William Shunn
William Shunn (born August 14, 1967, Los Angeles, California) is a science fiction writer and computer programmer. He was raised in a Latter-day Saint household, the oldest of eight children. He attended the Clarion Workshop in 1985. In 1986, he served a mission to Canada for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but was arrested for making a false bomb threat, for the purpose of preventing his fellow missionary from returning home.[1]
After completing a mission in the northwestern US, he returned to computer science studies at the University of Utah. [citation needed] He went to work for WordPerfect Corporation in 1991 and was part of the team that developed WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS (the word processor's final major DOS version, released in 1993). In 1995, he moved from Utah to New York City. He left the LDS Church at the same time and created one of the earliest and best-known ex-Mormon web sites. [citation needed]
Shunn's first professional short story was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1993.[2] He has been nominated once for the Hugo Award and twice for the Nebula Award. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, he created what may have been the first online survivor registry.[3][4]
Awards and nominations
- 2001: Nominated for Nebula Award for Best Novelette for "Dance of the Yellow-Breasted Luddites" (Vanishing Acts, ed. Ellen Datlow, Tor Books, New York, NY, 2000)
- 2006: Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novella and Nebula Award for Best Novella for "Inclination" (Asimov's Science Fiction, April/May 2006)
Bibliography
- Netherview Station story series:
- The Practical Ramifications of Interstellar Packet Loss (1998)
- Dance of the Yellow-Breasted Luddites (2000)
- Inclination (2006)
- Strong Medicine (2003)
- Love in the Age of Spyware (2003)
- The Missionary Imposition, essay (2005)
- An Alternate History of the 21st Century, chap-book (2007)
References
- ^ "Missionary gets day's jail, $2,000 fine for bomb hoax", Monica Zurowski, Calgary Herald, February 27, 1987
- ^ Editorial introduction to "From Our Point of View We Had Moved to the Left," The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1993
- ^ Journalism After September 11 , Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan (eds), Routledge, 2002, ISBN 0415287995
- ^ "Online help spawns hope for victims", Charles Cooper, CNET News.com, September 13, 2001
External links
- Official site
- "The Practical Ramifications of Interstellar Packet Loss" (short story)
- "Love in the Age
of Spyware" (short story from
Salon , 16 July 2003) - "Strong Medicine"
(short story from
Salon , 10 November 2003) - "The Missionary Imposition" (personal essay)
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