The annual Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award went to A. Merritt this year. The link takes you to the page where I describe what the award is. It is given every summer at Readercon.
Don’t know much about A. Merritt? Or like me, know nothing of him?
Ah, that’s probably part of why our panel of judges — Mike Resnick, Barry Malzberg, Martin H. Greenberg, and Robert J. Sawyer — felt that he needed rediscovery. The most important part being that his works are worth reading and keeping alive.
To find out more about Merritt, you can start at wikipedia, and don’t miss the external links at the end of the page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Merritt
Readers, your thoughts are most welcome.
While watching Hitchcock’s “Saboteur” last Saturday night, I noticed over Bob Cumming’s shoulder in a scene in a private library a familar spine…”The Face in the Abyss”, the 1931 version, of which I own a copy. My father was a big fan of A. Merritt’s, and this book has been in my personal library all my life. I decided to read it (I’d read the Ship of Ishtar when it was first reissued in paperback in the ’70’s), and just started it last night. The coincidence of Mr. Merritt’s winning of the 2009 Rediscovery Award and my rediscovery of him 3 days prior to finding this web site is fascinating. I am now looking into him much more seriously.