Harry Lang Honored at Writers of the Future Gala

by John Goodwin, President of Galaxy Press

Harry Lang, from Prospect Park, Pennsylvania, was honored Sunday night, April 15th, at the 28th Annual L. Ron Hubbard Achievement awards at the prestigious Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, California.

A video of the award acceptances by Harry Lang and illustrator Mago Huang can be viewed at YouTube.

The annual event celebrated the winners in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contests before a packed hall of over 1,000 guests and thousands more who were logged on to watch the event as it streamed live.

The night’s keynote speaker was Dr. J. Storrs Hall, founding chief scientist of Nanorex, Inc. Hall recently served as President of the Foresight Institute and is known as the originator of the Utility Fog concept and the Weather Machine. He spoke of the relationship between science fiction as the inspiration that leads to science fact. Hall quoted Hubbard who stated, “The Artist injects the spirit of life into a culture,” and continued by charging the evening’s winners with their responsibility stating, “What this means is that the artist has a very deep and abiding duty to his or her culture. The duty of the artist, and the duty of the science fiction writer in particular, is to inject that spirit of life.”

The event celebrated the annual winners in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contests, where Harry was one of the twelve writer winners with his story “My Name Is Angela,” making it further than some several thousand others who entered the international competition, and where he saw his winning story published in the bestselling Science Fiction anthology series L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XXVIII soon available in bookstores across the US.

Harry Lang was born in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, back when Eisenhower was president and no one had visited space. One of his earliest memories is watching John Glenn being strapped into a Mercury capsule on TV; he has lived in the future ever since. Generous doses of Star Trek, Ray Bradbury and the rest of the usual suspects sparked a lifelong interest in science fiction.

Writing has long been part of a broad resume of artistic interests; decades of devoted effort have produced a truly impressive collection of rejections. It wasn’t until his first acceptance by the online publication Bewildering Stories that Harry realized he might not be crazy after all. “My Name Is Angela” is his first professional sale.

When not actually writing or attending to the myriad necessities of life here on Earth, Harry enjoys teaching creative writing to small groups of home-schooled students. Harry graduated from Philadelphia College of Art with a BFA in painting in 1981. He is currently a review editor for Bewildering Stories. He lives in Prospect Park, Pennsylvania, with his brilliant wife and six brilliant kids and works as a technical designer for a gargantuan aerospace corporation.

Prior to the awards ceremony, the winners came from countries as diverse as Taiwan, Australia, Sweden, UK, Poland, Canada as well as the U.S. to attend a week long workshop taught by contest judges — including New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson (Dune series), World Fantasy Award winner Tim Powers (On Stranger Tides, adapted as the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean film), multiple Hugo and Nebula award winner Robert J. Sawyer (Flash Forward and The WWW Trilogy), Hugo and Nebula award winning author Larry Niven (the Ringworld series), and internationally acclaimed artists, Stephan Martiniere (visual designer for the game Myst and concept artist for Star Wars: Episodes II and III, Tron Legacy and Star Trek), Stephen Hickman (over 350 book and magazine covers), Robert Castillo (S.P.I.C. The Storyboard of my Life), and Cliff Nielsen (cover artist for Chronicles of Narnia) — each one an experienced professional in the field providing sound advice based on hard-won experience.

Each writing and illustrating contest winner was presented their trophy by contest judges at the ceremony and combined cash prizes and royalties of over $30,000, and their story published in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Volume XXVIII.

The Writers of the Future writing contest was initiated by L. Ron Hubbard in 1983 to provide a means for aspiring writers to get that much-needed break. Due to the success of the Writing Contest, the companion Illustrators of the Future Contest was created in 1988.

The intensive mentoring process has proven very successful. Past winners of the Writing Contest have published over 750 novels, 3,500 short stories and winners of the Illustrating Contest have had their art published in more than 500 books and magazines, with 4,500 illustrations, 350 comics and over 1.3 million art prints.

For more information please contact Mr. Carmen Barth and to see the awards ceremony online, go to www.writersofthefuture.com.

(l. to r.) Robert Castillo, judge, Illustrators of the Future; Harry Lang; Rebecca Moesta, judge, Writers of the Future