World Fantasy Award—Life Achievement


The World Fantasy Awards are given each year by the World Fantasy Convention for the best fantasy fiction and fantasy art published in English during the preceding calendar year. The awards have been described by sources such as The Guardian as a "prestigious fantasy prize", and as one of the three most renowned speculative fiction awards, along with the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The World Fantasy Award—Life Achievement is given each year to individuals for their overall career in fields related to fantasy. These have included, for example, authors, editors, and publishers. The specific nomination reasons are not given, and nominees are not required to have retired, though they can only win once. The Life Achievement category has been awarded annually since 1975.
World Fantasy Award nominees are decided by attendees and judges at the annual World Fantasy Convention. A ballot is posted in June for attendees of the current and previous two conferences to determine two of the finalists, and a panel of five judges adds three or more nominees before voting on the overall winner of each category. Unlike the other World Fantasy Award categories, the nominees for the Life Achievement award are not announced; instead, the winner is announced along with the nominees in the other categories. The panel of judges is typically made up of fantasy authors, and is chosen each year by the World Fantasy Awards Administration, which has the power to break ties. The final results are presented at the World Fantasy Convention at the end of October. Through 2015, winners were presented with a statuette of H. P. Lovecraft; more recent winners receive a statuette of a tree.
During the 45 nomination years, 71 people have been given the Life Achievement Award. Multiple winners have been awarded 22 times, typically two co-winners, though five were noted in 1984. Since 2000, it has become an unofficial tradition for two winners to be announced, often with one winner primarily an author and the other not. While most winners have been authors and editors, five winners have been primarily artists of fantasy art and book covers, and four winners are best known for founding or running publishing houses that produce fantasy works.

Winners

In the following table, the years correspond to the date of the ceremony. Items in the Work column are items and companies that the winner created or worked at; they are meant to be representative of the winner's career in the field of fantasy to that point, but the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement is not given for any specific achievement, and no such achievements are listed by the World Fantasy Convention as reasons for the award. In many cases the winner is well known for their non-fantasy works, such as science fiction novels, which are not listed.
YearWinnerWork
1975Psycho, "That Hell-Bound Train"
1976"Gonna Roll the Bones", Ill Met in Lankhmar
1977Dandelion Wine, The Illustrated Man
1978The Hounds of Tindalos, The Horror from the Hills
1979"The Garden of Forking Paths", Ficciones
1980Worse Things Waiting, Who Fears the Devil?
1981Jirel of Joiry, Northwest of Earth
1982The Baron in the Trees, The Castle of Crossed Destinies
1983James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
1984The Goblin Tower, Land of Unreason
1984Bid Time Return, I Am Legend
1984"Through the Gates of the Silver Key", Far Lands, Other Days
1984The Dying Earth, Lyonesse Trilogy
1984The Web of Easter Island, Strange Harvest
1985Without Sorcery, E Pluribus Unicorn
1986The Phoenix and the Mirror, Vergil in Averno
1987The Body Snatchers, Marion's Wall
1988Editing Guide to Supernatural Fiction, A Treasury of Victorian Ghost Stories
1989The Island of the Mighty, The Song of Rhiannon
1990Serpent's Egg, The Devil is Dead
1991The Bishop's Daughter, The Devil's Mirror
1992Artwork for Unknown, Fantasy Press
1993Deathbird Stories, Mefisto in Onyx
1994"Hocus Pocus Universe", Darker Than You Think
1995A Wizard of Earthsea, Always Coming Home
1996The Book of the New Sun, Soldier of the Mist
1997A Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet
1998Editing The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction
1998Witch World, The Halfblood Chronicles
1999Murgunstrumm and Others, Death Stalks the Night
2000The Mists of Avalon, Darkover
2000Elric of Melniboné, The Knight of Swords
2001Artwork such as Conan the Destroyer, Death Dealer
2001Hadon of Ancient Opar, Inside Outside
2002Editing Famous Monsters of Filmland, work as a literary agent
2002Editing Weird Tales, Amra
2003The Black Cauldron, The High King
2003Founding/running Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Centaur Press
2004, It
2004Artwork for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The New Yorker
2005Founder of Tor Books, publisher for Ace Books
2005The Mount, The Start of the End of It All
2006Little, Big, Great Work of Time
2006Artwork for Dungeons & Dragons, Ladies & Legends
2007Co-founded Bantam Books, Ballantine Books
2007Howl's Moving Castle, Charmed Life
2008Artwork for Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears, Ashanti to Zulu
2008Harpist in the Wind, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
2009Editor of Science Fiction Book Club, New American Library
2009Owl Moon, Lost Girls
2010Necroscope, Blood Brothers
2010The Colour of Magic, Mort
2010Ghost Story, The Talisman
2011The Last Unicorn, "Two Hearts"
2011Kalpa Imperial, Opus dos
2012The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, "The Owl Service"
2012A Song of Ice and Fire, Sandkings
2013The Dark Is Rising, The Grey King
2013Death's Master, The Birthgrave
2014Editing Omni, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
2014The Palace, Ariosto
2015To Wake the Dead, Alone with the Horrors
2015The True Game, Beauty
2016Editor of The New York Review of Science Fiction, Tor Books
2016The Witcher Saga
2017Shannara series, Magic Kingdom of Landover series
2017Research and non-fiction works on fairy tales and myths
2018Newford series
2018President, co-Publisher and co-Editor-in-Chief of DAW Books
2019Co-founder of Studio Ghibli, and animator, filmmaker, screenwriter, author, and manga artist of multiple works
2019Academic and folklorist on fairy tales