SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA

   A professional guild created to inform sf writers on matters of professional interest, to promote their professional welfare, and to help them deal effectively with publishers, agents, editors and anthologists; in 1992 (see below) renamed the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFFWA). The initial impulse for the SFWA came through discussionsand activities at the MILFORD SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' CONFERENCES, founded by Damon KNIGHT and others; in 1965, feeling the need for a formal body to represent sf writers, Knight founded the SFWA and served as its first president (1965-7). Later presidents have been Robert SILVERBERG (1967-8), Alan E. NOURSE (1968-9), Gordon R. DICKSON (1969-71), James E.GUNN (1971-2), Poul ANDERSON (1972-3), Jerry POURNELLE (1973-4), Frederik POHL (1974-6), Andrew J. OFFUTT (1976-8). Jack WILLIAMSON (1978-80), Norman SPINRAD (1980-82), Marta RANDALL (1982-4; 1st woman president), Charles SHEFFIELD (1984-6), Jane YOLEN (1986-8), Greg BEAR (1988-90), Ben BOVA (1990-92) and Joe HALDEMAN (1992-current). Full or "active" membership is restricted to professional writers - defined as writers who have sold a minimum of 3 short stories or 1 full-length book of fiction (collaborations are acceptable) to a "professional" US market, whichexcludes journals of less than 12,000 circulation (an exclusion which nullifies work in almost any literary journal). The qualification is one-off; a writer, once he or she has become a member, need never re-qualify.In addition to its guild activities, the SFWA sponsors the annual NEBULA Awards and the annual anthologies resulting from them. There are, in addition, 2 SFWA journals: The Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA BULLETIN), which is available to thepublic; and SFWA FORUM, whose circulation is restricted to active members (and some other categories of membership). As well as the Nebulaanthologies, the SFWA has been responsible for the SFWA Handbook, a writer's guide which has gone through various editions and formats, the most recent (and fullest) incarnation being Science Fiction Writers of America Handbook: The Professional Writer's Guide to WritingProfessionally (anth 1990) ed Kristine Kathryn RUSCH and Dean Wesley SMITH, which is packed with information (but lacks an index).The SFWA membership has been given to polemics, and resignations have been moderately commonplace. One major rift occurred in 1976 when Stanislaw LEM's honorary membership was cancelled. Another controversy erupted in1992, a US election year, when outgoing president Bova unilaterally invited the conservative Republican Newt Gingrich to give the keynote address at the annual Nebula banquet. All the same, although the SFWA has suffered public accusations of parochialism, and although much of its energies in recent years seems to have been devoted to increasingly arcane attempts to revise the already labyrinthine rules governing the Nebula Awards, it has played an important role in improving the conditions of thesf writer's life - by, for example, negotiating with publishers to improve the wording of contracts.The 1980s witnessed a de facto but ex jure increase in the proportion of fantasy and horror writers in the SFWA. At the beginning of 1992 a name change was agreed, and the SFWA became the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, or SFFWA.

   PN/JC

   See also: PARANOIA.