Brian Attebery (born December 1951) is an American writer and emeritus professor of English and philosophy at Idaho State University. He is known for his studies of fantasy literature, including The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin (1980) and Strategies of Fantasy (1992) which won the Mythopoeic Award. Attebery is also editor of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, for which he received the World Fantasy Award in 2021. He has also won the IAFA Award for distinguished scholarship and the Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement.
Biography Attebery was born in December 1951, and received a doctorate in American Civilization from Brown University in 1979. He is professor of English at Idaho State University, and the editor of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He is known for his non-fiction works on fantasy literature, such as the 1980 book The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin and the 1992 book Strategies of Fantasy. Attebery suggests that fantasy is a "fuzzy set" with no easily discernible boundaries, in contrast to the genre of science fiction. Critic John Clute has praised the book as displaying "very considerable [...] critical acumen".
He retired from Idaho State University in April 2022 and was named an emeritus professor in the Department of English and Philosophy.
In 2022 Brian Attebery won the Mythopoeic Award (given by the Mythopoeic Society) for his book Fantasy: How It Works (OUP).
Recognition
Career awards Attebery is the recipient of the 1993 IAFA Award for Distinguished Scholarship, and the 2009 Pilgrim Award for lifetime contribution to SF and fantasy scholarship. Year PresentedSocietyAwardRef1991IAFAIAFA Award for Distinguished Scholarship2009Science Fiction Research AssociationPilgrim Award
Individual works He has won the Mythopoeic Award and World Fantasy Award for individual works of nonfiction, as detailed in the following table. Year Work Award Category Result 1993 Strategies of FantasyLocus AwardNon-fiction (14th) Mythopoeic Award Scholarship 1994The Norton Book of Science FictionLocus AwardAnthology (5th) 2014Parabolas of Science Fiction(with Veronica Hollinger)Locus AwardNon-fiction (10th) 2015 Stories About Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth Mythopoeic Award Scholarship 2021 Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts World Fantasy Award Non-professional 2023 Fantasy: How It Works Mythopoeic Award Scholarship
Works
Short fiction
"Fairest", Strange Horizons (September 11, 2006)
Non-fiction
Anthologies as editor The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960–1990 (1993) editor with Ursula K. Le Guin Reading Narrative Fiction (1993) editor; written by Seymour Chatman Le Guin: Hainish Novels and Stories, Volume 1 (2017) editor, Library of America Le Guin: Hainish Novels and Stories, Volume 2 (2017) editor, Library of America
Essays
Fantasy as an Anti-Utopian Mode (1986) Women's Coming of Age in Fantasy (1987) Science Fantasy and Myth (1987) Tolkien, Crowley, and Postmodernism (1990) Fantasy and the Narrative Transaction (1992) Godmaking in the Heartland: The Backgrounds of Orson Scott Card's American Fantasy (1992) Response to John Kessel's "The Brother from Another Planet" (1993) Letter (NYRSF, May 1993) (1993) Review: Peake Studies by G. Peter Wilnnington (1994) The 1995 James Tiptree, Jr Memorial Award Shortlist (1995) with Ellen Kushner and Pat Murphy and Susanna J. Sturgis and Lucy Sussex The Politics (If Any) of Fantasy (1995) The Closing of the Final Frontier: Science Fiction After 1960 (1995) Androgyny and Difference in Science Fiction (1997) Science Fiction and the Gender of Knowledge (2000) Myth and History: Molly Gloss's Wild Life and Alan Garner's Strandloper (2001) "But Aren't Those Just... You Know, Metaphors?": Postmodern Figuration in the Science Fiction of James Morrow and Gwyneth Jones (2002) The Magazine Era: 1926–1960 (2003) Science Fiction, Parables, and Parabolas (2005) High Church versus Broad Church: Christian Myth in George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis (2005) The Conquest of Gernsback: Leslie F. Stone and the Subversion of Science Fiction Troupes (2006) Special Section (Extrapolation, Spring 2009) (2009) C. L. Moore (1911–87) (2009) The Nobies' Story (2010) Science Fiction Parabolas: Jazz, Geometry, and Generation Starships (2013) The Fantastic (2014) Introduction: Messages from an Alternate Reality (2020)
Notes
References
External links
Brian Attebery at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction