Worldcon 2005 UK - Guests of Honour

Guests of Honour

Alan Lee

Greg Pickersgill

SF fan Greg Pickersgill was born in Haverfordwest, Wales in 1951 and joined the British SF Association in 1967, a week too late for that year's only convention. He lived in London between 1971 and 1992, then returned to Haverfordwest, living with fellow fan Catherine McAulay in a small house full of paper.
Greg's influence on UK fandom has been substantial, spanning fanzines, fanwriting, and convention-running. His fanzines include Fouler, Ritblat, Stop Breaking Down, and Rastus Johnson's Cakewalk (Nova Award for Fanzine and Fanwriter in 1994). He won TAFF in 1986, and was Fan Guest of Honour at Follycon in 1988.
Convention activities include developing British fanrooms in the 1970s, fan rooms at the 1987 and 1995 Worldcons and the 2000 Eastercon, and a key role in the Mexicons of the 1980s. He is a determined believer in keeping the science fiction in science fiction fandom.
Greg's awareness of fan history - and the ease with which it can be forgotten - led to the creation of Memory Hole, a combined permanent fanzine collection and redistribution system, and the Memory Hole internet forum for discussing reading, collecting and archiving science fiction fanzines.
More information on Greg and Memory Hole can be found at www.gostak.demon.co.uk

Christopher Priest

Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a fulltime freelance since 1968. He has published ten novels, three short story collections and a number of other books, including critical work, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction. He has won the World Fantasy Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (both for his novel The Prestige), has been nominated four times for the Hugo award, and in 2001 was awarded the Prix Utopia for lifetime achievement in fantastic literature. He is married to the writer Leigh Kennedy. They live in Hastings, England, with their two children.
Christopher Priest's work has evolved from traditional genre science fiction such as Inverted World through to a series of works which are more concerned with explorations of human psyches. However, even these books are generally presented within a what Priest himself has described as "a deliberate effort to deal in a new and realistic way with stock SF ideas". Following The Affirmation (Immortality), The Glamour (Invisibility) and The Quiet Woman (a Dystopian England), Christopher's most recent books are The Prestige (Magic), The Extremes (Virtual Reality), and in 2002, The Separation (Alternate History).
Christopher Priest's website can be found at www.christopher-priest.co.uk. An interview in which he comments on his own books can be found here.

Interaction GoH Robert Sheckley passed away on 9th December 2005 in Vassar hospital, Poughkeepsie, New York.
Robert was a wonderful guest for a Worldcon even though he could not attend the event himself. We can all take great comfort in the fact that firstly, we had the chance to honour him before it was too late, and secondly, that we know he received and enjoyed our publications and the other items we sent him from the convention, which he followed with great interest through his family as they attended.
We are passing the condolences of all our staff and members along to Robert's family.
Further information is available at www.sheckley.com and www.sfwa.org/News/rsheckley.htm

Robert Sheckley

We regret that Robert Sheckley will be unable to attend the convention in person for health reasons. Please see Press Release 39 for full details.
Robert Sheckley was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in New Jersey. He went into the U.S. army after high school and served in Korea. After discharge he attended NYU, graduating with a degree in English. He began to sell stories to all the science-fiction magazines soon after his graduation, and has continued to produce both short and long fiction ever since. In all, he has produced about 65 books, including 20 novels and 9 collections of his short stories, as well as the five volume Collected Short Stories of Robert Sheckley. His best known longer works include Immortality, Inc, Mindswap, and Dimension of Miracles.
Robert Sheckley's writing is broad in range, but is characterised by one of the sharpest wits ever to have worked in science fiction. As Richard A. Lupoff says:
"Robert Sheckley is the Georges Seurat of novelists. Each scene, each image, each figure, glows like a tiny dot of pigment. It is only when you finish reading the book and step back from Sheckley's canvas that you realize what he has accomplished. And he does this with such tiny bursts of prose -- how does he make this all happen?--it's a marvel !".
Robert Sheckley received the Gallun award for contributions to the science fiction genre in 1991. In 2001 he was given an Author Emeritus award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. He is married to the writer Gail Dana and lives in Portland, Oregon.
Robert Sheckley's website can be found at www.sheckley.com.
A full bibliography can be found here.

Lars-Olov Strandberg

Lars-Olov Strandberg was born in 1929 and became active in fandom in 1956, when he attended the first Swedish convention, the Luncon. Lars-Olov was one of the founders of the Scandinavian SF Association (SFSF), and served on the organization's board of directors for decades afterward. He also served as chairman of the Alvar Appeltofft Memorial Foundation after it came into being in the late 1970s.
A very active convention fan, Lars-Olov served as treasurer for most Stockholm conventions, starting with the 1965 Stockon, and continuing throughout the decades of the 1970s and 1980s. He became known internationally from his travels to Worldcons, British Eastercons, and continental European SF conventions. This was facilitated by his profession, as head of life insurance investment training with Sweden's largest insurance corporation.
According to John-Henri Holmberg, Strandberg was "Sweden's combination of E. E. Evans, Howard DeVore, and Forry Ackerman: a soft-spoken, self-effacing man whose devotion without any doubt guaranteed the survival of the SFSF."

Jane Yolen

Born and raised in New York City, Jane Yolen now lives for the most of year in Hatfield, Massachusetts although she also spends most summers in Scotland, making her a particularly apt choice for Interaction. The author of more than 170 books, Jane Yolen is a person of many talents. When she is not writing, Yolen composes songs, is a professional storyteller on the stage, and is the busy wife of a university professor, the mother of three grown children, and a grandmother.
The majority of Jane Yolen's work is for children, although she has also written adult fantasy and non-fiction. However, all of her stories and poems are rooted in her sense of family and self, and much of it also owes a strong debt to folk culture - an interest which is also reflected in her story telling. Jane's versatility has led her to be called "America's Hans Christian Andersen," and has resulted in many awards including two Nebula Awards, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, and two Christopher Medals. She has also been president of the Science Fiction Writers of America.
Jane Yolen believes that "folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world." Folklore, she believes, is the universal human language, a language that children instinctively feel in their hearts.
Jane Yolen's website can be found at www.janeyolen.com.

Page last updated 24^th March 2006