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 center, study, science and/or fiction:
“Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.”
—Thomas Merton (1915–1968)
“If the study of all these sciences, which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.”
—Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)
“For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)