H.G. Wells Award for Outstanding Transhumanist Contributions of the Year: Charles Stross

In 2004 World Transhumanist Association began to award the “H. G. Wells
Award for Outstanding Transhumanist Contributions of the Year.”

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was an English futurist and writer. H.
G. Well’s first bestseller was Anticipations, published in 1901. Perhaps
his most explicitly futuristic work, it bore the subtitle “An Experiment
in Prophecy” when originally serialized in a magazine. The book is
particularly interesting for its prescience - trains and cars result in
the dispersion of population from cities to suburbs, and moral
restrictions declining as men and women seek greater sexual freedom.

His early novels, called “scientific romances”, invented a number of
themes now classic in science fiction in such works as The Invisible
Man, and The War of the Worlds

He was a utopian and socialist, and a member of the Fabian Society, an
British group of utopian social democratic thinkers. But he was very
aware of the ways that political authoritarianism and other social
trends could lead to very unpleasant outcomes, and some of his novels
depicted very dystopian futures, like The Time Machine, in which class
divisions led to a division of society into two different species, and
The Sleeper Awakes, about a socialist who wakes up in a socialist future
gone terribly wrong.

From quite early in his career, he sought a better way to organize
society, and wrote a number of Utopian novels, usually starting with the
world rushing to catastrophe, until people realize a better way of
living, whether by mysterious gases from a comet causing people to
behave rationally (In the Days of the Comet), or a world council of
scientists taking over, as in The Shape of Things to Come (1933). This
latter work depicted, all too accurately, the impending World War, with
cities being destroyed by aerial bombs. After the war a new world is
built, scientifically advanced and united. But at the end of this story
the question is left open about whether the Luddite backlash will stop
human progress.

Winner of the 2006 H.G. Wells Award:

Charlie Stross

Watch Charlie’s Acceptance Speech

Charles David George “Charlie” Stross (born Leeds, October 18, 1964) is
a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the first speculative
fiction author to receive the HG Wells award. His works range from
science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy.
Stross is one of a new generation of British science fiction writers who
specializes in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries
include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod and Cory Doctorow.
In addition to working as a writer of fiction he has worked as a
technical author, freelance journalist, programmer, and pharmacist at
different times. He holds degrees in Pharmacy and Computer Science.
His novella “The Concrete Jungle” (available online) won the Hugo award
for its category in 2005. Most recently, Accelerando (also available
online) won the 2006 Locus and Hugo awards for best science fiction
novel.