Science Fiction Awards Watch

Niall Harrison, editor of Strange Horizons magazine, has posted a look at several 2011 awards, including his pics for those works he expects to see on various shortlists.

Niall starts out with some commentary and reaction to Ursula Le Guin’s article on the subject that I covered here a while back.

Editor Harrison is certainly in a better position than most to make predictions;  that he is willing to make them in public is a bit unusual and deserving of attention.

Thanks to Jared Shurin of the Kitschies for the heads up.

Tom Hunter – the Arthur C. Clarke Award Director – discusses the plethora of science fiction awards (and why that’s not a bad thing) and pays particular attention to the relatively new Kitschie Awards and their uncanny predictive powers.

You can read the article on the HuffingtonPost here.

The British Science Fiction Awards nominees have been announced. The awards will be presented at Eastercon in April.

Best Novel

• Cyber Circus, by Kim Lakin-Smith
• Embassytown, by China Miéville
• The Islanders, by Christopher Priest
• By Light Alone, by Adam Roberts
• Osama, by Lavie Tidhar

Best Short Fiction

• “The Silver Wind,” by Nina Allan
• “The Copenhagen Interpretation,” by Paul Cornell
• “Afterbirth,” by Kameron Hurley
• “Covehithe,” by China Miéville
• “Of Dawn,” by Al Robertson

Best Non-Fiction

• Out of This World: Science Fiction But Not as We Know It, by Mike Ashley
• The SF Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition, edited by John Clute, Peter Nicholls, & David Langford
• Review of Arslan, by M.J. Engh & Abigail Nussbaum
• SF Mistressworks, edited by Ian Sales
• Pornokitsch, edited by Jared Shurin & Anne Perry,
• The Unsilent Library: Essays on the Russell T. Davies Era of the New Doctor Who, by Graham Sleight, Tony Keen, & Simon Bradshaw

Best Art

• cover for The Noise Revealed, by Dominic Harman
• cover for A Monster Calls, by Jim Kay
• cover for Osama, by Pedro Marques
• cover for A Glass of Shadow, by Anne Sudworth

Via Steven H Silver/SF Site News

FINALISTS ANNOUNCED FOR THE 2011 KITSCHIES, PRESENTED BY THE KRAKEN RUM

The Kitschies are proud to announce the finalists for the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works of genre literature.

The shortlisted books for the Red Tentacle (for novel):

• The Enterprise of Death by Jesse Bullington (Orbit)
• Embassytown by China Miéville (Tor)
• A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd (Walker Books)
• The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (Sandstone)
• Osama: A Novel by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)

The shortlisted books for the Golden Tentacle (for debut):

• Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick (Tor)
• God’s War by Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Harvill Secker)
• Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (Quirk)
• The Samaritan by Fred Venturini (Blank Slate Press)

The shortlisted books for the Inky Tentacle (for cover art):

• Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch; illustration by Stephen Walter, design by Patrick Knowles (TAG Fine Arts) (Gollancz)
• The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan; design by Peter Mendelsund (Canongate)
• The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco; design by Suzanne Dean, illustration by John Spencer (Harvill Secker)
• Equations of Life by Simon Morden; design by Lauren Panepinto (Orbit)
• A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd; illustration by Jim Kay (Walker Books)

The winning author of the Red Tentacle will receive a £750 prize; the winners of the Golden Tentacle and Inky Tentacles each receive £250. All three will also receive iconic, hand-made Tentacle trophies.

All the finalists receive a bottle of The Kraken Rum.

This shortlisted titles were selected from a list of over 150 submissions received from 38 publishers and imprints.

The winners will be announced on February 3, 2011 at an award ceremony to be held at the SFX Weekender 3.

Award Director Anne C. Perry said:

“Our goal in creating this award was not just to bridge the gap between genre and literature but to prove that there’s no gap at all. And we feel that 2011 has gone a long way towards illustrating that. We’re tremendously delighted by the passion we’ve seen from the authors, editors, publishers and fans – all of whom have contributed to make this an extraordinary year for The Kitschies.”

Red and Golden Tentacle Judge (and 2010 Red Tentacle winner) Lauren Beukes said:

“It’s been a fraught and bloody process winnowing the nominees down to shortlists of just five, involving passionate fan-rants, general geekery, some very silly jokes and occasional outbreaks of threatened violence between the judges.

2011 produced some remarkable novels. These are the ones that stood out for all of us, according to The Kitschies’ criteria: books that were inventive, playful and smart, packed with intriguing ideas, great characters and nudged at the boundaries of things, or overturned them altogether.

I suspect getting consensus on the ultimate winners is going to turn into even more of a knife-fight. A battle to which I fully intend to bring a mecha armed with autocannons.”

Inky Judge Hayley Campbell added:

“As we sorted through the mountain of submissions, we were glad to see our old pals the hooded druids, the snarling werewolves, and the miscellaneous bit of unfathomably large spaceship – we cast them a friendly wave as we sorted them out of the pile.

We were looking for stuff that went beyond the obvious, the kind of cover that would not relegate a book to the dark forgotten corner of the bookshop where the monsters live. What we were left with was an astonishingly diverse collection of covers, and an even more diverse collection of opinions.”

The judging panel for the Red and Golden Tentacles is:

• Lauren Beukes (2010 Red Tentacle winner for Zoo City)
• Rebecca Levene
• Anne C. Perry
• Jared Shurin

The judging panel for the Inky Tentacle is:

• Darren Banks
• Hayley Campbell
• Catherine Hemelryk
• Craig Kennedy
• Anne C. Perry

Thanks to File770 (original story here), we learn that the Munsey Award, presented at Pulpfest (and given to “the most worthy” by Pulpfest peers), has been renamed in honor of Rusty Hevelin, one of the “stalwarts” of Pulpfest.

The award will now become the Rusty Hevelin Service Award or, the Rusty.

Via File 770 -

Fans may now submit nominations for the 2012 Fan Activity Achievement Awards. These awards honor the best in fan writing, drawing, publishing and posting for the calendar year 2011.

The full story here

and the ballot HERE

Gary Wolfe sends along this information:

Genevieve Valentine has been named winner of the 2012 William L. Crawford Fantasy Award for her novel Mechanique, published by Prime Books in 2011.

The award, which includes a cash prize, is presented annually at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, is designated for an exceptionally promising writer whose first fantasy book was published the preceding year.  Prior winners include Jonathan Lethem, Charles de Lint, Greer Gilman, Judith Tarr,  Kij Johnson, Joe Hill, M. Rickert, Daryl Gregory, Christopher Barzak, Jedediah Berry and, last year, Karen Lord.

The nominators for this year’s award also shortlisted Erin Morgenstern for The Night Circus, Tea Obreht for The Tiger’s Wife,  Stina Leicht for Of Blood and Honey, and Ransom Riggs for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.  Those participating in the selection included Stacie Hanes, Niall Harrison, Ellen Klages, Kelly Link, Cheryl Morgan, Graham Sleight, and Paul Witcover.

The 2012 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts will take place March 21-25 in Orlando, FL.  Further details are at www.iafa.org.

According to Locus and John Scalzi, multiple award-winning author Connie Willis has received SFWA’s grandest award and will be presented with it at the SFWA Nebula Awards Weekend this year in Arlington, VA.

More information on the Grand Master Award.

A well deserved award!

Vote for as many titles as you’d like – and pick what you ENJOYED, rather than what you think is the ‘best’. (Sounds like Le Guin had a little influence on this one!)

To participate, go here

I’ve got the short list – can’t pub it until tomorrow!

(Which I hope I will be able to do remotely from Arisia)

Nominations are now open for the 2011 Ursa Major Awards, intended to recognize the best works published in the field of anthropomorphics last year. http://www.ursamajorawards.org/nominations.htm

Nominations close on February 29; voting starts March 15 and closes May 4 (to allow last-minute online voting from Morphicon). Furry fans may nominate up to five works in each category.  The 2011 Awards will be announced and presented in a ceremony at CaliFur VIII in Irvine, CA, June 1 – 3, 2012.

Available awards include Best Motion Picture, Dramatic Short Work or Series, Novel, Short Fiction, Other Literary Work, Graphic Story, Comic Strip, Magazine, Website, Published Illustration, and Game.

If you cannot think of five worthwhile nominees in each category, see the 2011 Recommended Anthropomorphics List on the Ursa Major Awards website for suggestions. http://www.ursamajorawards.org/ReadList.htm

Concatenation is out with its round up of the latter part of 2011 (mostly Euro, but that’s a good thing!), including reports on Worldcon, Fantasycon & Eurocon – which means AWARD news.

You can read Concatenation HERE

In other news, I will be attending Arisia 2012 this weekend (working the bid table and room parties for Orlando in 2015 as well as doing advance promotional work for the Amazing Stories Project), so it is unlikely that regular awards reporting will take place during that time.  On the other hand, I hope to be able to post some entries (and pics!) from the event itself.

Regardless, come Monday and SFAW will be back to its normal schedule – including a con report.

Lots of Award news this morning from various sources including Cheryl Morgan (please update your mailing lists and change your entry for SFAW), SFSignal and Locus -

The 2011 Philip K. Dick Award Nominees have been announced:

The judges of the 2011 Philip K. Dick Award and the Philadelphia SF Society, along with the Philip K. Dick Trust, are pleased to announce seven nominated works that comprise the final ballot for the award:

A SOLDER’S DUTY by Jean Johnson (Ace Books)
AFTER THE APOCALYPSE by Maureen F. McHugh (Small BeerPress)
DEADLINE by Mira Grant (Orbit)
THE COMPANY MAN by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
THE OTHER by Matthew Hughes (Underland Press)
THE POSTMORTAL by Drew Magary (Penguin Books)
THE SAMUIL PETROVITCH TRILOGY by Simon Morden (Orbit)

First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, April 6, 2012 at Norwescon 35 at the Doubletree Seattle Airport Hotel, SeaTac, Washington.

The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the Philip K. Dick Trust and the award ceremony is sponsored by the NorthWest Science Fiction Society. Last year’s winner was THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF SPRING HEELED JACK by Mark Hodder (Pyr) with a special citation to HARMONY by Project Itoh (Haikasoru). The 2011 judges are Scott Baker (chair), Mark Budz, Roby James, Darrell Schweitzer, Alice K. Turner.

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The World Fantasy Award Judges have been empaneled.  (This year’s award is designed by Gahan Wilson!)

2012 World Fantasy Awards Judges

John Berlyne               Zeno Agency Ltd; Primrose Hill Business Centre; 110 Gloucester Avenue;  London NW1 8HX; United Kingdom

James P. Blaylock      157 N. Pine Street; Orange, CA  92666; USA

Stephen Gallagher      St Judes Cottage; Abbott Brow; Mellor; Blackburn BB2 7HT; United Kingdom

Mary Kay Kare            908 15th Avenue East; Seattle, WA 98112; USA

Jacques Post              Luitingh-Sijkhoff; Leidsegracht 105A, Postbus 289; 1000AG Amsterdam; The Netherlands

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The deadline for nominations for the Spectrum Fantastic Art award fast approaches.  January 27th.  Tor has more info.

~~~

WSFA announced that nominations for the 2012 Small Press Award are now open.  Details here

I’ve added a new page to the site – Cons That Present Awards.

There are three tables (alpha by con and award name, date by date), with links to the convention homes or information pages.

It’s no great shakes, but might prove useful to someone.

You can view it HERE

Mike Kennedy,  Con-Stellation’s NASFA Shuttle editor, writes in to inform us that Karen Landsdale will be receiving the HWA’s President’s Award for service.

The awards will be presented at this year’s World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, the 25th anniversary for that event.

According to Joe and the Horror Writers Association website, Mr. Lansdale and Mr. Hautala will be presented with the 2011 HWA Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s World Horror Convention (Salt Lake City UT, March 31st, 2012).

It is also the 25th anniversary of the organization that Lansdale helped found.

More information regarding the convention here

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Chicago, Illinois, USA – Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), is delighted to announce that the 2012 Hugo Award nomination period is now open.

Nomination ballots will be accepted from January 2, 2012, to Sunday, March 11, 2012, 23:59 PDT for the prestigious Hugo Awards and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Members of Chicon 7 and LoneStarCon 3 (the 2013 Worldcon) who join by January 31, 2012, and all members of Renovation, the 2011 Worldcon, are invited to submit nominating ballots.

The Hugo Awards are the premier award in the science fiction genre, honoring science fiction literature and media as well as the genre’s fans. The Awards were first presented at the 1953 World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia (Philcon II), and they have continued to honor science fiction and fantasy notables for nearly 60 years.

More information about the Hugo Awards, including details about how to submit a nominating ballot, is available from www.chicon.org/hugo-awards.php. Nominations may be submitted by postal mail or online.

For additional information, contact us at HugoAdmin

As reported by Lloyd Penney

The 2011 Aurora Awards were given out at the 31st CanVention, or Canadian
National Convention, held as part of SFCOntario 2 in Toronto, Ontario,
Canada November 18-20, 2011.

The winners…

2011 Aurora Awards winners

Best Novel, English
WWW: Watch by Robert J. Sawyer

Best Short Story, English
“The Burden of Fire” by Hayden Trenholm

Best Poem/Song, English
“The ABCs of the End of the World” by Carolyn Clink (A Verdant Green)

Best English Graphic Novel
Goblins, by Tarol Hunt (<goblinscomic.com>)

Best Related Work, English
The Dragon and The Stars, ed. by Derwin Mak & Eric Choi (DAW Books)

Best Artist (Professional & Amateur)
Erik Mohr, cover art for ChiZine Publications

Best Fan Publication
No award given out

Best Fan Filk
Dave Clement and Tom Jeffers, Dandelion Wine for “Face on Mars” CD

Best Fan Organizational
Helen Marshall and Sandra Kasturi, chairs of Toronto SpecFic Colloquium

Best Fan Other
John Mansfield and Linda Ross-Mansfield, conception of the Aurora nominee
pins

Much thanks to Lloyd Penney for the information and followup.

On January 3rd, John Scalzi, Award Winning author, SFWA President, blogger extraordinaire and funny guy (not to mention cat lover, dog lover, daughter lover and wife lover, film critic and RockStar performer) let us all know which of his  works of the past year are eligible for awards this year, along with some gentle suggestions as to whom you ought to cast your vote for. (The 2012 Award Pimpage Post)

Today, as he did at about this same time last year, he is now opening up the pages of his Whatever blog to allow other authors, artists, editors and fans to do the same.  Pimp themselves, that is.

There are rules (and Scalzi is known to wield a mean ‘Hammer of Loving Correction’) so check them out, comply and tell us all about your eligible works…over on his website.

Whatever’s Award Awareness Post

by Tanya Tynjala, Spanish Language Contributor

(Editor’s note: Tanya contributes information regarding Spanish language awards and Spanish-speaking people’s events related to genre awards. English is not her primary language, nor is Spanish my secondary language. In ‘editing’ Tanya’s report, I’ve striven to change as little as possible while trying to maintain sensibility. If there are any volunteer Spanish-to-English translator types out there, I’m waiting to hear from you. Other X-to-English translators welcome!)

The comic “La espada del cazador” (The Hunter’s Sword), drawn by the Colombian artist Esteban Patiño from a script by the Spanish writer Rubén Serrano, has won the Ignotus Prize 2011 in the Best Comic category.

The prize is awarded by the AEFCFT (Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror-Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror Spaniard Association) during the Hispacon XXIX (Fantasy and Science Fiction Spanish Convention) in Mislata – Valencia on 12 and 13 November, 2011.

The comic is based upon a micro-story (flash fiction) by Rubén Serrano, and was included in an anthology published in 2005. “The Hunter’s Sword” as a comic was published in May 2010 in the on-line publication Exégesis. The story is realized in just one page in order to match the brevity of the original text.

Rubén Serrano was in charge of turning the text into a comic script: “and I took the opportunity to show through the images a little bit better an element that was not so clear on the original text: the ambivalence of the title. In fact, “The Hunter’s Sword” represents the victim (The separatist group
located in the Orion constellation-also known as the Hunter) as well as it represents the oppressive empire that dominates them”, explained Serrano.

Despite the brevity of the story, the author presents a clear critique of imperialism past, present or future.

(Article by Tanya; small edits by Steve)