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:
“Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“Whenever there’s a big war coming on, you should rope off a big field. And on the big day, you should take all the kings and their cabinets and their generals, put ‘em in the center dressed in their underpants and let them fight it out with clubs. The best country wins.”
—Maxwell Anderson (1888–1959)
“We have tried so hard to adulterate our hearts, and have so greatly abused the microscope to study the hideous excrescences and shameful warts which cover them and which we take pleasure in magnifying, that it is impossible for us to speak the language of other men.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art.... Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)