Editorial
The storytellers

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For the first time, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has chosen Seattle as the place it will present its Nebula Awards. The gathering of writers today through Sunday is an honor for our city, which has embraced the future in so many ways.

In the past century, science fiction has grown from a few seedlings planted by the Frenchman Jules Verne and others to an expansive literature of possibility, largely American and British. With stories set in the future, authors could think about the subjects of today — or of the day after tomorrow.

In 1965, the first Nebula Award-winning novel, Frank Herbert's "Dune," was ostensibly set in a galaxy far away, but was also an imagination of planetary ecology. Another early winner, Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog," was about life after thermonuclear war. Sometimes you can imagine and say things in a work of fiction that cannot easily be said any other way.

It is the business of science fiction and fantasy writers to imagine things not now possible. What would it be like to change genders as easily as a shirt? To live forever? To meet an alien race? There is no way for us to know, but in science fiction and fantasy, some of us may imagine these things and make a living doing it.

The folks gathering here are storytellers. They may not be the favorites of university departments of English — that will take another century — but the best of them already have written stories that have stayed in print for decades: Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" books, J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and many others.

Welcome, and tell us a story.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company