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Bradbury was such a beautiful, generous writer.  I've got his From the Dust Returned enqueued and am looking forward to experiencing his magic once again.

@ Scott, I was another Bradbury/Burroughs whelp - I think it might be a generational thing.

On Golden Age writers, according to ISFDB, James Gunn (89) was first published in 1949, so he makes the cutoff, along with the aforementioned Vance (96) and Pohl (93).  Just missing out are Richard Matheson (86) and Frank M. Robinson (86), both first published in 1950, Harry Harrison (87),  Gene Wolfe (81), and Julian May (81), all first published in 1951, and Daniel Keyes (85), first published in 1952.

Other "elder statesmen" authors who published in the 1950s or later are Mary Stewart (96), Doris Lessing (93), Richard Adams (92), Carol Emshwiller (91), Brian Aldiss (87), Kate Wilhelm (84), Sheri S. Tepper (83), Ursula K. Le Guin (83).

Some other living "associational" people are Martin Greenberg (94), Betty Ballantine (93), Ray Harryhausen (92), Christopher Lee (90), Stan Lee (90), Chuck Yeager (89), Christopher Tolkien (88), Alvin Toffler (84).

May they live all the years of their lives!  (Stolen from Swift )

If I were voting for next year's Grand Master award, Gene Wolfe and Richard Matheson would be my top candidates.

@jervalaw  Thanks for the link, that was a great video.

I should have paid more attention to this thread -  so much great stuff.

I've only read The Illustrated Man by Bradbury but I really liked it.  Not sure why I never read any of his other stuff.  Just one of those "holes" you find in your reading when you stop to consider.  I should move him up my list.

@dustydigger and others: I managed to miss out on Burroughs in my youth too!  Not sure how that happened.  I guess because I started reading on my own without much adult guidance.  And I'm a pretty old fart myself.  I did make up for lost time in the last few years reading Barsoom and loving every cheesy minute of it.

@jeralaw: That's a fantastic video, indeed.  I should add that to the site.  It's fun to see the Grand Masters in their prime like that!

@Englebrecht:  That's a nice bit of research that makes me desperately want to build a SF/F author timeline showing all the WWEnd authors in order of their first publication!  Some kind of scrolling timeline with author pics and dates picked out.  The pics would link to the author pages and the dates would link to a search result list of all the books published that year in our database.  I'll have to noddle on that for a bit.  Too bloody cool not to do!

@Scott Laz: You can go to YouTube for many more of those kinds of videos but don't forget to look at our massive list of over 400 videos here on the site:  Author Videos  We've been combing through YouTube for you!  The videos can be found on the author pages too.  Its about time I made another update to the list it seems.

The whole stipulation that the author must still be living is a bit silly to me.  It means that at the blistering pace of one award per year (at least for the last few years) they are going to be leaving off a lot of deserving authors through attrition.  There was a good discussion of this very topic on the Coode Street Podcast where they talked about the jury not wanting to make the obvious choice in a given year thinking the next jury would give it to that obvious author and then the author passed away.  They make an argument for giving more than one award a year because of the aging authors mentioned in this thread.  Give it a listen.