THE MAN BEHIND THE PRIZE
Ralph Slone, writing under the pen name of Ralph Williams

Ralph Slone arrived in McGrath, Alaska in 1941 with his young wife and their two small children. An engineer for the Civilian Aeronautics Administration, precursor to the FAA, Ralph was to work at the new McGrath airport for the next thirteen years. He immediately fell in love with his new home, and the years passed quickly. He learned to fish, to hunt, and to survive in the wilderness. In the long dark winters he fed a passion for the written word. Ralph published his first science fiction story in 1942. There followed a long period during which he was too pre-occupied with other commitments to spend much time at the typewriter – he and his wife produced nine more children before 1953, almost all of them born at home. It was a busy life caring for and feeding this brood. But in the early 1950s, driven by the need to develop a supplemental income to provide for his family, Ralph rekindled his passion for writing. He began once again to sell stories, mostly to pulp magazines, but also to hunting magazines and more mainstream publications. His first interest was science fiction, and he soon developed a friendship through correspondence with John Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction (now Analog). Ralph sold a number of stories to Astounding during the 1950s, getting his start along with many whose names have become more well-known: Asimov, Bradbury, Hubbard, Poul. Several of his stories were collected into anthologies published by Campbell. Ralph sold other stories wherever he could find a market: horror, nature, humor. In 1953 he and his wife and their eleven children moved to Homer, Alaska, where he continued to work for the CAA. By 1959, the couple had thirteen children, and Ralph was a very busy man. During summer leave from his job (he was by then the station manager of the airport), he would commercial-fish for salmon. In 1959, at the age of 42, Ralph and his eleven-year-old son, his apprentice deckhand, were lost at sea during a fishing trip. His last sale was the cover story for Astounding’s June, 1959 edition for which the author became, posthumously, a finalist for the Hugo Award.

The Ralph Williams Prize for Speculative Fiction is offered in honor of a great Alaskan, a truly versatile man of the frontier – engineer, carpenter, fisherman, hunter, writer and family man – who contributed in his short life to the development of Science Fiction as a respected genre, although his own development as a writer was cut unexpectedly short. It is hoped that through this prize his commitment to quality writing, to intelligent plots and meaningful themes, will continue to flourish through other hands.