The Gandalf Awards , honoring achievement in fantasy literature, were conferred by the World Science Fiction Society annually from 1974 to 1981. They were named after Gandalf the wizard, from the Middle-earth stories by J. R. R. Tolkien . The award was created and sponsored by Lin Carter and the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), an association of fantasy writers. Recipients were selected by vote of participants in the World Science Fiction Conventions according to procedures of the Hugo Awards .
8-575: The award was given for life achievement, and corresponds roughly to the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement , which was started the year after the Gandalf. In 1978 and 1979, an award was also given for a novel published during the preceding year. The Gandalf Grand Master Award for life achievement in fantasy writing was awarded every year from 1974 to 1981. The inaugural winner was J. R. R. Tolkien, recently deceased in 1973. There
16-490: A statuette of H. P. Lovecraft ; more recent winners receive a statuette of a tree. During the 49 nomination years, 79 people have been given the Life Achievement Award. Multiple winners have been awarded 25 times, typically two co-winners, though five were noted in 1984. Since 2000, it has become an unofficial tradition for two winners to be announced, often with one winner primarily an author and
24-420: Is given each year to individuals for their overall career in fields related to fantasy. These have included, for example, authors, editors, and publishers. The specific nomination reasons are not given, and nominees are not required to have retired, though they can only win once. The Life Achievement category has been awarded annually since 1975. World Fantasy Award nominees are decided by attendees and judges at
32-623: The World Fantasy Convention for the best fantasy fiction and fantasy art published in English during the preceding calendar year. The awards have been described by sources such as The Guardian as a "prestigious fantasy prize", and as one of the three most renowned speculative fiction awards, along with the Hugo and Nebula Awards (which cover both fantasy and science fiction ). The World Fantasy Award—Life Achievement
40-539: The annual World Fantasy Convention. A ballot is posted in June for attendees of the current and previous two conferences to determine two of the finalists, and a panel of five judges adds three or more nominees before voting on the overall winner of each category. Unlike the other World Fantasy Award categories, the nominees for the Life Achievement award are not announced; instead, the winner is announced along with
48-617: The nominees in the other categories. The panel of judges is typically made up of fantasy or horror authors, editors, publishers, booksellers, and others connected to the genres of fantasy and horror in some way and is chosen each year by the World Fantasy Awards Administration, which has the power to break ties. The final results are presented at the World Fantasy Convention at the end of October. Through 2015, winners were presented with
56-498: The other not. While most winners have been authors and editors, five winners have been primarily artists of fantasy art and book covers, and five winners are best known for founding or running publishing houses that produce fantasy works. In the following table, the years correspond to the date of the ceremony. Items in the Work(s) column are items and companies that the winner created or worked at; they are meant to be representative of
64-446: Was no ballot in 1981. All other winners since Tolkien were among the five or six finalists one year earlier. Others who appeared on the ballot were C. S. Lewis , Jack Vance , Roger Zelazny , Marion Zimmer Bradley , Anne McCaffrey , and Patricia McKillip . The Gandalf Award for Book-Length Fantasy was awarded only in 1978 and 1979. World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement The World Fantasy Awards are given each year by
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