George H. Scithers

George H. Scithers was an American science fiction fan, author and editor. He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which was established by author Fletcher Pratt in 1944, and which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers. A long-time member of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), Scithers published a fanzine starting in the 1950s, wrote short stories, and moved on to edit several prominent science fiction magazines, as well as a number of anthologies.

In 1957, Scithers began submitting to the fanzine Yandro. Two years later, he began publishing the Hugo Award-winning fanzine Amra. The term "Swords and Sorcery" first appeared there, and Amra became a leading proponent of the subgenre. Several of the articles originally published in Amra were later re-printed as part of two volumes about Conan the Barbarian which Scithers co-edited with L. Sprague de Camp.

In 1963, Scithers chaired Discon I, the 21st Worldcon, held in Washington, D.C. He was a regular parliamentarian for business meetings of the WSFS and authored a guide to running science fiction conventions, The Con-Committee Chairman's Guide, based on his experiences chairing Discon.

Scithers' first published fiction appeared in If magazine in 1969. In 1973, Scithers founded Owlswick Press, a small independent publishing company. In 1976, Owlswick published Scithers' book (under the pseudonym Karl Würf), To Serve Man: A Cookbook for People (including recipes for "Boiled Leg of Man", "Texas Chili with Cowboy", and "Person Kebabs").

In 1977, Scithers was named the first editor for Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. He remained in that position until 1982, and won two more Hugo Awards for his work there. After leaving IASFM, Scithers took the helm at Amazing Stories and edited that magazine until 1986. In 1988, he worked with John Gregory Betancourt and Darrell Schweitzer to re-establish Weird Tales, the magazine that had introduced one of his earliest interests, Conan the Barbarian, to the world. In 1992, he and Schweitzer won a World Fantasy Award for their work on Weird Tales.

In 2001, Scithers was the Fan Guest of Honor at the Worldcon, Millennium Philcon. At the 2002 World Fantasy Convention in Minneapolis, Scithers received the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. As editor emeritus of Weird Tales, he lectured at the Library of Congress in 2008.

Scithers resided in Rockville, Maryland, and was very fond of owls and trains. He died on April 19, 2010, two days after suffering a heart attack.
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