CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

William Shunn

American writer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ6175304
Source-derived summary

William Shunn (born August 14, 1967) is an American science fiction writer and computer programmer. He was raised in a Latter-day Saint household, the oldest of eight children. In 1986, he served a mission to Canada for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but was arrested for making a false bomb threat, for the purpose of preventing his fellow missionary from returning home.

Life and career

Shunn received a B.S. in computer science at the University of Utah in 1991. He went to work for WordPerfect Corporation and was part of the team that developed WordPerfect 6.0 for MS-DOS. In 1995, he moved from Utah to New York City. He left the LDS Church at the same time and created one of the earliest ex-Mormon web sites.

Shunn's first professional short story was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1993. He has been nominated once for the Hugo Award and twice for the Nebula Award.

Shunn is the author of a 2015 memoir, The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary.

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, he created what may have been the first online survivor registry.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “William Shunn” as american writer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around William, Shunn and American.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1967, 1986, 1991, 1995—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with William, Shunn and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “William Shunn”, the useful work is to connect “american writer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6175304. The first chronological checks are 1967, 1986, 1991 and 1995.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “William Shunn”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow William Shunn primary sources, William Shunn archive and William research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “William Shunn”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from William Shunn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.