Russell Davis, president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), has announced that Joss Whedon will receive this year’s Bradbury Award for excellence in screenwriting. Whedon is the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and Dollhouse. The award will be given during the Nebula Awards weekend in Los Angeles, California, 24-26 April 2009.
In announcing the award, Davis said “I’m very excited to be giving this honor to Joss Whedon in recognition of his substantial and superior body of work, including Buffy, Angel, Firefly and the Serenity film, as well as Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog. His impact as a writer, producer, and director on the science fiction and fantasy film and television landscape is undeniable, and he is more than deserving of this recognition from our organization.”
Responding to the announcement, Whedon said “Like everyone who picks up a pen, I was a rabid Bradbury fan and as greatly influenced by him as any other writer I read. To receive the award named for him is an honor I’d not dreamed of. In my defense, it didn’t exist back then. What did exist were the very lovely, very twisted, and very human stories that warped my impressionable mind, and that I have tried, in whatever medium they will let me, to measure up to.”
The Bradbury Award is not a Nebula, but was created in 1992 by then-President Ben Bova and named after famed author and screenwriter Ray Bradbury. The Award is a special president’s award presented for outstanding genre-themed work in a dramatic medium. Previous Bradbury Award winners include James Cameron for Terminator 2 (1992), J. Michael Straczynski for Babylon 5 (1999), and Yuri Rasovsky and Harlan Ellison for 2000X—Tales of the Next Millennia, a National Public Radio series (2001).
Starting next year, the award will become the annual Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation. For more on the new Bradbury Award, see this article on the recent overhaul of the entire Nebula process.