Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and the Science Fiction Research Association will work together more closely in the future, thanks to a new liaison positions established jointly by those two organizations.

James Van Pelt will serve in the liaison position for SFWA starting immediately, while Ed Carmien will hold the same capacity for SFRA. Both authors hold memberships in SFWA and SFRA. The moves were announced by SFWA President Russell Davis and SFRA President Adam Frisch.

"I'm excited about the potential for this relationship," Davis said. "There are clear areas of common interest to the memberships of both organizations and I hope members will choose to take advantage of the wide ranging areas of expertise."

This liaison agreement is an attempt to facilitate appropriate communications and to increase discourse between the two organizations. SFRA members who want to contact a particular author for legitimate research will contact their liaison who will then contact his SFWA counterpart. Likewise, SFWA member needing access to scholars for various purposes will follow a similar procedure. The clarified and simplified lines of communication will hopefully foster improved communication and offer mutual benefits for both organizations.

"It seems to me a given that the more scholars can do to understand the authorial contexts behind SF writing, and the more SF authors can gain from SFRA's format of probing scholarly analysis, the better off both of our groups and the SF community in general will be," Frisch said. "It is our hope that this SFRA-SFWA liaison agreement, focused as it does on generating appropriate interchanges, can help such understandings occur more frequently."

Posted November 14, 2008