In 1949, when he was in his mid-20s and finding out for his grasp’s diploma in English, James E. Gunn submitted a chunk of science fiction to a pulp journal. “In the future, I obtained a letter saying, ‘I like your story “Paradox,” and I’ll pay you $80 for it,’” he recalled in a 2008 interview. “My spouse says it was in all probability probably the most reworking expertise in our lives after we realized somebody would truly pay me to sit down in entrance of my typewriter.”
He remained significantly pleased with the plot — a few drunken bum kidnapped by telepathic aliens who, as soon as they learn his delirious thoughts, abandon their plans to subjugate humanity.
Many years later, he bumped into Sam Merwin Jr., the writer who had purchased “Paradox,” at a science fiction writers conference. He launched himself by saying, “You in all probability don’t keep in mind, however you purchased my first story.”
“Merwin mentioned, ‘I can inform you why,’” Mr. Gunn continued, “and I assumed, ‘Gee, it caught in his thoughts all this time.’ Then Merwin revealed, ‘It was as a result of something in any respect literate popped up out of the slush pile.’”
“So,” he added, “you by no means need to get too happy with your self.”
However Mr. Gunn had been so emboldened when his first two tales have been revealed that he went on to make science fiction his profession. He edited 10 anthologies of science fiction and wrote about 30 books, together with his final novel, “Transformation,” in 2017, and a few 100 quick tales, together with one he submitted shortly earlier than he died in Lawrence, Kan., on Dec. 23. He was 97.
His demise, which was not broadly reported, was introduced by the College of Kansas, the place he taught his first English class in 1955 and based the Gunn Middle for the Examine of Science Fiction in 1982.
Mr. Gunn’s 1962 story “The Immortals,” about individuals who uncover the key to everlasting life, was tailored into an ABC-TV film, “The Immortal,” in 1969 and a sequence within the 1970-71 season. His novels embrace “The Listeners” (1972), which Carl Sagan described as “one of many perfect fictional portrayals of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence ever written,” and which was credited with encouraging analysis by the SETI Institute into the seek for life past Earth.
Mr. Gunn was named a grand grasp of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2007 and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Corridor of Fame in 2015. He earned a Hugo Award for his vital examine “Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction” (1983) and edited “The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction” (1988).
Regardless of the motivation supplied by that first paycheck, Mr. Gunn mentioned in an interview with the College of Kansas in 2017, “I’ve usually made the purpose that writing is de facto laborious work.”
“A lot of occasions,” he mentioned, “I’ve sat in entrance of my typewriter or pc and felt actually I’d somewhat be out mowing the garden, doing guide labor, than attempting to wrench concepts out of my head. However there may be additionally the sensation that sitting there and turning ideas into language that’s appropriate is what I used to be lower out to do.”
“I’ve informed individuals,” he added, “that I really feel I earn my place right here on Earth every day when I’m able to create one thing that wasn’t there earlier than, and, in flip, a few of these issues enter tales that affect individuals.”
James Edwin Gunn was born on July 12, 1923, in Kansas Metropolis, Mo., to Jesse and Elsie Mae (Hutchison) Gunn. His father was a printer, two uncles have been pressmen, a 3rd was a proofreader, and his grandfather was an editor who was listed in “Ripley’s Imagine It or Not” for having visited each county within the nation as a consultant of the Masons.
As a toddler, James devoured fairy tales and Tarzan novels. He was impressed to put in writing science fiction as a young person after attending a speech by H.G. Wells.
He served within the Navy throughout World Struggle II and as a Japanese interpreter after the warfare, then earned a bachelor’s diploma in journalism from the College of Kansas in 1947 and a grasp’s in inventive writing in 1951.
In 1947, he married Jane Frances Anderson; she died in 2012. He’s survived by their son, Kevin. One other son, Christopher, died in 2005.
Mr. Gunn informed The New York Occasions in 2011 that science fiction might velocity the long run by sparking the creativeness of younger minds. However he additionally acknowledged that, as Arthur C. Clarke mentioned, “The longer term isn’t what it was once.”
“The science fiction author’s activity grows more and more harder as science and expertise catch as much as the science-fictional creativeness and as previous tropes get worn out,” he informed Electrical Spec journal in 2007.
However science fiction and fantasy can present therapeutic escapism, he usually mentioned, whereas the reality can show to be stranger.
“Definitely the contact with different intelligences can be as exhilarating (or as traumatic) as something possible,” he mentioned in that interview, “and the way we reply to that may decide humanity’s destiny and perhaps its transcendence.”
“So, he added, “it represents a vital second — perhaps the vital second — in humanity’s lengthy historical past, and it behooves us to ponder it earlier than it occurs (if it occurs).”