Pages four through eight of this progress report have one page (or in the case of the last one, half a page) of guests. In this post, those for Jack Dann (p4) and Sean Williams (p5) are transcribed. Theoretically, the rest will be in a post in the next couple of weeks, but we make no promises.
Jack Dann
is a multiple award winning author who has written or edited forty-eight books ,including the groundbreaking novels Junction, Starhiker, The Man Who Melted and The Memory Cathedral, which is an international bestseller. Dann’s work has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges, Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll, Castaneda, J. G. Ballard, and Philip K. Dick. The Washington Post Book World compared his novel The Man Who Melted with Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, and Science Fiction Age called it one of the greatest SF novels of all time.
His short stories have appeared in Omni and Playboy and other major magazines and anthologies. In collaboration with Janeen Webb, Dann won the Aurealis Award this year for Best Science Fiction Story. The story was “Niagara Falling”. He is the editor of the anthology Wandering Stars, one of the most acclaimed anthologies of the 1970’s, and several other well-known anthologies such as More Wandering Stars. He also edits the multi-volume Magic Tales fantasy series with Gardner Dozois, the White Wolf Rediscovery Trios with Pamela Sargent and George Zebrowski, and is a consulting editor for Tor books. He is a recipient of the Nebula Award, the Aurealis Award (twice), and the Premios Gilgamés de Narrativa Fantastica award. Dann has also been honoured by the Mark Twain Society (Esteemed Knight).
Dann’s major historical novel about Leonardo da Vinci–entitled The Memory Cathedral–was first published by Bantam Books in December 1995 to rave reviews. It is has been translated into seven languages. It won the Australian Aurealis Award in 1997 and was #1 on The Age bestseller list; a story based on the novel was awarded the prestigious Nebula Award. A new edition of The Man Who Melted has just been published in Australia. Also published are Three in Space, edited with Pamela Sargent and George Zebrowski, and Clones, edited with Gardner Dozois. As part of its Bibliographies of Modern Authors series, the Borgo Press has published an annotated bibliography and guide entitled The Work of Jack Dann. A second edition is in the works. Dann is also listed in Contemporary Authors and the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series; The International Authors and Writers Who’s Who; Personalities of America; Men of Achievement; Who’s Who in Writers, Editors & Poets, United States & Canada; Dictionary of International Biography;and the Directory of Distinguished Americans.
Sean Williams
was born in Whyalla, South Australia, in 1967. He has been writing since 1990. His short fiction has appeared in Aboriginal SF (the first story by an Australian to do so), Aurealis, Bloodsongs, Eidolon and The Leading Edge, as well as the anthologies Alien Shores, Intimate Armageddons, The Lottery, The Oxford Book of Australian Ghost Stories, The Year’s Best Australian SF & Fantasy 1996 and Terror Australis. He has won a prize in the Writers of the Future Contest, been recommended by Year’s Best Horror & Fantasy anthologies, and won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story in 1996. Doorway to Eternity, a collection of two short stories and one novelette, was published by MirrorDanse Books in 1994. His first collaboration with Simon Brown, “The Masque of Agamemnon”, was selected by Gardner Dozios to appear in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume Fifteen. An as yet untitled collection is due from Ticonderoga Publications in April, 1999.
This prolific and consistent short story output has earned him something of a reputation.
On the novel front, he is co-author with Shane Dix of the first book of the Cogal trilogy, The Unknown Soldier which was published by Aphelion Publications in 1995. The Unknown Soldier was nominated for both the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the Ditmar Award for Long Fiction, and was voted in the top twenty of the Internet Science Fiction Databases’s most popular books of 1995 (http://cu-online.com/avonruff/top100.html*).
His first solo novel, Metal Fatigue, was published by HarperCollins Australia in June of 1996 to rave reviews. Metal Fatigue won the Aurealis Award for Best SF Novel of 1996, and polled equal-11th in the Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase’s Top Books of 1996. His second solo novel The Resurrected Man, was published by HarperCollins Australia in April 1998 and has already generated a favourable response from editors and reviewers alike. Damien Broderick: “The Resurrected Man pushes cyberpunk’s envelope, then licks its stamp.”
The Unknown Soldier has been rewritten and, retitled The Prodigal Son, now serves as the first novel of the Evergence trilogy, continuing in The Dying Light and concluding with The Dark Imbalance. Ace Books will publish the Evergence trilogy in the US through 1999-2000, simultaneously with HarperCollins in Australia.
Sean lives directly underneath the flight path of Adelaide International Airport. Interests include music, cooking, and cheating death.
* note that this URL no longer exists, and the wayback is possibly not old enough to have captured it. Googling finds the Internet Science Fiction Database still up and running, but not the best books of lists.