Ray Nelson

(October 3, 1931 –)

Radell Faraday Nelson is a fan, cartoonist, and writer whose early work (both cartooning and writing) was for fanzines. He was born in Schenectady, became captivated by SF at the 1939 World's Fair. He became an actifan as a teenager in Cadillac, Michigan. Perhaps his greatest claim to fannish fame is as the creator of the iconic propeller beanie of fandom while a 10th-grader. (He also organized the Second International Beanie Brigade in the early ’80s.)

Ray was a long-time member of CAPA, the Golden Gate Futurians, the Detroit Science Fiction League, SAPS, Little Men, ISFS, and the N3F. He is also an associate member of the First Fandom club, one of the Wolverine Insurgents, and helped organize The Network. He resigned from CAPA early in 2019, just before the club disbanded because of the deaths of members and resignations.

He was a published artist at a very early age. He and his brother Trevor created a comic strip, "Petie Panda," that appeared in The Oak Ridge Journal in 1945, when Ray was 13 and Trevor was 10.

His main professional work includes the story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning", the novel The Ganymede Takeover co-authored with Philip K. Dick and Blake's Progress later re-written as Timequest. In the early ’70s. he ran a writers' workshop in the San Francisco area. One of his students was Anne Rice. While a member of the N3F, he once served as judge of the club's Amateur Story Writing Contest.

His SF novels include The Ganamede Takeover (1967) [with Philip K. Dick], Blake's Progress (1975), Then Beggers Could Ride (1976), The Ecolog (1977), The Revolt of the Unemployables (1978), The Prometheus Man (1982), and TimeQuest (1985). An historical mystery, Dog-Headed Death, was published in 1989. Several of his novels have been reprinted by Wildside Press.

Nelson was the subject of the Member Spotlight feature written by Heath Row and Jon D. Swartz in the March, 2010 (Vol. 10, No. 1) issue of The National Fantasy Fan. An interview with Nelson appears in the June, 2018 issue of Ionisphere, one of the current N3F fanzines.

He was married first to Lisa Mulligan; then to fan Perdita Lilly, for whom he wrote a volume of poetry, Perdita: Songs of Love Sex and Self Pity; then, in Paris, to Kirsten Enge, with whom he had a son, Walter; and, in 2017, to Dr. Helene Knox.

• An article on Nelson and the propeller beanie
• Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Fanzines and Apazines:

• Beret
• The Berkeley Bohemian (for CAPA)
• The Berkeley Pops (for CAPA)
• Big Cat
• Cafe Boheme
• The Existentialist Eye
• Garden Library
• Garden Party
• Le Marche Aux Puces Fantastique
• L'il Poo (for CAPA).
• Quoth (for CAPA)
• The Raven (for CAPA)
• Stupefying Stories
• Sunflower
• Universal Fanvariety (with Max Keasler)
• Universe
• Which Witch?
• Wireline

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

• 1982 -- Philip K. Dick Awards Special Citation for The Prometheus Man
• 1994 -- Baycon '94
• 2001 -- 1951 Best Fan Artist Retro Hugo nomination
• 2003 -- Rotsler Award
• 2014 -- Lifetime Achievement award from Corflu 31.
• 2019 -- First Fandom Hall of Fame

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Person

1931—

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