Awards! Awards! Awards!

The lingering memory of my year of blogging for the SFBC -- which ended five years ago, so I really should be over it by this point -- still compels me to post SFnal awards, even when I do so far too late to benefit anyone. What can I say? I'm a flawed person.

Anyway, here's some recent awards that you probably already know about:

2011 Aurealis Awards

The Australian national awards for SF and other imaginative literature were given out three weeks ago (I know, I know!), and the full list has been available since then.

Here's the novel-length awards, just because:

• YOUNG ADULT NOVEL: Only Ever Always, by Penni Russon
• FANTASY NOVEL: Ember and Ash, by Pamela Freeman
• SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL: The Courier’s New Bicycle, by Kim Westwood

(via SF Signal)

Analog and Asimov's Reader's Awards

The same weekend as the Nebulas (suddenly suspicious -- did I blog about the Nebulas? Yes, I did!), the editors of Asimov's and Analog announced the winners of their respective reader polls for the most popular features of the past year:

Analog’s Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) Awards:

• Best Novella: “With Unclean Hands” by Adam-Troy Castro (11/11)
• Best Novelette (Tie):
  • “Jak and the Beanstalk” by Richard A. Lovett (7-8/11)
  • “Betty Knox and Dictionary Jones in the Mystery of the Missing Teenage Anachronisms” by John G. Hemry (3/11)
• Best Short Story: “Julie is Three” by Craig DeLancey (3/11)
• Best Fact: “Smart SETI” by Gregory and James Benford (4/11)
• Best Cover: December 2011 (for “Ray of Light”) by Bob Eggleton

Asimov’s Readers’ Awards are:

• Best Novella: “The Man Who Bridged the Mist” by Kij Johnson (10-11/11)
• Best Novelette: “All About Emily” by Connie Willis (12/11)
• Best Short Story: “Movement” by Nancy Fulda (3/11)
• Best Poem: “Five Pounds of Sunlight” by Geoffrey A. Landis (1/11)
• Best Cover Artist: October/November, by Paul Youll (for “The Man Who Bridged the Mist”)

Note that Analog readers are scientists, carefully weighing the validity of each piece in their "Analytical Laboratory," while Asimov's  readers just vote for stuff they like.

(also via SF Signal -- you really should read them, and get this stuff quicker)

Sturgeon and Campbell Finalists

Finalists for the Theodore Sturgeon and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards were also announced around Nebula time. These are juried awards for the best SF (generally interpreted broadly) story and novel of the prior year, and this year's nominees are:

Sturgeon:

• Charlie Jane Anders, "Six Months, Three Days," Tor.com, June
• Paul Cornell, "The Copenhagen Interpretation," Asimov's, July
• Yoon Ha Lee, "Ghostweight," Clarkesworld, January
• Kij Johnson, "The Man Who Bridged the Mist," Asimov's, Oct / Nov (Note: removed from consideration because Johnson is a Sturgeon juror, though it still appears on the official list of nominees.)
• Jake Kerr, "The Old Equations," Lightspeed, July
• Ken Liu, "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary," Panverse Three
• Ken Liu, "The Paper Menagerie," F&SF, March / April
• Paul McAuley, "The Choice," Asimov's, Dec / Jan
• Catherynne M. Valente, "Silently and Very Fast," Clarkesworld, October

Sixteen (named) people nominated for the Sturgeon, many of them the editors of the short-fiction venues of the field. My eyebrow is cocked as I type this, but I really don't know the process. I'm also surprised to see a story by a juror appear on the shortlist, even though it has a note saying it was removed from consideration.


Campbell:

• Ernest Cline, Ready Player One (Crown Random House)
• Kathleen Ann Goonan, This Shared Dream (Tor Books)
• Will McIntosh, Soft Apocalypse(Night Shade Books)
• China Miéville, Embassytown (Ballantine Books / Del Rey)
• Christopher Priest, The Islanders (Gollancz)
• Joan Slonczewski, The Highest Frontier (Tor Books)
• Michael Swanwick, Dancing With Bears(Night Shade Books)
• Lavie Tidhar, Osama (PS Publishing)
• Daniel H. Wilson, Robopocalypse (Simon & Schuster)
• Gene Wolfe, Home Fires (Tor Books)
• Rob Ziegler, Seed(Night Shade Books)

Both awards will be given out during the Campbell Conference in early July.

Compton Crook Award

This award goes to the new SF author of the best novel of the prior year -- not to the book itself, but to the author. (It's also not quite clear if it has to be a first novel, or if newness persists in a writer for some extended period.)

This year's winner is T.C. McCarthy, for Germline.

(via SF Scope, for variety)


Congratulations to all of the winners and nominees, and thanks to all of the various nominators, judges, voters, and other functionaries that make these various awards run.