Friday, July 11, 2008

All The Awards In the World, Part Two

And the more interesting awards news this week is the annual Locus Awards. Locus has prided itself for many years on being the award voted on by the most people, but, this year, that claim jumped up and bit them.

SF Awards Watch has a good account of the rumpus, with links to the more excitable complainers. In short, Locus decided to change the way they counted votes after voting was closed, because they received a very high number of online votes.

There's no explanation of the change online with the list of winners, which is also a time-traveling web page from June 21st. I think I have the new Locus at home, so I'll have to check it out tonight, and see what explanation they give. (Something like "it looked like an attempt to stuff the ballot box" would be reasonable to me, but if it was just "too many of those people voted, and voted for things we didn't want to see win" I would perhaps be as grumpy as certain others.)

Anyway, those winners:
  • SF NOVEL: The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
  • FANTASY NOVEL: Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
  • YOUNG ADULT BOOK: Un Lun Dun, China MiĆ©ville (Ballantine Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
  • FIRST NOVEL: Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill (Morrow; Gollancz)
  • NOVELLA: "After the Siege", Cory Doctorow (The Infinite Matrix Jan 2007)
  • NOVELETTE: "The Witch's Headstone", Neil Gaiman (Wizards)
  • SHORT STORY: "A Small Room in Koboldtown", Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Apr/May 2007)
  • COLLECTION: The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories, Connie Willis (Subterranean)
  • ANTHOLOGY: The New Space Opera, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos)
  • NON-FICTION: Breakfast in the Ruins, Barry N. Malzberg (Baen)
  • ART BOOK: The Arrival, Shaun Tan (Lothian 2006; Scholastic)
  • EDITOR: Ellen Datlow
  • MAGAZINE: F&SF (Gordon Van Gelder, editor)
  • PUBLISHER: Tor
  • ARTIST: Charles Vess

However they were gerrymandered, it's a reasonable list...however, if they were deliberately gerrymandered to get those winners, that would be Not Cricket and I shall have to slide my glasses down my nose and give Locus a very stern look indeed.

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