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Gardner Dozois

Gardner Raymond Dozois ( ; July 23, 1947 – May 27, 2018) was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the founding editor of The Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies (1984–2018) and was editor of Asimov's Science Fiction (1986–2004), garnering multiple Hugo and Locus Awards for those works almost every year. He also won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story twice. He was inducted to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame on June 25, 2011.

Biography

Dozois was born July 23, 1947, in Salem, Massachusetts. He graduated from Salem High School with the Class of 1965. From 1966 to 1969 he served in the Army as a journalist, after which he moved to New York City to work as an editor in the science fiction field. One of his stories had been published by Frederik Pohl in the September 1966 issue of If but his next four appeared in 1970, three in Damon Knight's anthology series Orbit.

Dozois said that he turned to reading fiction partially as an escape from the provincialism of his home town.

He was badly injured in a taxi accident after returning from a Philadelphia Phillies game in 2004 (causing him to miss Worldcon for the first time in many years) but made a full recovery. On July 6, 2007, Dozois had surgery for a planned quintuple bypass operation. A week later, he experienced complications which prompted additional surgery to implant a defibrillator.

Dozois died on May 27, 2018, of a systemic infection at a hospital in Philadelphia at the age of 70.

Fiction

As a writer, Dozois mainly worked in shorter forms. He won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story twice: once for "" in 1983, and again for "Morning Child" in 1984. His short fiction has been collected in The Visible Man (1977), Geodesic Dreams (a best-of collection), Slow Dancing through Time (1990, collaborations), Strange Days (2001, another best-of collection), Morning Child and Other Stories (2004) and When the Great Days Come (2011). As a novelist, Dozois's oeuvre is significantly smaller. He was the author of one solo novel, Strangers (1978), as well as a collaboration with George Alec Effinger, Nightmare Blue (1977), and a collaboration with George R. R. Martin and Daniel Abraham for Hunter's Run (2008). After he became editor of Asimov's, Dozois's fiction output dwindled. His 2006 novelette "Counterfactual" won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. Dozois also wrote short fiction reviews for Locus.

Michael Swanwick, one of his co-authors, completed a long interview with Dozois covering every published piece of his fiction. Being Gardner Dozois: An Interview by Michael Swanwick was published by Old Earth Books in 2001. It won the Locus Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work.

Editorial work

Dozois was known primarily as an editor, winning the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor 15 times in 17 years from 1988 to his retirement from Asimov's in 2004. George R. R. Martin described him as the most important and influential editor in science fiction since John W. Campbell. In addition to his work with Asimov's (of which he was the first associate editor in 1976), he also worked in the 1970s with magazines such as Galaxy Science Fiction, If, Worlds of Fantasy, and Worlds of Tomorrow.

Dozois was also a prolific short fiction anthologist. After resigning from his Asimov's position, he remained the editor of the anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction, published annually since 1984. In three decades Locus readers have voted it the year's best anthology almost 20 times and the runner-up almost 10 times. And, with Jack Dann, he edited a long series of themed anthologies, each with a self-explanatory title such as Cats, Dinosaurs, Seaserpents, or Hackers.

Stories selected by Gardner Dozois for the annual best-of-year volumes have won, as of December 2015, 44 Hugos, 41 Nebulas, 32 Locus, 10 World Fantasy and 18 Sturgeon Awards. That also includes the Dutton series (Dozois volumes only).

Dozois consistently expressed a particular interest in adventure SF and space opera, which he collectively referred to as "center-core SF".

Bibliography

Fiction

Novels

Collections

  • The Visible Man (1977, )
  • Slow Dancing Through Time (1990, )
  • Geodesic Dreams (1992, )
  • Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys with Gardner Dozois (2001, )
  • Morning Child and Other Stories (2004, )
  • When the Great Days Come (2011, )

Short stories

  • The Empty Man (1966)
  • The Sound of Muzak (1970)
  • Wires (1971)
  • Conditioned Reflex (1972)
  • King Harvest (1972)
  • Flying (1973)
  • In A Crooked Year (1973)
  • The Sacrifice (1982)
  • Virgin Territory (1984)
  • The City of God (1995) (with Michael Swanwick)
  • Sunk Beneath the Waves (2013)
  • The Place of Bones (2016)
  • A Dog's Story (2017)
  • Unstoppable (2018)
  • Homecoming (2019)

Anthologies

Edited by Gardner Dozois

co-edited by Dozois and Susan Casper

co-edited by Dozois and Mike Resnick

  • Future Earths: Under African Skies (1993, ) (co-edited with Mike Resnick)
  • Future Earths: Under South American Skies (1993, ) (co-edited with Mike Resnick)

co-edited by Dozois and Stanley Schmidt

co-edited by Dozois and Jonathan Strahan

co-edited by Dozois and Greg Bear
Cross-genre anthologies co-edited by Dozois and George R. R. Martin
  • Songs of the Dying Earth, a tribute anthology to Jack Vance's seminal Dying Earth series, published by Subterranean Press (2009)
  • Warriors, a cross-genre anthology featuring stories about war and warriors (2010)
  • Songs of Love and Death, a cross-genre anthology featuring stories of romance in fantasy and science fiction settings (2010)
  • Down These Strange Streets, a cross-genre anthology featuring stories of private-eye detectives in fantasy and science fiction settings (November 2011)
  • Old Mars, an anthology featuring new stories about Mars in retro-SF vein (2013)
  • Dangerous Women, a cross-genre anthology featuring stories about women warriors (2013)
  • Rogues, a cross-genre anthology featuring stories about assorted rogues (2014)
  • Old Venus, an anthology featuring new stories about Venus in retro-SF vein (2015)
Themed anthology series co-edited by Dozois and Jack Dann

Formerly known as "Magic Tales Anthology Series" until 1995; most released under the Ace imprint.

"Isaac Asimov's" anthology series
  • Transcendental Tales from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (1989, )
  • Time Travelers from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (1989, )
  • Isaac Asimov's Robots (1991, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Aliens (1991, )
  • Isaac Asimov's Mars (1991, )
  • Isaac Asimov's Earth (1992, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's War (1993, )
  • Isaac Asimov's SF Lite (1993, )
  • Isaac Asimov's Cyberdreams (1994, )
  • Isaac Asimov's Skin Deep (1995, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Ghosts (1995, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Vampires (1996, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Moons (1997, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Christmas (1997, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Detectives (1998, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Camelot (1998, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Solar System (1999, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Werewolves (1999, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Valentines (1999, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Halloween (1999, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Utopias (2000, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Mother's Day (2000, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
  • Isaac Asimov's Father's Day (2001, ) (co-edited with Sheila Williams)
The Year's Best Science Fiction series

Dozois also edited volumes six through ten of the Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year series after Lester del Rey edited the first five volumes. That series began in 1972 and ended in 1981.

Non-Fiction

  • The Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr. (1977, )
  • Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy (1993, ) (co-edited with Stanley Schmidt and Sheila Williams)
  • Sense of Wonder: Short Fiction Reviews (2009-2017) (2018)

Awards

Critical studies and reviews of Dozois's work

Old Venus

See also

References

External links

Interviews
Other