Jim Fiscus (1944-2021)

SF writer, fan, and award administrator Jim Fiscus, 76, died suddenly on November 7, 2021 at home in Oregon.

Fiscus began publishing short SF in 1986, with a handful of additional stories appearing in the 2000s. He was best known in the field as administrator of the Endeavour Awards honoring Pacific Northwest authors and for his decades of work as a SFWA volunteer. He hosted SFWA events at Westercons in the ’90s and wrote a column for the SFWA Bulletin. In 2008 he became SFWA’s Western regional director, and later a director-at-large, serving as chair on various committees. He received the Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award in recognition of his work for the organization. He also volunteered for Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc., the group that runs OryCon, chairing both the Endeavour Awards and the board of trustees for the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund, providing grants to SF writers in the Pacific Northwest who suffer medical emergencies.

James W. Fiscus was born in Oregon in 1944, and grew up mainly on the East Coast and England before returning to Oregon as a teenager. He left Lewis and Clark College in 1967 to join the Navy, serving overseas, and later returned to finish his degree. He worked as a photojournalist, then enrolled at Portland State University, where he earned a MA in Middle East and Asian History (1987). He was a journalist, wrote history textbooks, and worked in public relations. His other books include non-fiction about war, and Meet King Kong (2005), about the making of the first King Kong film.

Fiscus is survived by wife Shawn Wall.

[Via File 770]