Here Come the Judges

The panel for the 2009 World Fantasy Awards have been announced. (They seem familiar, so they may have been announced some time ago -- but I haven't blogged about them, so they're new to me.)

This year's crew of victims judges are:

• Jenny Blackford
• Peter Heck
• Ellen Klages
• Chris Roberson
• Delia Sherman

And they have my best wishes, and my most sincere hopes that their eyes, backs, and minds will hold out against the onslaught of fantasy works that they're about to be inundated with. (That onslaught runs the entire gamut from wonderfully awesome down to spork-your-eyes-out.)

One thing that did amuse me is the difference in the call for submissions between the WFA (which I was a judge for, several years ago) and the Eisners (which I'm a judge for, right at this moment).

The WFA lists the addresses of the five judges, and then says:

Materials to be considered for awards must be received, no later than June 1, 2009, by all five judges with an additional copy to the World Fantasy Awards Association, Peter Dennis Pautz, President [address suppressed].

Please mark any packages as Review Material — No Commercial Value — World Fantasy Awards Materials. Also, please make sure to send a file copy of any and all materials to the Awards Administrator so a comprehensive list may be kept, as well as backup copies for any that are lost or misplaced. This is the only way the judges can consider all eligible items, and you can be sure that your work has been given fair attention.

And the Eisners call for a single copy to be sent, thus:

All submissions should be sent to Eisner Awards, Attn: Jackie Estrada, Eisner Awards Administrator, 8340 Allison Ave., La Mesa, CA 91941 before the deadline of March 13, 2009.

One more point: the WFAs have nine categories; the Eisners over two dozen. I'm not sure if the difference is meant to spare the judges' mailboxes (or perhaps shield their privacy) or to mollify comics companies that don't like sending out free copies of anything to anyone. (Some of them are quite remarkably averse to the concept of "review copies," for example.) But it is a notable difference in strategy.