Glasgow Science Fiction Writers Circle

The Glasgow Science Fiction Writers’ Circle (GSFWC, aka "The Circle") is a group of amateur, semi-professional, and professional fiction authors that has met regularly in Glasgow, Scotland since 1987.

The purpose of the Circle is to provide a supportive, non-confrontational setting in which an individual's work can be reviewed, critiqued, and discussed. The group's underlying emphasis on quality and professionalism has, in recent years, contributed to the commercial publication of novels and/or short story collections by members including Michael Cobley, Hal Duncan, Gary Gibson, and Neil Williamson. Members have also had work published in magazines including Analog, Asimov's Science Fiction, Interzone, and The Third Alternative, and short story anthologies Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction, Other Edens II, Shipbuilding, and Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.

The origins of the Circle lie in a science fiction short story competition — originally suggested by the SF writer Chris Boyce — that ran for several years in The Glasgow Herald newspaper (now, The Herald). The winning entry was published in the weekend edition of the newspaper that coincided with what had effectively become, at that time, a local annual science fiction convention known as Albacon.

In 1986, Ann Karkalas of the University of Glasgow Adult & Continuing Education Department contacted the competition's judge, the writer (and the Herald's then-Science Fiction reviewer) Duncan Lunan, about the possibility of starting a science fiction writing evening class. Both knew each other previously from the Glasgow Science Fiction Circle, a group of readers and writers which had met during the 1960s and 1970s. Duncan was willing to teach the course, and indeed the classes would go on to run for the best part of a decade.

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