The SFRA Innovative Research Award The SFRA Innovative Research Award is given to the writer or writers of the year's best critical essay-length work published in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Formerly known as the Pioneer Award, the SFRA Innovative Research Award was renamed in 2019 following lengthy discussions and a community vote.
| Award Committee Ali Sperling (chair) Anna Kurowicka Haerin Shin |
| 2020 | Jesse S. Cohn, "The Fantastic From Counterpublic to Public Imaginary: The Darkest Timeline?", Science Fiction Studies 47.3 (2020): 448-463. |
| Honorable Mention: Adriana Knouf, "Xenological Temporalities in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Lovecraft, and Transgender Experiences," Studies in the Fantastic 9 (2020): 23-43. | |
| 2020 | Susan Ang, “Triangulating the Dyad: Seen (Orciny) Unseen,” Foundation 48.132 (2019): 5-21. |
| Honorable Mention: Raino Isto, “‘I Will Speak in Their Own Language’: Yugoslav Socialist Monuments and Science Fiction,” Extrapolation 60.3 (2019): 299-324. | |
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2019 2018 |
Jed Mayer, "The Weird Ecologies of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” Science Fiction Studies 45.2 (2018): 229-43 Thomas Strychacz, "The Political Economy of Potato Farming in Andy Weir's The Martian," Science Fiction Studies 44.1 (March 2017): 1-20. |
| 2017 | Lindsay Thomas, “Forms of Duration: Preparedness, the Mars Trilogy, and the Management of Climate Change,” American Literature 88.1 (March 2016): 159-184. |
| 2016 | Scott Selisker, "'Shutter-Stop Flash-Bulb Strange': GMOs and the Aesthetics of Scale in Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl," Science Fiction Studies 42.3 (November 2015): 500-18. |
| 2015 | Graeme MacDonald, "Improbability Drives: The Energy of SF," Paradoxa 26: "SF Now" (2015): 111-144. |
| 2014 | Jaak Tomberg, "On the Double Vision of Realism and SF Estrangement in Gibson's Bigend Trilogy," Science Fiction Studies 40.2 (July 2013): 263-85. |
| 2013 | Lysa Rivera, "Future Histories and Cyborg Labor: Reading Borderlands Science Fiction after NAFTA," Science Fiction Studies 39.3 (November 2012): 415-36. |
| Honorable Mention: Hugh C. O'Connell, "Mutating toward the Future: The Convergence of Utopianism, Postcolonial SF, and the Postcontemporary Longing for Form in Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome," MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 58.4 (Winter 2012): 773-95. | |
| 2012 | David M. Higgins, "Towards a Cosmopolitan Science Fiction," American Literature 83.2 (June 2011): 331-54. |
| 2011 | John Rieder, "On Defining SF, or Not," Science Fiction Studies 37.2 (July 2010): 191-201. |
| 2010 | Allison de Fren, "The Anatomical Gaze in Tomorrow's Eve," Science Fiction Studies 36.2 (July 2009): 235-65 |
| 2009 | Neil Easterbrook, "Giving an Account of Oneself: Ethics, Alterity, Air,"Extrapolation 49.2 (Summer 2008): 240-60. |
| 2008 | Sherryl Vint, "Speciesism and Species Being in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Mosaic 40.1 (March 2007): 111-26. |
| 2007 | Amy J. Ransom, "Oppositional Postcolonialism in Québécois Science Fiction,"Science Fiction Studies 33.2 (July 2006): 111-26. |
| 2006 | Maria DeRose "Redefining Women's Power through Feminist Science Fiction,"Extrapolation 46.1 (Spring 2005): 66-89. |
| 2005 | Lisa Yaszek, "The Women History Doesn't See: Recoverying Midcentury Women's SF as a Literature of Social Critique," Extrapolation 45.1 (Spring 2004): 34-51. |
| 2004 | Andrew M. Butler "Thirteen Ways of Looking at the British Boom," Science Fiction Studies 30.3 (November 2003): 374-93. |
| 2003 | Lance Olsen, "Omniphage: Rock'n'Roll and Avant Pop Science Fiction," in Edging into the Future. Ed. Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon. Philadelphia: U of Philadelphia P, 2002. 30-56. |
| 2002 | Judith Berman, "Science Fiction without the Future," New York Review of Science Fiction 13.9 (May 2001): 1, 6-8. [full text] |
| 2001 | De Witt Douglas Kilgore, "Changing Regimes: Vonda N. McIntyre's Parodic Astrofuturism," Science Fiction Studies 27.2 (July 2000): 256-77. [full text] |
| 2000 | Wendy Pearson, "Alien Cryptographies: The View from Queer," Science Fiction Studies 26.1 (March 1999): 1-22. [full text] |
| 1999 | Carl Freedman, "Kubrick's 2001 and the Possibility of a Science-Fiction Cinema," Science Fiction Studies 25.2 (July 1998): 300-19. |
| 1998 | I. F. Clarke, "Future-War Fiction: The First Main Phase, 1871–1900," Science Fiction Studies 24.3 (November 1997): 387-412. [full text] |
| 1997 | John Moore, "Shifting Frontiers: Cyberpunk and the American South,"Foundation 66 (Spring 1996): 59-68. |
| 1996 | Brian Stableford, "How Should a Science Fiction Story End?" New York Review of Science Fiction 7.6 (February 1995): 1, 8-15. |
| 1995 | Roger Luckhurst, "The Many Deaths of Science Fiction: A Polemic," Science Fiction Studies 21.1 (March 1994): 35-50. [full text] |
| 1994 | Larry McCaffrey and Takayuki Tatsumi, "Towards the Theoretical Frontiers of Fiction: From Metafiction and Cyberpunk through Avant-Pop," SF Eye 12 (Summer 1993). |
| 1993 | No award |
| 1992 | Istvan Csiscery-Ronay Jr., "The SF of Theory: Baudrillard and Haraway," Science Fiction Studies 18.3 (November 1991): 347-404. [full text] |
| 1991 | H. Bruce Franklin, "The Vietnam War as American Science Fiction and Fantasy,"Science Fiction Studies 17.3 (November 1990): 341-59. |
| 1990 | Veronica Hollinger, "The Vampire and the Alien: Variations on the Outsider,"Science Fiction Studies 16.2 (July 1989): 145-60. |