Sci-Fi author/editor Charles N. Brown won a Lifetime Achievement Award and 22 winners of the International Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contests were honored on August 24 at the 23rd L. Ron Hubbard Achievement Awards held at the Athenaeum Club on the CalTech campus in Pasadena, California.
In accepting his award, Brown, founder and editor of Locus magazine with 23 Hugo Awards to his credit and 60 years experience in the science fiction and fantasy genre, wanted to focus his attention on the winners of the contest that he has supported since Hubbard initiated it in 1983. "Yes, we always need new authors and new artists to replace us old, cynical ones," he said. "We say, ‘somebody did it 40 years ago,’ but they think somebody is going to do it new."
Illustrator
Lorraine Schleter (an Indiana University student with her own comic strip) and writer Stephen Kotowych (member of a Toronto-based Fledglings writers group) won the Gold prizes in the contest and $5,000. Their work will appear alongside that of the 20 other winning writers and illustrators in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XXIII, an anthology of winners published by Galaxy Press.
Hubbard saw the contest as a means to give aspiring writers and illustrators a boost with recognition, some prize money and a way to get their work into print. The contests are run by a non-profit arm of Authors Services Inc., the literary agency that manages Hubbard’s literary assets.
John Goodwin, president and publisher of Galaxy Press, said that, for the first time, this year’s anthology will be available from Audible.com and will be featured in Doubleday’s Science Fiction Book Club.
Among this year’s group of contest winners, Jeff Carlson seemed to be getting an early start on pursuing his career. Ace published his first novel, Plague Year, this month and will publish its sequel, Plague War, in 2008.
