Edge Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing has announced that author J. Brian Clarke won the the inaugural A.E. Van Vogt Award for his novel Alphanauts. The award includes a $1200.00 honorarium (The largest in Canadian Science Fiction writing) and a certificate.
The story … After nearly fifty years in suspended animation a crew of human space explorers return to Earth, only to discover a medical side effect that prevents them remaining on their home planet. Now, in a desperate bid for survival, they must return to space and attempt to colonize an alien world under an alien sun.
Congratulations as well to finalists Karl Schroeder for Lady of Mazes (Tor) and Matthew Hughes for The Other (Underland Press). The award is sponsored by the Winnipeg Science Fiction Association. The Award is for a book that must be a first-edition full length science fiction novel or full-length science fiction short story anthology, written by an author linked to Western Canada by birth or residency.
A web site dealing with the award, celebrating A. E. Van Vogt’s contributions to Canadian writing, and Brian J. Clarke’s win, will be announced ASAP. It will provide details as how one may enter for the 2013 award.
About A. E. Van Vogt (from Winnipeg Science Fiction Association posts)
April 26, 1912, Alfred Elton Van Vogt was born on a farm in Edenburg, a Russian Mennonite community east of Gretna, Manitoba, Canada. By July 1939, he had written his first Science Fiction story and had it professionally published. He continued to write in Winnipeg until 1944 and it was during this time that one of his major stories “SLAN” was written. By 1995 he was awarded the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA). He has been the ONLY Canadian Science Fiction Writer to be awarded this major title.
