Most Senior SF Writer

Who, among the major writers, has been writing for the longest time? And who held the record before them?

(Note that this list is not “Oldest Living SF Writer.” It has a significant judgment element. First, "major" is inevitably subjective to a degree. In particular, there were undoubtedly early writers for magazines like Weird Tales or the mundanes who published something that was arguably SF and lived on forgotten -- or never known -- by fandom. We're not interested in these. Second, there are writers who are not forgotten, but whose writing career was relatively brief. We're looking for people with the longest active careers, not who were simply long-lived. To count, an active career should have spanned at least a majority of the time since their first published appearance. So Mary Shelley, while undoubtedly an SF writer, and deserving of her place in this list, would not have qualified 150 years later. Most subjective of all, is "major." Given two people who have essentially equivalent careers, where one is of significantly greater stature and influence in the field, we will pick the latter.)

First published	Born	Died	Who?	Span	Years on Top
1818	1797	1851	Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley	33	33
1851	1828	1905	Jules Verne	54	54
1879	1859	1930	Arthur Conan Doyle	51	25
1888	1866	1946	H. G. Wells	58	16
1912	1875	1950	Edgar Rice Burroughs	38	4
1919	1896	1975	Murray Leinster	56	25
1928	1908	2006	Jack Williamson	78	31
1937	1919	2013	Frederik Pohl	68	7
1949	1923	2020	James Gunn	71	7
Current Contenders
1950	1932		John Jakes	>70
1952	1933		Ron Goulart	>68
1954	1935		Robert Silverberg	>66

Jack Williamson had the longest in modern times.

For a somewhat different take, see Dean of Science Fiction.

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