Awards

We Iz Recommended

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The boss end of the Clarkesworld editorial collective has been going over the Locus Recommended Reading List to see how we, and other fiction magazines, did. You can find Neil’s analysis here, but the most exciting news is that we actually have two stories on the list. They are:

If you happen to be wondering what to put on your Hugo ballot, you might like to click through and read those stories.

Media Overload

~ Cheryl

There was a little Twitter storm here this afternoon as the American Library Association announced their Youth Media Awards. The ALA was right on the ball, having a live video feed from the awards ceremony, and coverage on Twitter, Facebook and Second Life. Being caught up in work I didn’t quite twig when Colleen Twitted (Tweeted?) that the ceremony was starting, but thankfully I was paying attention when the news came in that Neil Gaiman had won the Newbery.

The ALA’s web site went through a period of extreme overload shortly thereafter and I was unable to get full data (though I did get confirmation of Neil’s win from his own happy Tweets). I have since discovered that their Twitter feed crashed during the ceremony as well. It looks like Twitter is clearly the way to get news out, at least to the new media generation.

So now my ambition is to generate enough interest in the Hugos that my live coverage and the Hugo Twitter feed go down during the ceremony.

And Weird Tales too

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

When I was writing about semiprozines yesterday I entirely forgot about Weird Tales. Thankfully they quickly reminded me that they too are a Hugo-eligible semiprozine.

So let’s think about this. Even if Locus were not eligible, we could have a semiprozine slate composed of Interzone, Weird Tales, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Clarkesworld and NYRSF. Would that really be such a bad thing?

And there are plenty of other fiction magazines around too. The only reason that they haven’t got on the ballot before is that no one has nominated them.

Some Pimpage

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

No, not for me. You know what I do, and most of it is here anyway.

Instead I would like to ask you to think a bit about semiprozines. I happen to work for one now. That job started this month, so I can’t claim any influence on the eligibility period, but Clarkesworld Magazine has been running monthly throughout 2008 and has published stories by a number of major writers including Robert Reed, Theodora Goss, Mary Robinette Kowal, Catherynne Valente, Jeff Ford, Jay Lake, Stephen Dedman and Tim Pratt. It has also included non-fiction by Jeff VanderMeer, Ekaterina Sedia and Tobias Buckell. And despite being online it has fabulous covers. You can see the whole back issue archive here.

Clarkesworld is one of a large number of magazines that count as semiprozines because they pay their contributors good rates and take advertising, but are run mainly by enthusiasts in their spare time. (Like me, Neil Clarke has a “real” job outside of the SF industry. Sean Wallace is full time in publishing, but at Prime Books, not with us.) Without them the short fiction market would be much the poorer. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, which has been a nominee in the past, falls into the same category. We are all part of that group of magazines that Ben Yalow claims are not worthy of a Hugo nomination, and Seth Breidbart says are not even worth reading.

I can’t predict whether the semiprozine category will go away this year. It is a very complex debate. But I do know that if the abolition of the category is ratified in Montreal then Clarkesworld, and many other magazines like it, will never have another chance. (Neil would, of course, be eligible for Best Editor (Short Form), but that means competing against the likes of Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois and Gordon Van Gelder.)

More to the point, if all of those small press fiction magazines start getting a bunch of nominations, perhaps SMOFdom assembled will actually acknowledge that they exist. So if you do have nominating rights, share a little love on semiprozines, please.

Scalzi Declines

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

John Scalzi has just put up a post about this year’s Hugos. In it he says:

What about Best Fan Writer? I hear you ask. I’ll make it simple: don’t nominate me this year. There are lots of excellent writers out there deserving of this award who have not won it, and I think right now the best thing for this particular award is to have the love spread around for a while, and to have the science fiction community recognize both eligible newer writers and some writers for whom recognition in this category is long overdue. I’ve won it; I’m good, thanks. Give it to someone new.

So, presumably less controversy over that one this year.

I shall miss John’s presence in the race. I don’t think I have a hope in hell of beating him, but his presence gave the category a much higher profile. Also there’s not so much kudos in winning a prize for being the Best Fan Writer Who Isn’t John Scalzi. I guess I’ll just have to write a best selling novel so I can compete with him again.

There will, of course, be people asking why I don’t retire from the category as well. There’s not much that I can say in my defense because I would like to win it, but I can note that I bumped Emerald City out of Fanzine and into Semiprozine after I’d won Fanzine. And I haven’t yet won Fan Writer. Also if I did retire I’d get just as much flak from people saying “who does she think she is, that she assumes she’s bound to get nominated?” Which would be quite reasonable because there are a lot of good people out there. Hopefully, as John says, we’ll see some fresh faces.

Watching Comic Creation

~ Cheryl

I didn’t put Dave Gibbons’ Watching the Watchmen up on my “currently reading” list because, to be honest, there’s not a lot of reading involved. If you are interesting in the process of comic creation, and like to be able to see how rough layouts are eventually transformed into full-fledged comic pages, then it is utterly fascinating. If that doesn’t interest you then there isn’t a lot else. However, towards the end of the book Dave does devote much of a page to a photo of one of these.

Dave says that he and Alan were delighted to win a Hugo because they always had the impression that science fiction fans looked down on comics, so they must have done something truly amazing. Besides, Hugo trophies are really useful. Dave uses his as a door stop. Alan has apparently turned his upside down and stuck it in the ground, in which configuration it makes an excellent bird table.

Nnedi in The Guardian

~ Cheryl

The Guardian book blog has published an article about Nnedi Okorafor’s win in the Wole Soyinka Prize (something I wrote about on SFAW a few days ago). This is really a rather huge story, because the Wole Soyinka is the top prize for literature in all of Africa, and the book is a YA fantasy novel written by a woman. As Sam Jordison says, you can’t imagine the Booker Prize ever deigning to notice such a work. Africa, it seems is a little less stuffy.

Still, another good deed done. Now all I need to do is get hold of a copy of Zahra the Windseeker.

World Fantasy Awards

~ Cheryl

Well, that turned out to be a lot of fun despite not being in Calgary. If you want to see what happened, you can replay the coverage here. And…

Yay! Go Liz! Go Guy!

Happy dance. It is nice when my friends win.

World Fantasy Awards Coverage

~ Cheryl

It turns out that the whole things would have been a bust anyway as there is no wi-fi access in the banquet room. Fabulous ace reporter, Gigi Gridley, will be texting the winners through to me as they are announced and I’ll be doing my best to pretend some sort of party atmosphere over at SFAW. You are welcome to join me from around 12:30pm Pacific Time onwards.

In the meantime, I have the finale of the Formula 1 season to watch.

I Say, Back On Track!

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

As Kevin reported last night, a few additional memberships in the Steampunk Convention became available last night. We quickly bagged a couple. If you are going, you can expect to find us around on Saturday. Please note that while we will make an effort, we are unlikely to achieve anywhere near the level of sartorial elegance of Mr. Roche and Mr. Trembley. I will try to get Kevin to read some of George Mann’s The Affinity Bridge before we go so that we can both enthuse about it. The game’s afoot! Tally ho!

In other news, the very wonderful Gigi Gridley has offered to live-blog the World Fantasy Awards for SFAW. More on that later this week.

Heroic Fantasy Gets An Award

~ Cheryl

I’ve just done a post over at SFAW about the brand new David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy, an award for fantasy novels of truly heroic stature. I suspect that will make a whole bunch of people very happy. There are folks who are always moaning that heroic fantasy never gets a fair whack in the Hugos or World Fantasy Awards. Well this is an award for them.

The mechanism is also quite interesting. Essentially what they have done is take the structure of a juried award, but farm out the job of reading the long list and narrowing it down to a short list to the general public. A jury still gets to pick the winner, but a lot of the hard work for that jury (in reading a whole bunch of submitted works that are not up to scratch) is removed.

If you happen to be a fantasy novel editor and have not been asked to nominate works yet, I suggest you get in touch with Debbie Miller, the award administrator.

Booker Update

~ Cheryl

As you may have heard, Salman Rushdie’s fantasy novel, The Enchantress of Florence, did not make the short list for this year’s Booker Prize. Apparently the judges didn’t think it was very good. Thankfully they refrained from making any comments about “fantasy rubbish”. But there is another book on the short list that is of interest because it is written a past winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award. Amitav Ghosh’s The Sea Of Poppies is described as follows:

Beginning in 1838, among the poppy fields of India during the build up to the first opium war, this is a historical novel of the old school. There are pirates, exotic landscapes, palaces, prisons, swash and buckle galore, while reams of information about nineteenth-century conditions give a patina of authenticity to an otherwise enjoyably unlikely narrative.

That sounds sort of Neal Stephenson-ish. The description came from Sam Jordison’s review in today’s Guardian Book Blog. Sadly for Ghosh, that’s about as good as it got. Sam was distinctly underwhelmed. Read the whole review to see why.

All Down To Us Now

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

The comics and anime communities have noticed the new Graphic Story Hugo and are getting excited about it in various ways. (Including people who assumed that anime had been banned from the Hugos up until now.) However, most of these folks are people who have never been to Worldcon and quite probably never will go to Worldcon. Many of them probably also think that it is the duty of the “Hugo judges” to give the rocket to the “right” graphic story (by which they mean “the one I like best”).

But of course those “Hugo judges” are people like you and me. Many of us are not exactly experts in graphic story telling. And I don’t want to see the Graphic Story Hugo go the same way as the abortive Video Game Hugo that L.A.Con IV ran. So we need help. I shall be doing something a bit more formal over on SF Awards Watch towards the end of the year, but of anyone has any suggestions of things that I should be reading now, please let me know.

Meanwhile Kevin has had a few wise things to say about the process.

The Best Dressed Award

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

As regular readers will know, for many years now I have been handing out a “best dressed” award at the Hugo ceremony. It is time once again for a winner to be announced. There was a fair amount of stiff competition this year. Naomi Fisher is always very elegant. Ellen Datlow, Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Kaja Foglio all looked splendid, as did the ladies accompanying John Scalzi, Wil McCarthy and Ed Bryant. Lisa Konrad gets a special mention for having bought her lovely dress in Fairy Gothmother in Camden (and teaming it with boots). However, for sheer princessly gloriousness, not to mention coming with a matching tiara, there can be no doubt about the winner. Ladies and Gentlemen, the 2008 Emerald City Best Dressed Award goes to…

– drum roll –

Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal's dress

I spoke to Mary briefly about the dress on the night. If I recall correctly it is from the 1960s and was purchased in a vintage clothing store in Portland, Oregon. Those of you into dressmaking can learn much more about it in this post.