The Center for the Study of Science Fiction is an educational institution, associated with the University of Kansas, that emerged out of the science-fiction (SF) programs that James Gunn created there beginning in 1970.
In 1975, its supporters held its first Intensive English Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction, which as of 2011 has continued as an annual event. In 1979, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best science fiction novel of the year was presented for the first time as part of the Campbell Conference, devoted to the teaching and writing of SF.
The Center was formally created in 1982. In 1985, the first Writer's Workshop in Science Fiction was held, likewise as of 2011 an annual event. Other annual events that take place in Lawrence each summer include the Intensive Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction (since 1975), the Novel Writing Workshop (since 2004), the "Repeat Offenders" novel workshop, and a writing retreat. Awards presented each year during the Campbell Conference include the Campbell Award for best SF novel of the year (since 1979) and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short SF of the year (since 1987).
In 1991, Gunn's brother, Richard W. Gunn, a retired physician in Kansas City, created an endowment for the Center, and it was ceremonially renamed the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center in honor of their parents.
The Center presented the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in cooperation with the Kansas City Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy, from 1996 to 2004.
James Gunn is Founding Director of the Center, Christopher McKitterick is Director, and Kij Johnson is Associate Director.
Famous quotes containing the words science fiction, center, study, science and/or fiction:
“Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can’t talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.”
—Philip K. Dick (1928–1982)
“Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)
“Looking at yourself in a mirror isn’t exactly a study of life.”
—Lauren Bacall (b. 1924)
“Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)