Cordwainer Smith exploded on the field in 1950 with a story titled "Scanners Live in Vain." In those early days of the genre, a time when fans could easily keep up with all published science fiction, that story and the others that quickly followed created a sensation. His inventive stories were full of the awe and wonder that is science fiction at its best. One of his Smith's themes was that in the distant future, long after the human species has gone through dramatic changes and forgotten its past, those who remained would rediscover that which had led to the world of their tomorrow.

Many of our finest writers, the giants on whose shoulders we all stand to see all of our many shared tomorrows, have been forgotten, or are out of print and known only to the privileged few, and so are as in as much need of rediscovery as was humanity itself in the works of Cordwainer Smith. Recognizing this, the family of Paul Linebarger, the man who was behind the Cordwainer Smith pseudonym, created the Cordwainer Smith Foundation, in order to preserve the memory of their father and his work, as well as the ideals for which he stood.

The most public activity of the Cordwainer Smith Foundation has been the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, which is designed to shine the spotlight each year on an important science-fiction or fantasy writer whose work has unjustly fallen into the shadows. It is our hope that the true award here will be more than just this trophy, but your actions in taking the time to rediscover the world of an unjustly neglected author. That is the award Cordwainer Smith and these writers deserve most of all—a new audience.

At last year's Worldcon, the first annual Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award was presented to Olaf Stapledon. This year, as last, there were four jurors for the Award: John Clute, Gardner Dozois, Robert Silverberg and me. The award bylaws ask that we choose a science-fiction or fantasy writer whose work displays unusual originality, embodies the spirit of Cordwainer Smith's fiction, and deserves renewed attention or "Rediscovery." We had no other mandate beyond that, and could choose any writer, living or dead, whom we felt right for the Award.

We were all extremely happy about that last point, for as e-mails passed among the judges, one name repeatedly came to the top of our lists, a name that many of you here likely heard earlier this year, when, in the midst of our deliberations, he passed away at age 87 on March 18th.

Some of you remembered the fine work that came before during his lifttime, and were saddened; others, because of trends and fashions and the way the new continually pushes aside that which came before, did not have the opportunity to remember. Which is why this writer was at the top of our list when he lived, and he remained there afterwards.

I speak of an eccentric author who, beginning in 1959—in his '40s, rather late to start a career in science fiction—went on to write more than 200 short stories, which were collected in at least 19 short story collections, and 21 novels. The first three of those novels appeared the same year, 1968—Past Master, The Reefs of Earth, and Space Chantey—the very first of those being nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

He was praised in the '60s by Roger Zelazny, Samuel R, Delany and Harlan Ellison, and embraced as part of the New Wave, but he was never part of any wave. He was a unique teller of tall tales, and we were privileged that he decided to make his home in our genre. Neil Gaiman, writing in The Washington Post, said that he was "a genius, a oddball, a madman," and that "he was undoubtedly the finest writer of whatever it was that he did that there ever was."

And at the time he was working in a genre all of his own, the field saw him as one of us, so much so that he was nominated for the Hugo Award four times, for the Nebula Award seven times and for the Philip K. Dick Award as well. He received the Hugo Award in 1973 for his short story "Eurema's Dam," and later on, when he was no longer writing, the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990. During the end of his life, small press publishers championed him, and for that we must all be grateful.

He never wrote on anything but a manual typewriter, and he never learned to drive, but still, he drove us to see new visions of science fiction and fantasy. Speaking of his own work, he said that the life of a writer was like "dropping rose petals down the Grand Canyon and listening for the landing." The judges hope that in some small way, this award will increase the volume of that landing, enabling more of you to hear its joyful noise. And so we are pleased to present the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award to R. A. Lafferty.

Accepting the award tonight on his behalf will be Frederick Pohl.

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