William Sanders (writer)

William Sanders (writer)

William Sanders (born April 28, 1942) is an American speculative fiction writer, primarily of short fiction, and was the senior editor of the now defunct online science fiction magazine Helix SF.

Sanders has written several novels, including Journey to Fusang (1988), The Wild Blue and the Gray (1991) and The Ballad of Billy Badass & the Rose of Turkestan (1999). The first two are alternate histories with a humorous bent while the last is a more serious work of science fiction.

He has also written a number of mystery novels, including a series featuring Western writer Taggert Roper beginning with The Next Victim (St. Martin's Press 1993), as well as novels marketed by the publisher as Action/Adventure, beginning with Hardball (Berkley Jove 1992).

Sanders, a former powwow dancer, is best known for his use of American Indian themes and his dry, often cynical sense of humor. His most-anthologized and perhaps best known work is "The Undiscovered", an alternate history in which Shakespeare is transported to Virginia and writes "Hamlet" for the Cherokee tribe. The story won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History in 1997. Sanders won a second Sidewise Award for his story "Empire" in 2002. Sanders has said that he considers his best story to be "Dry Bones."

A stickler for detail and accuracy, Sanders has studied history, which led to the publication in 2003 of Conquest: Hernando de Soto and the Indians, 1539-1543, a book begun some two decades earlier and researched by travelling extensively in the southeastern quarter of the US, by motorcycle and small boat and on foot, retracing Soto's probable routes.

As a non-fiction writer, he has written numerous articles on the martial arts and outdoor sports, as well as books on bicycle racing, kayaking, and backpacking.

From 2006 until the final issue in 2008, Sanders was the editor and publisher of the online quarterly magazine Helix SF. During this time, he wrote a rejection letter in which he called Muslim terrorists "sheet heads" "worm brained" and "incapable of honesty." Sanders would later deny that he was referring to Muslims as a whole, but the controversy ultimately resulted in several authors asking to pull their stories .

Sanders and his wife live in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.