James Patrick Kelly

James Patrick Kelly (born April 11, 1951 in Mineola, New York) is an American science fiction author who began publishing in the 1970s and remains to this day an important figure in the science fiction field.

Kelly made his first fiction sale in 1975, and has since been a major force in the science fiction field. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 1972, with a B.A. in English Literature. After graduating from college, he worked as a full-time proposal writer until 1977. He attended the Clarion Workshop twice - once in 1974 and again in 1976.

Throughout the 1980s, he and friend John Kessel became involved in the humanist/cyberpunk debate. While Kessel and Kelly were both humanists, Kelly also wrote several cyberpunk-like stories, such as "The Prisoner of Chillon" (1985) and "Rat" (1986). His story "Solstice" (1985) was published in Bruce Sterling's anthology Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology.

Kelly has been awarded several of science fiction's highest honors. He won the Hugo Award for his novelette "Think Like a Dinosaur" (1995) and again for his novelette "10¹⁶ to 1" (1999). Most recently, his 2005 novella, Burn, won the 2006 Nebula Award. Other stories have won the Asimov's Reader Poll and the SF Chronicle Award. He is frequently on the final ballot for the Nebula Award, the Locus Poll Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. He frequently teaches and participates in science fiction workshops, such as Clarion and the Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop. He has served on the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts since 1998 and chaired the council in 2004.

He is currently on the Popular Fiction faculty for the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Maine.

He is a frequent contributor to Asimov's Science Fiction and for the past several years has contributed a non-fiction column to Asimov's, "On the Net." He has had a story in the June issue of Asimov's for the past twenty years. In addition to his writing, Kelly has recently turned his hand to editing (with John Kessel), with several reprint anthologies: Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology and The Secret History of Science Fiction. Through these anthologies, Kelly and Kessel have brought together a wide spectrum of both traditional genre authors and authors who are considered to be more mainstream, including Don DeLillo, George Saunders, Jonathan Lethem, Aimee Bender, Michael Chabon and Steven Millhauser.

Bibliography

Books

• Planet of Whispers (Bluejay Books, 1984)
• Freedom Beach (with John Kessel) (Tor Books, 1985)
• Look Into the Sun (Tor Books, 1989)
• Heroines (collection) (1990)
• Wildlife (Tor Books, 1994)
• Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories (collection) (Golden Gryphon Press, 1997)
• Strange But Not a Stranger (collection) (Golden Gryphon Press, 2002)
• Burn (Tachyon Publications, 2005) (Nebula Award winner)
• Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology (co-edited with John Kessel) (Tachyon Publications, 2006), featuring stories by Aimee Bender, Michael Chabon, Ted Chiang, Carol Emshwiller, Jeffrey Ford, Karen Joy Fowler, Theodora Goss, Jonathan Lethem, Kelly Link, M. Rickert, Benjamin Rosenbaum, George Saunders, Bruce Sterling, Jeff VanderMeer, and Howard Waldrop.
• Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology (co-edited with John Kessel) (Tachyon Publications, 2007)
• The Wreck of the Godspeed and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon Press, August 2008)
• The Secret History of Science Fiction (co-edited with John Kessel) (Tachyon Publications, 2009)
• Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka (co-edited with John Kessel) (Tachyon Publications, 2011)
• Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology (co-edited with John Kessel) (Tachyon Publications, 2012)

Short Fiction

• "Dea Ex Machina" (Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1975)
• "The Prisoner of Chillon" (Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1986)
• "Rat" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1986)
• "Glass Cloud" (Asimov's, June 1987)
• "Mr. Boy" (Asimov's, June 1990)
• "The Propagation of Light in a Vacuum" (Universe 1, 1990)
• "Pogrom" (Asimov's, Jan 1991)
• "Think Like a Dinosaur" (Asimov's, June 1995) (Hugo Award winner)
• "10^16 to 1" (Asimov's, June 1999) (Hugo Award winner)
• "Ninety Percent of Everything" (with Jonathan Lethem and John Kessel) (F&SF, Sep 1999)
• "Undone" (Asimov's, June 2001)
• "The Pyramid of Amirah" (F&SF, March 2002)
• "Bernardo's House" (Asimov's, June 2003)
• "Men Are Trouble" (Asimov's, June 2004)
• "The Edge of Nowhere" (Asimov's, June 2005)
• "The Leila Torn Show" (Asimov's, June 2006)
• "Surprise Party" (Asimov's, June 2008)
• "The Promise of Space" (Clarkesworld Magazine, September 2013)
• "Someday" (Asimov's, April/May 2014)
• "Why School Buses Are Yellow" by James Patrick Kelly
• "Barry Westphall Crashes the Singularity" by James Patrick Kelly
• "The Best Christmas Ever" by James Patrick Kelly at the Wayback Machine (archived April 29, 2007): It was nominated for the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.^[2] Plot summary: The story follows Albert Hopkins, the last real man on earth, and the biops that care for him. Granted his every wish, Albert is slipping into depression and the biops try everything to bring him out of it - including throwing a Christmas party that they think he will truly enjoy.

On the Net : columns from Asimov's Science Fiction

• "What is reality?". Asimov's Science Fiction. 36 (8): 10–13. August 2012. 
• "Mobility". Asimov's Science Fiction. 37 (2): 9–11. February 2013. 

Interviews

• An Interview with James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel conducted by John Joseph Adams
• James Patrick Kelly - Audio Interview
• SciFi.com Interview
• AISFP 55 - James Patrick Kelly Interviewed by Matthew Wayne Selznick - Audio Interview

References

External links

• James Patrick Kelly Homepage
• James Patrick Kelly's StoryPod
• Freereads - JPK blog/podcast site
• James Patrick Kelly at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• IT Conversations - James Patrick Kelly
• James Patrick Kelly Audiobooks