Ray Nelson

(October 3, 1931 --)

Radell Faraday Nelson is a fan, cartoonist, and writer whose early work (both cartooning and writing) was for fanzines. He was born in Schenectady, became captivated by SF at the 1939 World's Fair, and perhaps his single greatest claim to fannish fame is as the creator of the iconic propeller beanie of fandom while a 10th-grader. (Though he did organize the Second International Beanie Brigade in the early 80s.)

Ray is a long-time member of CAPA, the Golden Gate Futurians, the Detroit Science Fiction league, SAPS, Little Men, ISFS, and the N3F. He is also a member of First Fandom, one of the Wolverine Insurgents, and helped organize The Network. He resigned from CAPA early in 2019, just before the club disbanded because of the deaths of members and resignations.

He was a published artist at a very early age. He and his brother Trevor created a comic strip, "Petie Panda," that appeared in The Oak Ridge Journal in 1945, when Ray was 13 and Trevor was 10.

His main professional work includes the story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning", the novel The Ganymede Takeover co-authored with Philip K. Dick and Blake's Progress later re-written as Timequest. In the early 70s. he ran a writers' workshop in the San Francisco area. One of his students was Anne Rice. While a member of the N3F, he once served as judge of the club's Amateur Story Writing Contest.

His SF novels include The Ganamede Takeover (1967) [with Philip K. Dick], Blake's Progress (1975), Then Beggers Could Ride (1976), The Ecolog (1977), The Revolt of the Unemployables (1978), The Prometheus Man (1982), and TimeQuest (1985). An historical mystery, Dog-Headed Death, was published in 1989. Several of his novels have been reprinted by Wildside Press.

Nelson was the subject of the Member Spotlight feature written by Heath Row and Jon D. Swartz in the March, 2010 (Vol. 10, No. 1) issue of The National Fantasy Fan. An interview with Nelson appears in the June, 2018 issue of Ionisphere, one of the current N3F fanzines.

He was married first to Perdita Lilly, then to Kirsten Enge, and in 2017 to Helene Knox.

An article on Nelson and the propeller beanie

Fanzines and Apazines:

• Beret
• The Berkeley Bohemian (for CAPA)
• The Berkeley Pops (for CAPA)
• Big Cat
• Cafe Boheme
• The Existentialist Eye
• Garden Library
• Garden Party
• Le Marche Aux Puces Fantastique
• L'il Poo (for CAPA).
• Quoth (for CAPA)
• The Raven (for CAPA)
• Stupefying Stories
• Sunflower
• Universal Fanvariety (with Max Keasler)
• Universe
• Which Witch?
• Wireline

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

• 1982 -- Philip K. Dick Awards Special Citation for The Prometheus Man
• 1994 -- Baycon '94
• 2001 -- Best Fan Artist Retro Hugo (nomination)
• 2003 -- Rotsler Award
• 2014 -- Lifetime Achievement award from Corflu 31.
• 2019 -- First Fandom Hall of Fame

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