Guest of Honor ~ Scott Edelman
Scott Edelman began his career in the fantastic as an assistant editor for Marvel Comics in the ’ 70s, where Stan Lee gave him the nickname Sparkling
,and in addition to comic books wrote everything from display copy for superhero Slurpee cups to the famous Bullpens Bulletins pages. While there, he edited the Marvel-produced fan magazine FOOM (Friend of Ol ’ Marvel). He also wrote trade paperbacks such as The Captain Midnight Action Book of Sports, Health and Nutrition and The Mighty Marvel Fun Book.
In 1976, he left staff to go freelance, and worked for both Marvel and DC. His scripts appeared in Captain Marvel, Superman Family, Master of Kung Fu, Omega the Unknown, Time Warp, House of Mystery, Weird War Tales, Welcome Back, Kotter and others.
He has published more than 85 short stories in magazines such as Analog, Postscripts, The Twilight Zone, Absolute Magnitude, The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives, Science Fiction Review and Fantasy Book, and in anthologies such as Why New Yorkers Smoke, The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three, Crossroads: Southern Tales of the Fantastic, Men Writing SF as Women, MetaHorror, Once Upon a Galaxy, Moon Shots, Mars Probes, Forbidden Planets, Summer Chills, and The Mammoth Book of Monsters.
A collection of his horror fiction, These Words Are Haunted, came out in hardcover from Wildside Books in 2001, and was rereleased in 2015 in paperback by Fantastic Books. His collection of zombie fiction, What Will Come After, came in 2010 from PS Publishing, and was a finalist for both the Stoker Award and the Shirley Jackson Memorial Award. His science fiction short fiction has been collected in What We Still Talk About from Fantastic Books. A new collection of zombie novelettes, Liars, Fakers, and the Dead Who Eat Them, was published earlier this year by Written Backward Press. He is also the author of the Lambda Award-nominated novel The Gift (Space & Time, 1990). He has been a Stoker Award finalist seven times, both in the category of Short Story and Long Fiction, and currently holds the record for the most Stoker Award nominations without a win. Additionally, Edelman worked for the Syfy Channel for more than thirteen years as editor of Science Fiction Weekly, SCI FI Wire, and Blastr. He was the founding editor of Science Fiction Age, which he edited during its entire eight-year run. He also edited SCI FI magazine, previously known as Sci-Fi Entertainment, for more a decade, as well as two other SF media magazines, Sci-Fi Universe and Sci-Fi Flix. He has been a four-time Hugo Award finalist for Best Editor.
He has at various times served on the juries for both the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Short Fiction Awards and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. He has been the Editor in Residence at the Clarion SF Workshop in 1999 and 2003, and the Guest Editor at the Odyssey Writers Workshop in 1999. He was the Toastmaster for the 2000 Nebula Awards ceremony. He was the winner of the 2004 Sam Moskowitz Award for outstanding contributions to the field of science fiction fandom.