Rhysling Award.html

The Rhysling Awards are an annual award given for the best science fiction, fantasy, or horror poem of the year. Unlike most literary awards, which are named for the creator of the award, the subject of the award, or a noted member of the field, the Rhyslings are named for a character in a science fiction story: the blind poet Rhysling, in Robert A. Heinlein's short story The Green Hills of Earth. The award is given in two categories: "Best Long Poem", for works of 50 or more lines, and "Best Short Poem", for works of 49 or fewer lines.

The nominees for each year's Rhysling Awards are chosen by the members of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Each member may nominate one work for each of the categories. The nominated works are then compiled into an anthology called The Rhysling Anthology, and members of the Association then vote on the final winners.

Best Long Poem winners and finalists

1978

Winner: Gene Wolfe "The Computer Iterates the Greater Trumps"

1979

Winner: Michael Bishop "For the Lady of a Physicist"

1980

Winner: Andrew Joron "The Sonic Flowerfall of Primes"

1981

Winner: Thomas M. Disch "On Science Fiction"

1982

Winner: Ursula K. Le Guin "The Well of Baln"

1983

Winner: Adam Cornford "Your Time and You: A Neoprole's Dating Guide"

1984

Winner: Joe Haldeman "Saul's Death: Two Sestinas"

1985

Winner: Siv Cedering "A Letter from Caroline Herschel (1750-1848)"

1986

Winner: Andrew Joron "Shipwrecked on Destiny Five"

1987

Winner: W. Gregory Stewart "Daedalus"

1988

Winner: Lucius Shepard "White Trains"

1989

Winner: (tie): Bruce Boston "In the Darkened Hours" ; John M. Ford "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station"

1990

Winner: Patrick McKinnon "dear spacemen"

1991

Winner: David Memmott "The Aging Cryonicist in the Arms of His Mistress Contemplates the Survival of the Species While the Phoenix Is Consumed by Fire"

1992

Winner: W. Gregory Stewart "the button and what you know"

1993

Winner: William J. Daciuk "To Be from Earth"

1994

Winner: W. Gregory Stewart and Robert Frazier "Basement Flats: Redefining the Burgess Shale"

1995

Winner: David Lunde "Pilot, Pilot"

1996

Winner: Margaret B. Simon "Variants of the Obsolete"

1997

Winner: Terry A. Garey "Spotting UFOs While Canning Tomatoes"

1998

Winner: Laurel Winter "why goldfish shouldn't use power tools"

1999

Winner: Bruce Boston "Confessions of a Body Thief"

2000

Winner: Geoffrey A. Landis "Christmas (after we all get time machines)"

2001

Winner: Joe Haldeman "January Fires"

2002

Winner: Lawrence Schimel "How to Make a Human"

2003

Winner: (tie): Charles Saplak and Mike Allen "Epochs in Exile: A Fantasy Trilogy" ; Sonya Taaffe "Matlacihuatl's Gift"

2004

Winner: Theodora Goss "Octavia Is Lost in the Hall of Masks"

2005

Winner: Tim Pratt "Soul Searching"

2006

Winner: Kendall Evans and David C. Kopaska-Merkel "The Tin Men"

2007

Winner: Mike Allen "The Journey to Kailash"

2008

Winner: Catherynne M. Valente "The Seven Devils of Central California"

Best Short Poem winners and finalists