Some time this year Peter Beagle turns sixty-eight. Even though he’s nowhere near the oldest guy out there writing science fiction or fantasy, he’s getting up there. And yet, somehow, even though he’s sixty-eight and has been publishing first rank work since before I was born, he’s still producing fiction that wins awards, gets critically raved about and, more importantly, is loved by readers everywhere. I mean, he wrote The Last Unicorn in the late ’60s and “Two Hearts” in 2005, The Folk of the Air in 1986 and Tamsin in 1999. He’s a seriously impressive writer, and one of the best fantasists we’ve ever seen.
Which got me to thinking. I don’t think this is inappropriate. After all, the judges haven’t been empanelled yet, and if they have, they haven’t been announced and I certainly don’t know who they are, so… how about Beagle for the World Fantasy Award? Not for best novelette for “Salt Wine” or “El Regalo” (though both would be worthy nominees in my opinion), but for Life Achievement. I don’t know how many people deserve to be recognised for lifetime achievement by the World Fantasy Convention, but Beagle would have to be one of them. A writing career that stretches back nearly fifty years, at least one genuine world straddling classic, and a very, very impressive body of work. I really hope he gets considered.
PS: As a booklover and Beagle reader, I’d love to see a treasury of his best short fiction. I’m probably alone, but it’d be something really special.
You’re not alone, Jonathan. I’d love to see a treasury of selected short fiction from him, especially seeing how the collections we have to choose from right now are sort of mixed bags. I’d like to see his best and most interesting works altogether for once. And a Lifetime Achievement award would make sense to me in his case as well.
I’m biased, of course, since I work with Peter, but I came into that work because I was a raving fan, so maybe I can be excused.
I’m hoping that THE LINE BETWEEN will get a World Fantasy Award nomination for best collection of 2006. Even if it doesn’t win, a nomination would go a long way towards erasing last year’s injustice (there’s that bias showing; ah well).
But a Life Achievement award? Why the hell not…unless it gets in the way of people paying attention to the new stories that are coming out. And there are going to be a lot of them. Peter aren’t used to thinking of Peter as prolific, but that’s only because he’s been writing so many different things, in so many different places, that the actual extent of the output is obscured.
Regarding a treasury of his short fiction…well, if you can read Hungarian, there will be one later this year. It will contain ALL of Peter’s non-Innkeeper’s World stories, including five things which I found in his filing cabinet that I made him clean up and finish, because they were too good to abandon. Those pieces have never yet seen print in America. I’m working on that. And maybe someday this Big Treasury will be out here in the States, as well, if it makes sense.
Just a reminder that members of the current and past two WFCs get to nominate – including the Life Achievement Award. The last few years there have been two winners announced at each WFC.
This year WFC is in Saratoga Springs, NY. Details here: http://www.lastsfa.org/wfc2007/.