The deadline for submitting abstracts for the 2012 SFRA Conference has been extended to May 15, 2012. This means more time to don your thinking caps and submit your stellar proposals to Steve Berman (sdberman1121@gmail.com).

The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) commends the winners of the 2012 SFRA Awards! These awards recognize members of the SF community who exhibit outstanding scholarship, pioneering viewpoints in SF discourse, and lifetime contributions to SF research. Ritch Calvin, SFRA president, said of this year’s awardees, “We have a very fine slate of recipients this year; each one deserving of the recognition.”

The 2012 SFRA award recipients are:

*Pilgrim Award (for life time contributions to SF/F studies) - Pamela Sargent

Have you submitted your abstract for the 2012 SFRA Conference? If not, you still have time to submit before the April 23, 2012 deadline.

Issue number 297 is now available for download online at sfra.org under the following direct link: http://www.sfra.org/sfra-review/297.pdf

Mark Wilcox sent out the following call for submissions for the inaugural issue of James Gunn's Ad Astra, a new venue for science fiction scholarship. Visit Ad Astra's official site here, or read the call below:

Call For Papers

James Gunn's Ad Astra is a new online publication dedicated to the study, advancement, and celebration of speculative fiction in the twenty-first century. Ad Astra will be edited by volunteers at the Center for the Study of Science fiction at the University of Kansas. Each issue will feature an assortment of stories, reviews, scholarly articles, and poems about science fiction, fantasy, horror and other genres of speculative art and literature.

The first issue of Ad Astra is scheduled for release on June 22nd, 2012.

The theme for Issue #1 will be Communication and Information.

David G. Hartwell recently announced here that as a result of publisher changes the New York Review of Science Fiction will end print publication in July 2012. At that time, the editorial staff of the NYRSF will decide how best to proceed into the future. This could take one of a number of forms including PDF distribution to subscribers with print-on-demand. For SFRA members who elect to subscribe to the NYRSF at the organization's subscription discount, this announcement means that you can expect to receive print issues until July 2012, but the form that the NYRSF takes after that has yet to be determined. David and the other NYRSF editors will keep us informed about the shape of things to come.

Anne McCaffrey, a prolific and inventive science fiction writer, passed away on November 21, 2011. Perhaps most well-known for the Dragonriders of Pern and Brain and Brawn Ship series, she also wrote a significant number of other standalone novels and cycles. Her story, "The Ship Who Sang" appears in the SFRA anthology Visions of Wonder, edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf. Notably, her work often introduced elements of fantasy into rationally explained science fictional settings and she championed narratives focused on female protagonists. In response to the widespread popularity of her writing, she was recognized with a number of awards including SFWA Grand Master.

Locus Online carries an informative obituary of McCaffrey here.

McCaffrey's life and her work are extensively cataloged on Wikipedia here.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database contains an extensive and well-detailed bibliography of McCaffrey's writing here.

Haraway Pilgrim Talk from SFRA on Vimeo.