For the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement award, I’m nominating Glen Cook.

The Black Company, back in 1984, started the whole ‘dark’ or ‘gritty’ epic fantasy thing, thirty years ago, and put the epic fantasy mercenary company on the map. It also featured moral ambiguity, another hallmark of recent epic fantasy, in stark contrast to the majority of other epic fantasy in the 80s, which was still starkly good vs. eeevil.

Add in those cool Garrett the medieval private eye novels, and the fact that The Black Company became a long series of stand-alone mid-sized novels, and that is a great lifetime achievement in fantasy.