Most Senior SF Writer

Who (among major writers, admittedly a vague criterion) has been writing for the longest time? And who held the record before them?

First published	Born	Died	Who?	Span	Years on Top
1818	1797	1851	Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley	33	33
1851	1828	1905	Jules Verne	54	54
1879	1859	1930	Arthur Conan Doyle	51	25
1888	1866	1946	H. G. Wells	58	16
1912	1875	1950	Edgar Rice Burroughs	38	4
1919	1896	1975	Murray Leinster	56	25
1928	1908	2006	Jack Williamson	78	31
1937	1919	2013	Frederik Pohl	68	7
1949	1923	2020	James Gunn	71	7
1952	1933	2022	Ron Goulart	70	1
Current Contenders
1954	1935		Robert Silverberg	>68
1956	1939		Michael Moorcock	>66
1957	1939		Peter S. Beagle	>65

Jack Williamson held the record the longest in modern times.

Note that this list is not “Oldest Living SF Writer”, which only requires a single story and significant longevity. Here, we are looking for a career which is both long and major.

First, "major" is inevitably subjective to a degree. Early writers for magazines like Weird Tales or the mundanes who published something that was arguably SF and lived on forgotten — or never known — by fandom still qualify for "Oldest Living SF Writer." Here, we're looking for writers who had a major and continued impact on the field.

Second, there are writers who write something important, but whose writing career was relatively brief. We're looking for people with long active careers, not who were simply long-lived. To count, an active career should have spanned a majority of the time since their first published appearance. (And, yes, Mary Shelley is a bit of a dodge, since while undoubtedly a majorly influential SF writer — arguably the very first such — she doesn't have a large body of work. But no one else from that period does, either.)

Most subjective of all, is "major." Given two people who have essentially equivalent careers, where one is of significantly greater stature and influence in the field, we will pick the latter.

Anyway, this is all for fun.

For a somewhat different take, see Dean of Science Fiction. Also see: Most Senior Fan.

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