James Gunn

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James Edwin Gunn (July 12, 1923 – December 23, 2020) 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 for a book about author Isaac Asimov, and he won or was nominated for several other awards for his non-fiction works in the field of science fiction studies. He became a faculty member of the university, where he served as the director of public relations and as a professor of English, specializing in science fiction and fiction writing. He was a professor emeritus and founding director of the original Center for the Study of Science Fiction, which awarded the annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short fiction.

He served as President of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1971 to 1972 and was President of the Science Fiction Research Association from 1980 to 1982. SFWA honored him as a Grand Master of Science Fiction in 2007.

Personal life and death Gunn married Jane Frances Anderson on February 6, 1947, at Danforth Chapel in Lawrence, Kansas. They had two sons, Christopher, born in 1949, and Kevin, born in 1954. Christopher died on St. Patrick's Day, 2005. Jane died September 27, 2012. They were survived by Kevin.

Gunn died in Lawrence, Kansas, on the morning of December 23, 2020, at age 97 of natural causes after a brief hospitalization. (maintained since 1992; McKitterick worked closely with Gunn and his SF center from 1992 until his death in 2020, and wrote extensively on Gunn, his original Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and his work).

Novels Star Bridge, Gunn and Jack Williamson (Gnome Press, 1955) This Fortress World (Gnome, 1955) The Joy Makers (Bantam, 1961) The Immortals (Bantam, 1962), which was adapted for an ABC Movie of the Week in the fall of 1969 and turned into an ironically short-lived TV series in 1970. The Listeners (Scribner's, 1972), stories – October 1972 collection of six novelettes, five previously published (September 1968 to September 1972); "The 'Computer Run's between each story average 8 pages long" The Magicians (Scribner's, 1976) – expanded from a novella, "Sine of the Magus" (Beyond Fantasy Fiction, May 1954)