William Shunn

William Shunn
William Shunn at the 2007 World Fantasy Convention
Born	Donald William Shunn II August 14, 1967 Los Angeles, California, USA
Occupation	Short story writer
Nationality	American
Period	1993–present
Genre	Science Fiction
Website
www.shunn.net

William Shunn (born August 14, 1967) is a science fiction writer and computer programmer. He was raised in a Latter-day Saint household, the oldest of eight children. He attended the Clarion Workshop in 1985. In 1986, he served a mission to Canada for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but was arrested for making a false bomb threat, for the purpose of preventing his fellow missionary from returning home.^[1]

Shunn received a B.S. in computer science at the University of Utah in 1991.^[2] He went to work for WordPerfect Corporation and was part of the team that developed WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS (the word processor's final major DOS version, released in 1993). In 1995, he moved from Utah to New York City. He left the LDS Church at the same time and created one of the earliest ex-Mormon web sites.^[3]

Shunn's first professional short story was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1993.^[4] He has been nominated once for the Hugo Award and twice for the Nebula Award. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, he created what may have been the first online survivor registry.^[5][6]

Awards and nominations

• 2001: Nominated for Nebula Award for Best Novelette for "Dance of the Yellow-Breasted Luddites" (Vanishing Acts, ed. Ellen Datlow, Tor Books, New York, NY, 2000)
• 2006: Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novella and Nebula Award for Best Novella for "Inclination" (Asimov's Science Fiction, April/May 2006)

Bibliography

• Netherview Station story series:
  • The Practical Ramifications of Interstellar Packet Loss (1998)
  • Dance of the Yellow-Breasted Luddites (2000)
  • Inclination (2006)
• Strong Medicine (2003)
• Love in the Age of Spyware (2003)
• The Missionary Imposition, essay (2005)
• An Alternate History of the 21st Century, chap-book (2007)

References

1. "Missionary gets day's jail, $2,000 fine for bomb hoax", Monica Zurowski, Calgary Herald, February 27, 1987
2. "Through the Years", Continuum: The Magazine of the University of Utah, Fall 2007
3. "Mormon Matter"
4. Editorial introduction to "From Our Point of View We Had Moved to the Left," The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1993
5. Journalism After September 11, Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan (eds), Routledge, 2002, ISBN 0-415-28799-5
6. "Online help spawns hope for victims", Charles Cooper, CNET News.com, September 13, 2001

External links

• Official site
• William Shunn at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• "The Practical Ramifications of Interstellar Packet Loss" (short story)
• "Love in the Age of Spyware" (short story from Salon, 16 July 2003)
• "Strong Medicine" (short story from Salon, 10 November 2003)
• "The Missionary Imposition" (personal essay)
• Podcast of Shunn comparing the Book of Mormon to Lord of the Rings