The folks at Locus have been busy over the Holidays, and the results of the short fiction categories are now available. These results are much more in tune with what I would have voted for, and I suspect that’s not unconnected with the fact that there appear to be fewer voters. I say “appear” because the lower number of voters per item could also indicate a wider selection. That may also be the case. It certainly is in the Hugos. But I’d be quite interested to see a comparison of the number of people who voted in each category, and how many picks they had. I suspect there will be variation all the way from people who filled the entire ballot to people who just voted for one or two novels.

Anyway: Ted Chaing, yay! Kij Johnson, yay! Kelly Link, yay! Margo Lanagan, yay! And so on. I’m particularly pleased to see two Clarkesworld stories: “The Things” by Peter Watts and “Spar” by Kij Johnson make the top 10 of 21st Century short stories.

One final thought. I suspect that if Dune had been published today, and been written by a woman, it would have been marketed as “fantasy”.