The Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award is given to “a science fiction or fantasy writer whose work displays unusual originality, embodies the spirit of Cordwainer Smith’s fiction, and deserves renewed attention or ‘Rediscovery’.” Judges Barry Malzberg, Mike Resnick, Robert J. Sawyer, and Elizabeth Hand chose this year’s honoree. Malzberg, the usual presenter, had a last-minute conflict that prevented him from attending this year’s convention, but Gordon Van Gelder (editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) ably stepped in to make the announcement. This year’s honoree is Fredric Brown (1906-72).
As Van Gelder said in his announcement, Brown is at the very least a, and possibly the, master of the science fiction short-short story [a form near to my own heart], though he also wrote three classic novels: What Mad Universe (1949), The Lights in the Sky are Stars (1952), and Martians, Go Home (1955). Most of the classics of the short-short sf subgenre are Brown’s, including “Arena” (filmed several times, including as a classic Star Trek episode) and the evergreen “Knock”. In 2001, NESFA Press published From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF (Science Fiction) of Fredric Brown; the following year, they published Martians and Madness: The Complete SF Novels of Fredric Brown.
Van Gelder also noted that Brown wrote straight mystery. His first mystery novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint, won the Edgar Award.
Brown was active from the late 1930s until the 1960s. The ISFDb has an extensive bibliography at this link.
The announcement of the award came at the beginning of Readercon’s Friday night Meet the Pros(e) event. Among the audience (which seemed to be at least half the attendees of the convention) was last year’s honoree, Katherine MacLean.