Erik Andersson

(July 26, 1962 --)

Erik Andersson entered Swedish fandom at the tail end of the 1970s and was for a decade one of its dominant forces. A prolific fan publisher, his genzine Der Leuchtturm was not only the decade's best but periodically also only qualitatively impressive sercon fansine. Simultaneously, in his personal fanzine Abstrakt Astrakan, as well as in several oneshots, he showed an impressive talent as a raconteur, humorist, and essayist. A further, more absurd and entertainingly irreverent side was on display in his contributions to the multi-editor Ghöteborgs Faanveckliga, as a filk singer-songwriter and as a stage improviser, usually with David Nessle, entertaining audiences at many conventions. In the early 1990s, Anderssons obvious literary talents enabled him to write full time; his first book was a short story collection published in 1993; since then until 2023 he has published a further story collection, four books of essays and five novels.

Already in 1984, Erik Andersson began working as a translator, first of a handful of sf titles, then for more prestigeous publishers. Among the authors he translated were early on Philip K. Dick, Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison, crime authors Ross Thomas, James Ellroy, and Patricia Cornwell; later he turned to Flann O'Brien, Nick Hornby, Kate Atkinson, and Zadie Smith. In the early 2000s, he worked for years on a new Swedish translation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which when published in 2004-2005 was hailed by critics; in 2007 he published a book on his translation. Another years-long translation followed, and in 2012 his new translation of James Joyce's Ulysses was published, and in the same year another book on that translating work. Erik Andersson is now considered both a major Swedish author in his own right, and a masterful translator; he has received numerous literary awards in addition to his fannish one.