Bud Webster has been working on a long-term project for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, to identify the heirs of deceased sf writers. Now he's looking for some help. He writes:
The SFWA Estates Database is a project we've been working on for the past few years to compile and maintain an accurate (and therefore useful) listing of the literary estates of sf and fantasy authors so that editors and publishers have a resource to turn to for permissions to reprint, and forward payment.
I'm on several mailists which focus on old magazines and the writers who filled their pages as well as writing extensively about the history of the field, and as a result, when SFWA would get a request for an author's representative it would find its way to me. I'd query the members of the mailists, and more often than not come up with an answer (many of the FictionMags and PulpMags members are editors and/or publishers themselves, and thus had access to much of the info I was looking for.
The Estates info has always been published in the SFWA Directory, which is sent to all members. The last time Michael Capobianco was SFWA President, he approached me to help him with this project officially, in order to correct much of the data in that Directory list, and to plan a way to make it available on the (then new) sfwa.org website. Since then, we've been able to expand the list from under a hundred names to almost three hundred, and have corrected most of the errors that had crept in over the years. The list will also be far more useable, sorted not by agency but by author, which makes more sense anyway.
If you have information for Webster, please e-mail him at budwebster [at] mindspring [dot] com. The current list of deceased authors for whom he has "little or no data as to who reps their literary estates" includes:
Christopher Anvil (Harry Crosby, Jr.)
Jerome Bixby
Joseph Payne Brennan
Howard Browne
Daphne Castell
Mildred Clingerman
William E. Cochrane
Ronald Anthony Cross
Philip K. Dick
Lloyd Arthur Eshbach
Janet Fox
Leo Frankowski
H.B. Fyfe
Raymond Z. Gallun
Chester Geier
Bernard Gordon
Wyman Guin
Gary Gygax
Joseph L. Hensley
Edward D. Hoch
J. Hunter Holly
Robert E. Howard
Colin Kapp
P. Schuyler Miller
Kris Neville
Milorad Pavic
Rog Phillips
George W. Proctor
Tom Reamy
Ross Rocklynne
Milt Rothman
Robert Sampson
Michael Shaara
T.L. Sherred
Wilmar H. Shiras
George H. Smith
George O. Smith
Brian Thomsen
Manly Wade Wellman
Angus Wells
Wallace West
Donald E. Westlake
Paul O. Williams
Robert Anton Wilson
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