Nalo won an Aurora! Yay!!! Bounce, bounce, bounce.

World Fantasy members please note when considering your votes.

Several weeks ago, before my life got plunged into chaos by a panic project at work, David Moles asked me to write about this year’s Tiptree Award. I have finally got around to finishing the article, and you can find it here. Profuse apologies to David for taking so long to produce it.

Although I still have some web sites to finish (and other that could always do with more work), I think I am now all caught up on writing projects, so if anyone wants to suggest some new Challenge Cheryl questions, please go ahead and do so. I shall do my best to try to answer them.

The Guardian has not one, but two reports from the Clarke Award ceremony. This is progress, even if Sam didn’t quite realize that the event was taking place in the middle of Sci-Fi London.

Sam’s reports of conversations with the jury sound like it was very much a typical Clarke Award with much debate happening behind closed doors. Good to see that the jurors were working hard.

Many congratulations to Richard. I’ve not read Black Man / Thirteen yet, but Abigail Nussbaum makes it sound very interesting. And not to worry, Mr. Scalzi, I don’t think this presages a shock sweep of awards by people named Morgan in 2008.

A while back on SF Awards Watch we posted about The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao, a book which today has been revealed as the winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction. From the novella published in The New Yorker it does seem like Junot Díaz is a really good writer, but equally poor Oscar is a really pathetic nerd. I mean, Blake’s 7??? (That will get me into trouble.)

Anyway, it appears that Díaz is not alone, and if the New York Times can use the deaths of two old men who happen to blog as proof that blogging is bad for your health then surely I can use two books about nerds to claim evidence of a startling new trend in mainstream literature.

The other book is All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well (yes, that is the title) by Tod Wodicka. There’s more about it on GalleyCat, but the important evidence is as follows:

Burt, the novel’s protagonist, is a vehemently faithful medieval reenactor, who dresses in handmade garb and refuses to drink coffee because it’s “out of period.” He tries to give up all his possessions and journey to Prague to reconcile with his estranged son, but don’t let your sympathy build up just yet. “I wanted Burt to be an unlikable asshole,” Wodicka says, “and in the earlier drafts, he was even more of one than he is now.”

(Note to Mr. Scalzi – I think “Burt” is the character’s first name, though I could be wrong.)

So there you have it. Two data points, so it must indicate a new literary movement, right? As to why? Well, obviously some of these mainstream types are running scared. They have seen how successful SF is these days, and how other mainstream authors are using SF themes in their work in a desperate attempt to stay relevant in today’s technology-obsessed world. Rather than give up and join the flow, they are busily writing books about how awful those SF types are in a desperate attempt to turn the tide.

Well, that’s my theory anyway, and I think it holds up at least as well as the NYT one about the dangers of blogging does (if not a lot more so). Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to write a proposal for a novel about a greedy entrepreneurial geek who makes a fortune running science fiction conventions for his sad, nerdy friends but gets into blogging and dies of a heart attack at 25.

The PKD is one of my favorite awards. Not only does its juries generally produce very good results, it also, thanks to its focus on paperback-only publication, manages to highlight very deserving works that never get a sniff of the major awards.

So yes, I’m delighted that Nova Swing won. As you probably know, M John Harrison is one of my favorite writers. I loved Light, and if I’m slightly less enthusiastic about Nova Swing that is probably only because I still have a strong geek streak that is always yearning for the next sensawunda experience. I’m also delighted that the courage my pal Juliet Ulman had in bringing Mike’s work to a US audience when older, supposedly wiser editors said he’d never sell here is apparently paying off.

However, what really pleases me about last night’s results is the Special Citation (i.e. second place) for Minister Faust. From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain didn’t make my Hugo short list, but it would absolutely be in my top ten of 2007 SF, and possibly even the top 5 if I had time to sit down and think about the selection. Karen Burnham and I have been plugging the book enthusiastically for some time and have generally got a pretty negative reaction from the rest of the critic community, in no small part because some of them can’t get past the cover. But it is a very fine book. Here’s Karen’s review.

I’m not entirely sure what to say about this one other than that I firmly believe that the world needs books about conceptual sharks. They are a clear and present danger to our well-being, and the lack of government attention to this urgent problem is nothing less than shameful.

Also, of all the Clarke nominees I have read, this one is my favorite. The jury, of course, may disagree, but I do hope that it wins (and that Steven Hall gets to write his Doctor Who episode). A big “hurrah” for Canongate for publishing such an adventurous book.