday2014"Someday". Asimov's Science Fiction. 38 (4&5): 134–141. April–May 2014.
Uncanny2014"Uncanny". Asimov's Science Fiction. 38 (10–11): 98–100. October–November 2014.

On the Net : columns from Asimov's Science Fiction

Interviews

———————

Notes

Related Research Articles

<i>Dangerous Visions</i> Science fiction short story anthology edited by Harlan Ellison

Dangerous Visions is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by American writer Harlan Ellison and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. It was published in 1967 and contained 33 stories, none of which had been previously published.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gardner Dozois</span> American science fiction author and editor (1947–2018)

Gardner Raymond Dozois was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the founding editor of The Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies (1984–2018) and was editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine (1986–2004), garnering multiple Hugo and Locus Awards for those works almost every year. He also won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story twice. He was inducted to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame on June 25, 2011.

<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.

<i>Asimovs Science Fiction</i> American science fiction magazine

Asimov's Science Fiction is an American science fiction magazine edited by Sheila Williams and published by Dell Magazines, which is owned by Penny Press. It was launched as a quarterly by Davis Publications in 1977, after obtaining Isaac Asimov's consent for the use of his name. It was originally titled Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and was quickly successful, reaching a circulation of over 100,000 within a year, and switching to monthly publication within a couple of years. George H. Scithers, the first editor, published many new writers who went on to be successful in the genre. Scithers favored traditional stories without sex or obscenity; along with frequent humorous stories, this gave Asimov's a reputation for printing juvenile fiction, despite its success. Asimov was not part of the editorial team, but wrote editorials for the magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Kessel</span> American author

John Joseph Vincent Kessel is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He is a prolific short story writer, and the author of four solo novels, Good News From Outer Space (1989), Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997), The Moon and the Other (2017), and Pride and Prometheus (2018), and one novel, Freedom Beach (1985) in collaboration with his friend James Patrick Kelly. Kessel is married to author Therese Anne Fowler.

<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 1991 novella Beggars in Spain, 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 writing 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.

Michael Lawson Bishop was an American author. Over five decades and in more than thirty books, he created what has been called a "body of work that stands among the most admired and influential in modern science fiction and fantasy literature."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucius Shepard</span> American novelist

Lucius Shepard was an American writer. Classified as a science fiction and fantasy writer, he often leaned into other genres, such as magical realism.

Shawna Lee McCarthy is an American science fiction and fantasy editor and literary agent.

<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".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Think Like a Dinosaur</span>

"Think Like a Dinosaur" is a science fiction novelette written by James Patrick Kelly, originally published in the June 1995 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mr. Boy</span>

"Mr. Boy" is a science fiction novella by American writer James Patrick Kelly, first published in the June 1990 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. It tells the story of a wealthy boy in the year 2096 who falls in love with a working class girl who inspires him to abandon his decadent lifestyle.

Kathryn Elizabeth Cramer is an American science fiction writer, editor, and literary critic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tachyon Publications</span>

Tachyon Publications is an independent press specializing in science fiction and fantasy books. Founded in San Francisco in 1995 by Jacob Weisman, Tachyon books have tended toward high-end literary works, short story collections, and anthologies.

<i>Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology</i> 2007 science fiction anthology edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel

Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology is a collection of postcyberpunk short stories, published by Tachyon Publications and edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. It features 16 short stories which fall into the loose categorisation of postcyberpunk, intercut with excerpts from a series of letters exchanged by Kessel and fellow science fiction author Bruce Sterling in which they discuss and debate the nature of cyberpunk, the implication being that the issues which they raise have led to the formation of the postcyberpunk trend.

<i>Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology</i>

Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology is an anthology of slipstream fiction, edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, published in 2006 by Tachyon Publications.

Jason Sanford is an American science fiction author whose 2022 novel Plague Birds was a finalist for the Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards. He's also known for this short fiction, which has been published in Interzone, Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Year's Best SF 14, InterGalactic Medicine Show and other magazines and anthologies.

<i>The 1985 Annual Worlds Best SF</i>

The 1985 Annual World's Best SF is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, the fourteenth volume in a series of nineteen. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in June 1985, followed by a hardcover edition issued in September of the same year by the same publisher as a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club. For the hardcover edition the original cover art by Frank Kelly Freas was replaced by a new cover painting by Richard Powers.

<i>Terry Carrs Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year 16</i>

Terry Carr's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year #16 is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Terry Carr, the sixteenth and last volume in a series of sixteen. It was first published in hardcover by Tor Books in September 1987. The first British editions were published in hardcover and paperback by Gollancz in December of the same year, under the alternate title Best SF of the Year #16.

<i>Nebula Awards 27</i>

Nebula Awards 27 is an anthology of science fiction short works edited by James Morrow, the second of three successive volumes under his editorship. It was first published in hardcover and trade paperback by Harcourt Brace in April 1993.

References

  1. Clute, John & Graham Sleight. "Kelly, James Patrick". In John Clute & David Langford (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction . Retrieved July 14, 2022.