February 8th, 2010 by Editors
SF Scope reveals that the winners of the SF Poetry Association’s Dwarf Stars Award for 2009 have been announced. The Dwarf Stars is for for short poems of 10 lines or less. First place went to “Fireflies” by Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s, June 2008).
February 8th, 2010 by Editors
Over the weekend someone asked a question on the Hugo Recommend LiveJournal community about whether podcast fanzines and semiprozines were eligible for the Hugos. The short answer is that we don’t know. Here’s Kevin’s longer answer:
Nobody knows for sure, because nothing has ever received sufficient nominations to make the ballot; therefore, no administrator has ever had to make a ruling on the subject. Also, this is the first year that the rule has had wording inserted (“or the equivalent in other media”) that suggests that something that published in non-print media might be eligible. (Remember that “published” doesn’t just mean “imprinted with ink on pieces of paper” despite those people who wish it did claiming that’s the “plain meaning” of it.)
This year’s lead Hugo Award administrator, Vincent Docherty, discussed the difficulty of ruling preemptively on works in a thoughtful article on the File 770 web site.
The short version: unless there are enough nominations cast for the works in question, nobody will ever know, because administrators almost never rule on a work unless the voters try to give it enough nominations to make the ballot. This is similar to how courts won’t issue rulings without an actual case before them — no hypothetical rulings allowed.
Note: Kevin has taken the opportunity to correct typographical and grammatical errors in the original post.
February 7th, 2010 by Editors
The International Animated Film Society gave out their annual awards, the Annies, last night. Unsurprisingly genre films dominated. Henry Selick’s Coraline picked up 5 of the 10 awards it was nominated for, the most by any movie (as happily tweeted by Neil Gaiman). Up picked up Best Feature Film and Best Feature Film Director, reinforcing the view that it will beat Coraline to the Oscar. Full results are available here. Commentary from Joe Gordon here.
February 6th, 2010 by Editors
The SFX Awards were handed out at the magazine’s annual convention today. We’ve been following the tweets of the lads from Geek Syndicate. We’ll post the official results as and when we get them from SFX, but here’s what we have gleaned from Twitter.
February 5th, 2010 by Editors
Locus magazine has opened voting in their 40th annual awards. The poll looks a little different this year, with the traditional drop-down menus being replaced by boxes where you are asked to enter up to 5 preferences. As usual the books on the Locus Recommended Reading List are all included as options, but you have the opportunity to write in nominees as well. The preamble to voting form notes:
the voting rules remain the same — subscriber votes count double.
(In our case that means Kevin gets two votes and Cheryl gets one because the subscription is in Kevin’s name.)
You have until April 1st to vote, which is pretty much the same deadline as the Hugos. However, as usual with the Locus Awards, this round of voting will determine the winners as well as the short lists they issue in advance of the award ceremony.
February 3rd, 2010 by Petrea Mitchell
With this year’s submission list heading for a record size, the Endeavour Award is again seeking to expand the pool of volunteer readers who evaluate the books to select the nominees. If you’re in the Portland, Oregon area, have broad reading tastes, and would be willing to read a few books and fill out scoresheets, drop them a line.
February 3rd, 2010 by Editors
The WSFA Small Press Award is once again open for submissions. Any small press with fiction from 2009 that they would like to nominate for the award should get in touch with the administrators. Full details on their web site.
February 3rd, 2010 by Editors
World SF News has a long post all about the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, including a splendid picture of their rather nice trophy. Hopefully the blog will feature many other international awards in the future.
February 3rd, 2010 by Editors
The long list for this year’s Bram Stoker Awards has been announced. You can see the full list here.
February 3rd, 2010 by Editors
Yes, they are doing Retro-Bookers now. Where the Hugos fearlessly tread, other book awards are bound to follow. (We leave it to you to decide exactly what they are treading in.)
Over at The Guardian Sam Jordison explains why the Booker Prize for 1970 is only just being judged. This list of books being considered is quite interesting. Brian Aldiss is there with a book called The Hand Reared Boy. No, it is not science fiction, it is about sex. You can work out what the title means for yourselves. The wonderful Mary Renault is also on the list with Fire From Heaven, the first in her trilogy of novels about Alexander the Great. Patrick O’Brian is nominated for Master and Commander, a book we suspect that many of you have read. And then there’s Joe Orton with Head To Toe, a book that Publishers Weekly describes as, “A cross between Gulliver and Alice.” Sam’s post has the full short list.
February 3rd, 2010 by Editors
This is a little bit outside of our usual remit, given that it appears to be only for novels that don’t meddle with the great events of the past, but it may well be of interest to some of you and it is generally good to see a new genre prize announced.
According to The Guardian the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize will be presented to the best historical novel of the year. Hilary Mantel will doubtless be watching that with some eagerness.
How come poor of Sir Walter appears to have lost his honorific? Surely that would only add to the prestige of an historical award.
February 2nd, 2010 by Editors
The Oscar nominees for 2010 have been announced, and as expected there are a few genre films getting a nod. The nominees for Best Film (remember there are 10 this year) include Avatar (the hot favorite according to the BBC), District 9 and Up. James Cameron has a nomination in Best Director for Avatar. Neill Blomkamp missed out on Best Director but with Terri Tatchell is up for Best Adapted Screenplay, for District 9.
One category we dominate is Animated Feature. The nominees there are:
Here at SFAW we are keeping our fingers crossed for Henry Sellick and Coraline, but given that Up won this category in the Golden Globes, and got a nod for Best Picture, it has to be favorite here.
Visual Effects is also dominated by science fiction, with Avatar, District 9 and Star Trek being the only nominees. Star Trek also gets a nod in Makeup, while The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus is featured in Art Direction and Costume, and Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince is featured in Cinematography. Avatar turns up all over the place. Animated Short also looks interesting, with the wonderful Wallace & Gromit getting a nod for A Matter Of Loaf And Death and other likely titles included. Digital Spy has a full list of nominees.
Of course we mustn’t forget the Razzies. Science fiction films are less in evidence there, but Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen appears to be trying to carry the honor of the field all by itself. SF Scope has the full list, and sadly finds it necessary to resort to transphobic “humor”.
January 31st, 2010 by Editors
An email from the Libertarian Futurist Society announces the finalists for their 2010 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. The chosen works are:
Final voting by members of the Society will take place in June and early July of 2010. The award will be presented in a ceremony at the World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne.
January 31st, 2010 by Editors
Jason Sanford writes to let us know that the Million Writers Award is open for nominations for 2010. The award is for stories published in online magazines, and while it is a mainstream award it has often featured speculative fiction stories. As with last year, Jason is asking for donations to help fund prizes.
January 29th, 2010 by Editors
John Jude Palencar has won the prestigious Hamilton King Award, presented by the Society of Illustrators. As Irene Gallo explains, although the Hamilton King is ostensibly given for a single piece of artwork (in Palencar’s case his cover for Charles de Lint’s Muse and Reverie), the award has become seen as something of a mid-career achievement award given only to artists with a superb track record. Irene notes:
The award ceremony and black-tie dinner will take place at the Society of Illustrators in June in conjunction with the Illustrators Fall of Fame inductions.
And here’s the winning picture.
January 29th, 2010 by Cheryl
Some of you may have lost your RSS feeds from this site for a few days. That’s because in transferring over to use FeedBurner I managed to typo the feed address. Much embarrassment here. Hopefully things will be fixed shortly.
January 27th, 2010 by Editors
RT Book Reviews magazine has annual awards in a vast range of different categories, many of which are SF&F specific, or SF&F-related. Also the overwhelming majority of the nominees are women. You can see the whole list here (PDF). Here are the most obviously relevant categories.
SF&F books are also nominated in other categories such as Paranormal Romance, YA, Erotica and so on. The winners will be announced in the June issue of the magazine.
Our thanks to Jeff Prucher for the tip off.
January 26th, 2010 by Editors
Via Gary K. Wolfe, the Crawford Award administrator:
Jedediah Berry has been named the winner of this year’s William L. Crawford Award for his first novel The Manual of Detection.
The award, presented annually at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, is designated for a new fantasy writer whose first book appeared the previous year. This year’s conference will be March 17-21 in Orlando, FL.
The nominators for this year’s award also shortlisted Deborah Biancotti’s story collection A Book of Endings, Kari Sperring’s novel Living with Ghosts, and Ali Shaw’s novel The Girl With Glass Feet, and wanted to commend two other authors whose works were ineligible this year but were highly regarded: Robert V.S. Redick, whose The Red Wolf Conspiracy appeared in 2008 and whose The Ruling Sea appears in 2010, and Michal Ajvaz, whose The Other City originally appeared in Czech in 1993 but was first translated into English, by Gerald Turner, in 2009.
Those participating, in varying degrees, in this year’s nomination and selection process included Kelly Link, Niall Harrison, Cheryl Morgan, Graham Sleight, Paul Witcover, John Clute, Jonathan Strahan, Liza Trombi, Farah Mendlesohn, and Amelia Beamer.
January 25th, 2010 by Editors
The British Science Fiction Association has released the nominee lists for its annual awards. You can find them at Torque Control. The winners will be announced at Eastercon.
Update: Hal Duncan has withdrawn his nomination from the non-fiction category. Explanation here.
January 25th, 2010 by Editors
Frank Ludlow of Albedo One writes to remind us that the Aeon Award (which is actually a writing competition) is running again this year. Once again there’s €1000 available to the winner. Ian Watson is again the judge. More details here.
