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.
Formerly known as the Pioneer Award, the SFRA Innovative Research Award was renamed in 2019 following lengthy discussions and a community vote.
[*Each award is keyed to the calendar year preceding the conference at which it was presented.]
Award Committee
John Rieder (chair)
Sümeyra Buran
Ciarán Kavanagh
2024
Rebekah Sheldon, “Generativity without Reserve: Sterility Apocalypses and the Enclosure of Life-Itself,” Science Fiction Film and Television 16.3 (2023): 277-299.
2023
Pawel Frelik, “Power Games: Towards the Rhetoric of Energy in Speculative Video Games,” Er(r)go. Teoria – Literatura – Kultura 44 (2022): 75-94.
Honorable Mention: Nora Castle, “In Vitro Meat: Contemporary Narratives of Cultured Flesh,”Extrapolation 63.2 (2022): 149-179.
2022
Amy Butt, “The Present as Past: Science Fiction and the Museum,” Open Library of Humanities 7.1 (2021): 1-18.
Honorable Mention: Katherine Buse, “Genesis Effects: Growing Planets in 1980s Computer Graphics,” Configurations 29 (2021): 201-230.
2021
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.
2019
Jed Mayer, “The Weird Ecologies of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” Science Fiction Studies 45.2 (2018): 229-43
2018
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.
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.
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.
Overview
The Executive Committee of the Science Fiction Research Association invites travel grant proposals to attend and present at the annual conference of the Science Fiction Research Association. Maximum awards of $500 may be given. (In the past the SFRA has considered distance traveled primarily in terms of domestic vs. international travel. Starting with travel awards for the 2019 conference, the geographic criterion has been based on the estimated cost of travel, as one factor among many.)
While you do not need to be a current member of the organization to apply for this grant, please remember that you must be a member of SFRA to present at the conference. Grant checks will be presented to awardees during the conference funded by the grant.
Deadline for this year's grants: March 31st (notifications of awards will be sent around April 30th)
Please organize your proposal as follows:
- A cover page that gives the name of the applicant (please do not identify yourself or your institution in the rest of the proposal), mailing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, distance from the conference; please note your willingness to accept partial funding. Submit your cover page as a separate document from the remainder of your proposal.
- The abstract for your paper (as submitted to the conference director).
- A grant proposal of no more than 300 words in which you explain:
- the financial difficulty you face in attempting to attend the annual SFRA conference and
- the professional growth you intend to receive by attending the conference.
- A realistic, detailed budget for your conference attendance. Be sure to list alternative funding resources you have already applied for and/or received money from.
Criteria for Selection
You may find the following criteria useful in preparing your proposal. The Executive Committee will use these to conduct reviews of all proposals.
- Need: The proposal demonstrates a significant need.
- Distance: The proposal demonstrates that the applicant will have to travel far distances to attend the conference.
- Contribution: The project being presented makes an original contribution to scholarship in the field.
- Professional Growth: The proposal articulates clear objectives for professional growth.
- Cost: Budget expenditures are reasonable and the applicant has also sought funding elsewhere.
- Dollars Available: The organization will attempt to award as many travel grants as possible while remaining fiscally responsible.
Restrictions
No individual or organization may submit more than one proposal for SFRA funding per calendar year (conference travel, research travel, or other grants); this does not prohibit an individual applying for conference travel funding from preparing a small grant application on behalf of a collective to which he or she belongs. The first consideration will go to those who have not received an award in the last three years.
Expectations of Award Recipients
Grant recipients will be expected to do the following:
- Present at the SFRA Conference they are being funded to attend.
- Submit a final written report of 1 to 2 pages to the secretary of the SFRA Executive Committee by September 30 of the calendar year in which they attend and present at the SFRA conference.
Questions should be directed to SFRA Secretary Sarah Lohmann.
Proposals should be submitted to the same, as Rich Text File or Portable Document Format attachments.