Even More Awards I Neglected to Mention

I sure hope that no one is using this wee blog as a primary source of news, because, if so, you're in big trouble. But I do feel service-y every so often, and so here are a bunch of awards winners and nominees that happened in the last longer-than-I-care-to-specify:


Finalists for the Prometheus Award:

The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced the short list for their annual award, given as a shiny coin of sweet, sweet gold, and for an "outstanding work of science fiction and fantasy that stress[es] the importance of liberty as the foundation for civilization, peace, prosperity, progress and justice."

This year's free and independent competitors are:

• The Children of the Sky (TOR Books) by Vernor Vinge
• The Freedom Maze (Small Beer Press) by Delia Sherman 
• In the Shadow of Ares (Amazon Kindle) by Thomas L. James and Carl C. Carlsson
• Ready Player One (Random House) by Ernest Cline
• The Restoration Game (Pyr Books) by Ken MacLeod
• Snuff (Harper Collins) by Terry Pratchett

Congratulations to whichever novel wins the Darwinian competition and thus proves itself uniquely fit to survive and breed. And to the rest of the nominees, who should have tried harder.


BSFA Awards Winners

The other award from the UK -- one that, one suspects, Christopher Priest is entirely in favor of -- was handed out at a ceremony that attracted its own degree of negative attention. Winners via SF Awards Watch, since the British Science Fiction Association has apparently not updated its website with the winners in the three weeks since the ceremony.

• Novel: The Islanders, by Christopher Priest
• Short Fiction: “The Copenhagen Interpretation,” by Paul Cornell
• Artwork: Cover of Ian Whates’s The Noise Revealed, by Dominic Harman
• Non-Fiction: The SF Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition edited John Clute, Peter Nicholls, David Langford, and Graham Sleight

Prix Aurora Nominations


The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Society has announced the nominees in at least some of the Aurora categories (I'm not sure if there are also French-language categories), which were all posted to their website. Since most people only really care about the novel award, here's that category:

• Enter, Night by Michael Rowe, ChiZine Publications
• Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism by David Nickle, ChiZine Publications
• Napier's Bones by Derryl Murphy, ChiZine Publications
• The Pattern Scars by Caitlin Sweet, ChiZine Publications
• Technicolor Ultra Mall by Ryan Oakley, EDGE
• Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer, Penguin Canada

Shirley Jackson Award Nominees

This is a newer award (meaning it didn't exist when I came into the field, which could also be taken to mean that I Am Old), awarded by a jury "for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic." The full list of nominees is at the link, but this is the novel category:

• The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock (Doubleday)
• The Dracula Papers, Reggie Oliver (Chômu Press)
• The Great Lover, Michael Cisco (Chômu Press)
• Knock Knock, S. P. Miskowski (Omnium Gatherum Media)
• The Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan (Canongate Books, Ltd.)
• Witches on the Road Tonight, Sheri Holman (Grove Press)

FAAn Awards


Last and least, this most fannish suite of awards was recently awarded to:

• Best Website: eFanzines.com, hosted by Bill Burns
• Harry Warner Jr. Memorial Award Best Letterhack;Robert Lichtman
• Best Perzine: A Meara for Observers, ed. Mike Meara
• Best Single Issue or Anthology: Alternative Pants,ed. Randy Byers
• Best Fan Artist: Steve Stiles
• Best Fan Writer: Mark Plummer
• Best Genzine or Collaboration: Banana Wings, ed. Mark Plummer and Claire Brialey
• #1 Fan Face: Mark Plummer

I will admit to wondering if "#1 Fan Face" is more like a Most Wanted, a Most Impressive Facial Hair, a Most Famous, or a Person We Like Better Than You, but it's only a momentary thought.


Congratulations to everyone who has ever been nominated for anything, which, in this fallen age, is pretty much all of us.