Stanley G. Weinbaum, Winner of the 2008 Rediscovery Award

The 2008 Rediscovery Award winner is Stanley G. Weinbaum, chosen by the judging panel of Martin H. Greenberg, Barry N. Malzberg, Robert J. Sawyer, and Mike Resnick. The judges are free to choose any science fiction or fantasy writer, living or dead, whom they think deserves to be rediscovered. This award was announced at the July 2008 Readercon.

According to Cordwainer Smith biographer Alan C. Elms, "Weinbaum has certainly not been forgotten in the science fiction world -- his first-published and best-known SF story, 'A Martian Odyssey,' is still seen for good reason as the first 'modern' science fiction story. But few people have read the rest of his work, of which there is a surprising amount -- given that he died of cancer less than two years after 'A Martian Odyssey' was published.  Probably the best single collection of his work is still the Ballantine paperback The Best of Stanley Weinbaum, published in 1974 (a year before Ballantine published The Best of Cordwainer Smith and Norstrilia); it should be pretty easy to find from Internet used-book dealers. (It has an enthusiastic introduction by Isaac Asimov and a personal afterword by Robert Bloch.) I see on the Net that a small publisher, Leonaur, has recently come out with a set of all of Weinbaum's science fiction and fantasy stories and novels, but I haven't seen it; and another small publisher has just come out with a one-volume edition of the most well-known stories." 

A Martian Odyssey

How could his first science fiction story catapult Stanley G. Weinbaum into such a position that he was proclaimed to be the best living science fiction writer in the world? It happened.

"A Martian Odyssey" was originally published in July 1934, and was ground-breaking for a variety of reasons. For one thing, it treated the aliens (Martians, they were) in the story as real characters.

See more about this story at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Martian_Odyssey and if you'd like to read it, it is available in book form in The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum (see Amazon search box below) and--in ebook form--from a link at the very bottom of this page.

Some Weinbaum Book Covers

These two are from old paperbacks:

And this is the design used by the small press publisher Leonaur on their recent republishing of Weinbaum:

Further Reading on Weinbaum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_G._Weinbaum

http://www.gcwillick.com/Spacelight/weinbaum.html

http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/Stanley_G._Weinbaum

Places to get Stanley G. Weinbaum Science Fiction

Here's an Amazon.com search box for Weinbaum. It should include the Leonaur editions that are referred to above.

And I found three ebooks available as inexpensive (about $5) downloads:

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Weinbaum, Stanley, G. - The Black Flame: The Classic SF Romance

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Weinbaum, Stanley G. - Dawn of Flame & Other Science Fiction Classics

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Weinbaum, Stanley G. - A Martian Odyssey