Earl Kemp
(November 24, 1929 – February 29, 2020)
A fan, publisher, SF editor, and critic, Earl Kemp (born Finis Earl Kemp) won a Hugo Award for Best Fanzine in 1961 for the first SaFari Annual aka Who Killed Science Fiction?, a collection of questions and answers with top writers in the field. For the second, he produced Why Is a Fan?, with opinions from dozens of fans.
Born in Arkansas, he later moved to Chicago. Kemp was president of the University of Chicago Science Fiction Club for almost a decade, and was probably responsible for the science fiction lecture series that brought Robert Heinlein, C. M. Kornbluth, Robert Bloch and Alfred Bester to campus and resulted in The Science Fiction Novel: Imaginative and Social Criticism (Advent:Publishers, 1959), which he edited.
He served as chairman of the 20th Worldcon, Chicon III, held in Chicago in 1962. He edited The Proceedings Chicon III (Advent:Publishers, 1963). Before winning with the Chicago in 1962 bid, he led two failed bids: Chicago: 1959 and Chicago in '60. He was involved in the semi-serious Tijuana in '69 Westercon bid and was the subject of The Kemp Fund to bring him to Chicon IV in 1982.
He was a member of the N3F and the (1962) Chicago SFL (II). He led production of The Purple Pastures at Pittcon.
In the 1950s, he compiled four lists of "The Science Fiction Book Index" that appeared in various publications.
Kemp helped found Advent:Publishers, a small press publisher focused on SF criticism, history, and bibliography.
Kemp worked as an editor under Algis Budrys at Blake Pharmaceuticals in Evanston, IL, producing pornography for William L. Hamling. During the 1960s and 1970s, Kemp was involved in publishing a number of erotic paperbacks, including an illustrated edition of the Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography in 1970. This publication led to their both being sentenced to prison for "conspiracy to mail obscene material," but they served only the federal minimum of three months and one day.
After many years of inactivity, he published the electronic fanzine e*I from 2002 to 2012.
He married fellow fan Nancy Kemp in 1949. They divorced sometime after 1970. They had three children, including sons Erik and Earl Terry Kemp; the latter is also a fan and a sf historian. Earl died of a pulmonary thromboembolism on February 29, 2020. (Several fan sources incorrectly gave the date as February 6.)
- Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
- Website.
- eFanzines pages.
- 2011 Video.
- Obituary at File 770.
- “Oh, Them Crazy Monkeys! Me and Earl and Robert Heinlein” by Alexei Panshin.
- ...be forgot, and never...
- Destiny [early 50s] (several issues)
- e.I
- Feliz Navidad 2001 [2001]
- Racing to Lemuria [2013]
- SaFari [1959–2000s] (for FAPA and SAPS, some issues with Nancy Kemp)
- SaFari Annual [1960–61] (aka Who Killed Science Fiction? and Why Is a Fan? with Nancy Kemp)
- TS-SAPS (for SAPS)
Awards, Honors and GoHships:
- 1961 -- 1961 Best Fanzine Hugo
- 2009 -- FAAn Award for Best Fanzine
- 2010 -- Corflu Fifty
- 2011 -- Past president of the FWA, Neffy Award for Best Fanzine
- 2012 -- FAAn Award Lifetime Achievement
- 2013 -- First Fandom Hall of Fame
| Person | 1929—2020 |
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