Science Fiction Awards Watch

The finalists for this year’s Endeavour Award are as follows:

• Anathem by Neal Stephenson
• Ill Met in the Arena by Dave Duncan
• Long Walks, Last Flights and Other Stories by Ken Scholes
• Space Magic by David D. Levine
• A World Too Near: Book Two of the Entire and the Rose by Kay Kenyon

The judges for 2009 are: Joe Haldeman, John Helfers & Sarah Zettel.

Further details here.

Anticipation has announced two more items for the Hugo voter’s packet: Y: The Last Man, Volume 10 and Fables: War and Pieces. If you have already voted, and this changes your mind about participating in the Best Graphic Story category, you can still submit a revised ballot electronically until 23:59 EST on July 3rd.

The winner of the Fantasy division of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is:

A quest is not to be undertaken lightly — or at all! — pondered Hlothgar, Thrag of the Western Boglands, son of Glothar, nephew of Garthol, known far and wide as Skull Dunker, as he wielded his chesty stallion Hralgoth through the ever-darkening Thlargwood, beyond which, if he survived its horrors and if Hroglath the royal spittle reader spoke true, his destiny awaited — all this though his years numbered but fourteen.

Stuart Greenman, Seattle, WA

And the winner of the Science Fiction Division s:

The golden, starry wonders of the dark universe unfurled before the brave interstellar vessel “Argus” like a black flag of victory with a whole bunch of holes in it as the mysterious mission buoyantly commenced that would one day resolve critical questions about space, time, and the appropriate ratio of nuts to chips in a perfect chocolate chip cookie.

Robert Friedman, Skillman, NJ

More bad fiction that you could ever wish for (including the SF & F runners up) can be found here.

We now have the full details of the John W Campbell Memorial Award results:

1st (tie) Song of Time, Ian MacLeod
1st (tie) Little Brother, Cory Doctorow
3rd The Philosopher’s Apprentice, James Morrow

and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award results:

1st “The Ray Gun: A Love Story,” James Alan Gardner
2nd “Memory Dog,” Kathleen Ann Goonan
3rd “The Tear,” Ian McDonald

Those of you with an interest in comics should pop on over to con-news.com where the full list of Harvey Award nominees is available.

The University of Kansas has release the winners of the two annual awards.

The Theodore Strugeon Memorial Award (for short fiction) has been won by James Alan Gardner’s “The Ray Gun: A Love Story” (Asimov’s).

The John W. Campbell Memorial Award was a tie between Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (Tor) and Ian R. MacLeod’s Song of Time (PS Publishing).

Doctorow notes that he’s the first person to win both the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Macleod’s book also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Read the official press release here.

Just announced at the award ceremony in Seattle, here they are:

• Science Fiction Novel: Anathem, Neal Stephenson (Atlantic UK, Morrow)
• Fantasy Novel: Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin (Harcourt)
• First Novel: Singularity’s Ring, Paul Melko (Tor)
• Young-Adult Book: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins, Bloomsbury)
• Novella: “Pretty Monsters”, Kelly Link (Pretty Monsters)
• Novelette: “Pump Six”, Paolo Bacigalupi (Pump Six and Other Stories)
• Short Story: “Exhalation”, Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
• Anthology: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed. (St. Martin’s)
• Collection: Pump Six and Other Stories, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books)
• Non-Fiction/Art Book: P. Craig Russell, Coraline: The Graphic Novel, Neil Gaiman, adapted and illustrated by P. Craig Russell (HarperCollins)
• Editor: Ellen Datlow
• Artist: Michael Whelan
• Magazine: F&SF
• Publisher: Tor

Tanya Tynjälä writes with news of the Cryptoshow Festival which takes place in Barcelona next month. The festival has short story competitions for genre literature. The winners are:

• Horror: “Noche de difuntos”, (”Night of the Dead”) José Manuel Blanco
• Fantasy: “Factoría onírica” (”Dream Factory”), Miguel Gonzáles
• Science fiction: “Frías máquinas, almas de metal” (”Cold machines, souls of metal”), Fracisco Arouete

All of the finalists are to be published in an anthology called Cryptonomikon 2. Details here.

(And as usual apologies if your translations are not quite up to scratch.)

Pawel Dembowski writes with the list of people who will be attending this year’s Polcon with a great deal of excitement.

Novel

• Ewa Bialolecka, wiedzma.com.pl (Fabryka Slow)
• Anna Brzezinska, Ziemia niczyja (in: Na ziemi niczyjej, Runa)
• Stefan Darda, Dom na wyrebach (Videograf II)
• Rafal Kosik, Kameleon (Powergraph)
• Magdalena Kozak, Nikt (Fabryka Slow)
• Krzysztof Piskorski, Zadra, part I (Runa)

Short Fiction

• Jacek Dukaj, “Kto napisal Stanislawa Lema?” (in: Doskonala proznia, Agora)
• Anna Kantoch, “Swiaty Dantego” (in: Epidemie i zarazy, Fabryka Slow)
• Magdalena Kozak, “Sznurki przeznaczenia” (in: SFFH 30)
• Andrzej Miszczak, “Harpunnicy” (in: Nowe idzie, Powergraph)
• Wit Szostak, “Podworzec” (in: NF 2/2008)

Our apologies once again for the lack of proper Polish characters.

The Janusz A. Zajdel Awards are Poland’s fan-voted SF awards.

The Guardian has picked up on the news of the Gemmell Award result, and by far the most interesting thing in their coverage is that the award attracted “Over 10,000 fans from 75 countries”. Now that’s an international award, even if the eligibility criteria limits the candidates to works in English.

The Gemmell has set out almost from the start to be a popular vote award. It has little in the way of literary pretensions. From that point of view it has succeeded very well in getting mass participation. There has been some rumbling (see comments here) that Sapkowski benefited from a large block vote from Poland, but no voting figures have been produced so there’s no evidence of that.

So, all you people who claim that the Hugos have no validity because so few people participate, is the Gemmell what you would like the Hugos to be? Or is mass participation not the good thing you thought it would be?

The word on the web is that the first ever David Gemmell Legend Award has been won by Andrzej Sapkowski’s Blood of Elves (Gollancz).

Update: This has now been confirmed on the official Gemmell Award web site.

Poland’s Jacek Dukaj can’t stop winning awards for his novel Lód (Ice). He has picked up the major SF awards in Poland, a mainstream award, has been chosen as the Polish nominee for the EU Literature Prize, and now the readers of Polityka magazine have voted his book the most important Polish novel of the last 20 years.

When are we going to see an English translation of this book?

Thanks as usual to Pawel Dembowski for the information.

The nominee lists for this year’s Chesley Awards have been released. You can find the full lists on the ASFA web site. The nominees for the prestigious Artistic Achievement award are:

• Julie Bell
• Roger Dean
• Dan Dos Santos
• James Jean
• Stephan Martiniere
• Shaun Tan

Two major award voting deadlines are looming:

• World Fantasy Award nominations : June 30th
• Hugo Award final ballot: July 3rd

Don’t miss your chance to vote.

Via Tero Ykspetäjä we learn that The Road (Tie in Finnish) by Cormac McCarthy has won the Tähtivaeltaja Award, presented by the Helsinki Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction novel of 2008. This is a juried award, and those responsible were: critic Hannu Blommila, editor Toni Jerrman, critic Elli Leppä, and journalist Vesa Sisättö. More details at Tero’s blog.

Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick’s Coraline has been named joint winner (with Mary and Max) of the Best Feature Film award at the Annecy Film Festival. Annecy is an international festival of animation film. Full winners list here.

The Bram Stoker Award Winners for 2009 were announced last night in Burbank. We couldn’t be there, but other people were and SF Scope has been following developments on Twitter. Stephen King won two awards, including the Superior Achievement in a Novel award for Duma Key.

The list of finalists for the John W Campbell Memorial Award has been announced. They are:

• City at the End of Time, Greg Bear (published by Del Rey)
• Valley of Day-Glo, Nick Di Chario (Robert J. Sawyer Books)
• Little Brother, Cory Doctorow (Tor)
• Song of Time, Ian MacLeod (PS Publishing)
• The Philosopher’s Apprentice, James Morrow (William Morrow)
• Anathem, Neal Stephenson (William Morrow)

The jury for this year’s award is: Gregory Benford, Paul A. Carter, James Gunn, Elizabeth Ann Hull, Paul Kincaid, Christopher McKitterick, Pamela Sargent, and T.A. Shippey.

The British Fantasy Society has issued the short lists for their awards. Here are the nominees for the Best Novel category (a.k.a. The August Derleth Fantasy Award):

• Memoirs of a Master Forger (William Heaney/Graham Joyce) Gollancz
• Midnight Man (Simon Clark) Severn House
• Rain Dogs (Gary McMahon) Humdrumming
• The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman) Bloomsbury
• The Victoria Vanishes (Christopher Fowler) Little Brown
• Thieving Fear (Ramsey Campbell) PS Publishing

You can find the full lists here.

DeepSouthCon presented its annual awards tonight. The Rebel Award, for service by a fan to Southern fandom, goes to Randy B. Cleary, for many years of work in many capacities, especially president of the Southern Fandom Confederation. The Phoenix Award, for service by a professional to Southern fandom, goes to Robert “Rick” McCammon, one of the founders of the Horror Writers Association.

And then there’s the Rubble Award, the sillier but no less traditional counterpart to the Rebel, given for recognition of things done to Southern fandom. This year’s unlucky receipient of the traditional Krystal Happy Meal plus a box of registration supplies was ChattaCon, for repeat trouble with… well, you can guess. Happily, the award was accepted with good grace.

(Information via Mike Kennedy on SMOFs.)