Steve Sem-Sandberg

(August 16, 1958 --)

Steve Sem-Sandberg entered Swedish fandom with the publication of his oneshot fanzine Lux Eterna in the summer of 1975, containing only an epic science fiction poem of that title. He quickly became an active contributor to many other fanzines, and in 1979–1980 was the editor of Sf forum, the fanzine published by the Scandinavian SF Society in Stockholm. During his time as editor, efforts were made to develop the fanzine into a semi-prozine; this fit well in with his own ambition to become an author, and he published short stories as well as novelettes in both fanzines and professionally. Already in 1976 he had two short sf novels published professionally, a third followed in 1977, and in 1979 he published a short story collection in collaboration with Bertil Mårtensson.

Sem-Sandberg's active period in fandom was brief, and although he translated a couple of sf novels in 1986, he basically left fandom early in the 1980s, after only five years of considerable and often impressive activity. His next novel was published in 1987, a work in the literary mainstream highly regarded by critics. He has remained prolific but also firmly within the realist confines of modern Swedish literary fiction, although he in a 2003 essay spoke warmly of his early fascination with sf. In 2009, his novel The Emperor of Lies, which was also his international breakthrough book, recieved Sweden's two major literary awards; in 2014 he received the Prix Médicis for best foreign novel published in France as well as the Prix Transfuge for the year's best European novel. Sem-Sandberg was elected to the Swedish Academy in 2021 and is a member of the Academy's Nobel Prize committee.