Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Awards Update II

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 11:44 AM

The Nebula Award Nominations were announced on Monday, and can be seen here. This also includes nominations for the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. While the nomination list is always a fun thing to look through for suggested reading material, only members of the SFWA can vote on nominations. Membership of the SFWA is limited to authors who have made professional sales with approved publishers in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. More than any other SFF award, this is the one by industry insiders. The awards will be awarded at the Nebula Awards Weekend May 17-20, 2012. You do not have to be a member to attend, simply register for the weekend like any other convention. Click here for more information.

 

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Monday, February 13, 2012

Awards Updates

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 9:07 AM

First of all, the poll for the Locus Awards is up at Locus Magazine, as well as a recommended reading list.  The polls close April 15. Voting does not require a current subscription to Locus.

Finalists for the Phillip K. Dick Award have been announced, and the award will be given on April 6.

The Skylark will be presented this weekend.

A new award, the Kitschies, announced their winners this month as well. You can take a look at their selections here.

The Hugos, the John W. Campbell Award, and the Nebulas are all still in nomination process. Those who wish to nominate works for the Hugo and the Campbell may do so by buying a supporting membership or greater to Chicon 7, which is hosting this year's WorldCon.

 

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Sunday, January 1, 2012

It's that time again

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 12:28 PM

We're coming up on that fabulous and exciting time of year: awards season. Soon our televisions will be exploding with a host of Hollywood style spectacle showcases punctuated by speeches. In the book world, things are less flashy, but no less all encompassing. I thought I'd take a look at some of the different awards that are specific to SFF, and give you a brief who's who and what's what of the major awards. Who knows? Now you may know what all that stuff on an Author Bio really means! I'm also planning on trying to track these awards all the way through the year, so stay tuned for nomination announcements and the awards themselves. Also realize that book awards take up more of the year than movies or music. While some of these awards are in finale judging as I post this, others have not yet entered voting phases. Therefore, awards in the book world stretch from February through October. I'll be making an attempt to follow the results of the following awards:
  1. Presented annually since 1955 by the World Science Fiction Society at each year's World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon), the Hugo is one of the most prestigious awards in the SFF genre. The award is named for Hugo Gernsback, who founded America's first science fiction magazine in 1926. Nominations can be made by any member of WorldCon, and are accepted January through March. A shortlist of finalists is posted in April, and voting is open to all members until sometime in July. Awards are announced at a special awards ceremony at the convention. This year, WorldCon is at Chicon in Chicago, Ill. during the first weekend in September. Awards include Best Novel, Novella, Short Story, and many more.
  2. Awarded annually at WisCon in May for the previous year, this award recognizes SFF works that expand our understanding of gender. Founded in 1991, the award is named for Alice B. Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr. for many years. The discovery of her real gender prompted a great deal of discussion as to the role of gender in writing. Recommendations to the award council are encouraged from the public through December, with the award, honor, and short lists all being released in May.
  3. The Campbell Award honors authors who's debut work in SFF was professionally published in the previous two years (authors are therefore eligible for the award for two years). The award is named for John Campbell, longtime editor of Astounding Science Fiction (now Analog Science Fiction and Fact). While this award follows Hugo nomination and voting procedures and is presented at WorldCon, it is not a Hugo, and has only been around since 1973. Amusingly enough, as well as a niffty plaque, the winner is also presented with a tiara!
  4. Presented by Locus Magazine, these awards are voted on by the readers of Locus and are presented at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle. A recommended reading list is published in the February issue, with a finalist list of the top five finishers in each category published before the final announcement. This is also an older award, dating the to 1970s, and features several categories.
  5. These awards are presented and voted on by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), a professional organization of writers in the SFF genre, and have been given out annually since 1965. Nominations are due by mid February, with finalists selected by a jury. The Nebula's are awarded in May at the Nebula Awards Weekend. Award categories are similar to the Hugo Awards, with the Ray Bradbury award specific to film, and the Andre Norton award specific to young adult.
  6. This award is presented by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society in association with the Philip K. Dick Trust with additional sponsorship by the Northwest Science Fiction Society. It rewards innovation in science fiction in the paperback market. Unlike many other awards, this award is strictly for new releases in the United States in paperback form. Works that had previously been released in hardback are ineligible. You may wonder why; Phillip K. Dick's novels were typically published first in paperback format, and only later were released in more expensive versions. Publishers provide copies of eligible books to a panel of judges, with nominees announced in January. The award itself is announced in April at NorwesCon. Like the Nebula, awards are presented for the previous calender year, and has been given since 1983.
  7. Also known as the E. E. Smith Memorial Award, the Skylark is given out by the New England Science Fiction Association to a person the NESFA believes has contributed significantly to science fiction, both in their body of work and in their personal qualities. The Skylark is jointly named for E. E. Smith, "the father of space opera", and his Skylark series (first volume is The Skylark of Space, published in 1928). The award is decided by a membership vote, and is awarded at the NESFA's annual convention, Boskone, in February. This is also an old award, having been presented every year (with one exception) since 1966.
  8. Created in 1975 as a counterpart to the Hugo and Nebula, this award is targeted only towards fantasy works, and is given out at the World Fantasy Convention in October. Like WorldCon, the World Fantasy Convention travels around, and will be in Toronto this year. Winners are selected by judges, with some help from con attendees, and features similar categories to its science fiction counterparts. Unlike the Hugo or the Nebula, it always features a Lifetime Achievement award.

 

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Thursday, May 20, 2010

Nebula Awards

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 11:53 AM

The Science Fiction Writers of America presented this year’s round of Nebula Awards and a few unrelated awards over the weekend in Cape Canaveral.  The winners were:

·         Novel:  Paolo Bacigalupi for The Windup Girl
·         Novella:  Kage Baker for The Women of Nell Gwynne’s (posthumously)
·         Novelette:  Eugie Foster for “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest: Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast”
·         Short Story: Kij Johnson for “Spar”
·         Ray Bradbury Award: Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell for District 9
·         Andre Norton Award: Catherynne M. Valente for The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
·         Damon Knight Grand Master Award: Joe Haldeman
·         Author Emeritus: Neal Barrett Jr.
·         SFWA Service Award: Vonda N. McIntyre, Keith Stokes
·         SFWA Solstice Award: Tom Doherty, Terri Windling, Donald A. Wollheim (posthumously)

All of these awards deserve some talk, but I’m going to narrow my focus now to the Andre Norton Award because this year’s winner was such a game changer.  A few years ago Valente had just started making a living as a full time writer when her husband lost his job unexpectedly due to the recession.  A few months later, she decided to be innovative and daring.  She announced that she was writing a book that would only appear online, for free, with a donation button so that her readers could pay what they felt like for it, hoping to add at least a little extra cash to help pay the bills.  There was no editor involved, no agent, no publishing house.  Just Valente and her audience.  These sorts of projects are known as crowd funding, and until now they’ve received very little attention or recognition.  Not only did Valente find a significant audience for her work online, but she just won the premiere award for teen/young adult science fiction and fantasy in the country with it.  It is believed that hers is the first such work to win any major literary award.

Not only is it interesting to see a crow funded project like this rewarded, but it’s also one of the rare times a self published work in any medium has been so successful and rewarded.  Valente, whether she set out to or not, has proved that the publishing world is changing.  Now, she herself has said that she does not think that agents, editors, and publishing houses are going to go away because the fill very needed roles.  But Fairyland has illustrated just how powerful the web is.  I should also point out that Valente had much better odds of pulling this off than the average joe doing crowd funding.  Valente was already a traditionally published author with several books under her belt when she started this project.  She had an established blog and a community of fellow bloggers to rely on to spread the word of her new book.  Most people don’t have that.

And while I’m going on about how publishing is changing, I’d also like to look at two of the Solstice Award Winners, which honors those who have had a significant impact on science fiction and fantasy.  Tom Doherty is the founder, President and Publisher of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, which publishes books under the imprints Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape and Tor Teens.  Now a subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishers, Tor is one of the largest publishers of SF/F, and has published more award winners in this category than any other house.  Mr. Doherty previously worked at the publisher at Ace, another premiere science fiction/fantasy publishing house.  Donald A. Wollheim helped develop Ace as a paperback science fiction house until starting his own house, DAW.  Both Ace and DAW are now owned by the Penguin Group.  As an editor, Wollheim worked with such giants as Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton, Ursula K. Le Guin, Phillip K. Dick, Robert Silverburg, and Jack Vance to name a few.  As a publisher, he started the careers of C. J. Cherryh, Tanith Lee, Jennifer Roberson, and Tadd Williams, again, to name a few.  Most infamously, he published an unauthorized edition of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings while at Ace.  While later found to be illegal, this edition popularized Tolkein in the United States and helped to create a huge fantasy audience.  Mr. Wollheim passed away in 1990.  His daughter Elizabeth Wollheim is a current publisher with DAW.

Valente is also up for a Hugo award this year for her traditionally published novel Palimpset.  Bacigalupi’s Windup Girl and Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker (which I’ve reviewed here) are also nominated.  Those awards are currently in the voting process, and will be announced at Aussiecon 4 in Melbourne, Australia in September.  The Hugo is award by the World Science Fiction Society.

The Girl Who Navigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making will be published by Feiwel and Friends in May 2011, and upon the request of the publisher, the final act is no longer available online.

 

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