Award-A-Palooza

I've neglected to mention a bunch of these, so let's strew them about randomly and hope no one notices....


2013 Heinlein Award Winners

This award, for vaguely being Heinleinian and skiffy and pro-space in writings of some kind or another, goes to Allen Steele and Yoji Kondo this year, for no specific works or events.

This award has recently been taken over by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society from the Heinlein Society, according to the Locus Online write-up, which I think implies that Kondo is no longer the chair of the judging committee. But he previously was chair of that committee -- and is still cited as such by the official website of the award -- which is unusual for a winner, to say the least. (Of course, the first winner of the award was Virginia Heinlein, who created the prize and the committee, so there is a tradition to be upheld.)

The award itself will be given out at Balticon 47, in late May in the wilds of Maryland. If you want to see a grown man getting a whopping great sterling silver medallion with another grown man's face on it, this may be your best opportunity.


2013 BSFA Award Nominees

This one is more straightforward: the British Science Fiction Association, which is, as you know Bob, an Association of British people that like Science Fiction, has announced the nominees for their annual awards. Winners will be announced at this year's Eastercon, EightSquared, in scenic Bradford.

There are several categories -- and you can see all of them on the official BSFA blog, but here's the one that everyone cares the most about:

Best Novel
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus)
Empty Space: a Haunting by M. John Harrison (Gollancz)
Intrusion by Ken Macleod (Orbit)
Jack Glass by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)


 2013 Kitschies Nominees

This is a newer, quirkier British award -- which I suspect, like so many other awards, was created because one year the Wrong Things Won -- sponsored by a brand of rum and with three categories with cutesy names. In other words, it's the SF award for the Internet Era, so we'd better get used to it.

This year's nominees:


Red Tentacle:

• Jesse Bullington's The Folly of the World (Orbit)
• Frances Hardinge's A Face Like Glass (Macmillan)
• Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker (William Heinemann)
• Adam Roberts' Jack Glass (Gollancz)
• Juli Zeh's The Method (Harvill Secker) (Translated by Sally-Ann Spencer)

Golden Tentacle:

• Madeline Ashby's vN (Angry Robot)
• Jenni Fagan's The Panopticon (William Heinemann)
• Rachel Hartman's Seraphina (Doubleday)
• Karen Lord's Redemption in Indigo (Jo Fletcher Books)
• Tom Pollock's The City's Son (Jo Fletcher Books)

Inky Tentacle:

• La Boca for Ned Beauman's The Teleportation Accident (Sceptre)
• Oliver Jeffers for John Boyne's The Terrible Thing that Happened to Barnaby Brocket (Doubleday)
• Tom Gauld for Matthew Hughes' Costume Not Included (Angry Robot)
• Peter Mendelsund for Ben Marcus' Flame Alphabet (Granta)
• Dave Shelton for his own A Boy and a Bear in a Boat (David Fickling Books)

If you want explanations of the various naughty, naughty tentacles, check out the Kitschies site. I note that all of these works are distinguished by being "progressive," which I suppose means this is the opposite of the Libertarian's Prometheus Award.

Winners will be announced on February 26th at a random event space in London, because the Internet has nothing to do with boring old crotchety convention fandom! Anarchy Now!



Congratulations to all of the winners and nominees. (Note: this is possibly the only non-sarcastic sentence in the whole post.)