2025 Robert A. Heinlein Award Winner

Sharon Lee

Sharon Lee Wins 2025 Robert A. Heinlein Award

The Robert A. Heinlein Award will be formally presented during opening ceremonies of Balticon 59

Friday, May 23, 2025

8:00 p.m.

Sharon Lee's first science fiction story, "A Matter of Ceremony," appeared in the May 1980 issue of Amazing Stories.  In the decades since, with her late partner, Steve Miller, she authored more than 100 novels and shorter works.

Lee and Miller's best-known creation is their genre-bending Liaden Universe®, a vast, multi-cultural space opera setting featuring traders, scouts, long-lived alien "Turtles," independent logics, furry empaths, psionics, gamblers, thieves, and persons of grace, goodwill, and really phenomenal luck. Or, as it says on the card: "Welcome to the Liaden Universe®, where honor, wit, and true love are potent weapons against deceit and treachery."

Lee and Miller's work reflects their core, shared philosophies – that fiction ought to be fun, both the reading and the writing of it; and that we're all better when we help each other.

Early influences on Lee and Miller of course include Robert Heinlein, as well as Georgette Heyer, classic "Star Trek," Isaac Asimov, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E," Dorothy Sayers, "The Twilight Zone," E. E. "Doc" Smith, classic "Avengers," Anne McCaffrey, "Rocky and Bullwinkle," James Thurber, "Get Smart," C. J. Cherryh, and "Captain Kangaroo," among others.

During their long and storied career, Lee and Miller were celebrated as guests of honor at more than two dozen science fiction conventions across the country, and were frequent panelists and guest speakers.

Their awards include the Prism for Best Futuristic Romance, the Golden Duck for Best YA SF, the Reader's Choice Award for the Year's Best Military and Adventure SF of 2017, and the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (the Skylark).

Sharon Lee is continuing the work she and her co-author began in 1988, with their first novel, Agent of Change.  Diviner's Bow, the 27th Liaden Universe® novel, will be published by Baen in April 2025, with three more novels under contract.

For more information about the Liaden Universe®, including reading orders, go to https://korval.com. 

To keep up with Sharon and the resident Maine coon cats, go to https://sharonleewriter.com