Robert J. Sawyer

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts in which I'm going to discuss people and things that I think merit consideration for this year's Hugo and Aurora Awards; both sets of awards will be given at the Montreal Worldcon this year.

Okay, folks, y'all have been very good to me when it comes to the Hugos over the years. You nominated my novels The Terminal Experiment, Starplex, and Rollback for the Hugo; you nominated my short story "Shed Skin" for the Hugo, and you gave me the best-novel Hugo for Hominids, and, if I'm lucky, next year, you might be kind enough to nominate my new novel Wake for the Hugo, too.

But you know what all those works have in common? Stanley Schmidt, the editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, edited every single one of them. The Terminal Experiment (under its original title of Hobson's Choice), Starplex, Hominids, Rollback, and Wake all first appeared in Analog (as did my 2002 Aurora Award-winning novelette "Ineluctable"). You can't be a Robert J. Sawyer fan without also being a fan of Stanley Schmidt.

And yet, despite being the longest-serving short-fiction editor in the SF field, despite editing what has in every year of his tenure been the world's number-one bestselling English-language science-fiction magazine, despite being the only major SF&F magazine editor to write an editorial himself for each issue, despite his tireless mentoring of new writers, such as (to name an obvious example from this past year) Calgary's Susan Forest -- despite all that, Dr. Schmidt has never won a Hugo. That's criminal.

It goes without saying that Stan will be nominated for a Hugo this year -- he's nominated every year. But don't just nominate this wonderful, self-effacing, brilliant, hard-working, caring editor. Vote for him..

Some of my previous blog posts about Stan:

For the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor, Short Form: