Well, I’m back from Eastercon, and – as is traditional at this time of year – the genre fiction awards cycle is gearing up, with results and nominations and longlists flying in every which direction.
At Eastercon itself, China Mieville took the BSFA Best Novel award while the inimitable Ian Watson and Roberto Quaglia took the Short Fiction gong, and we got to hear the Hugo nominations announced to the world; last week saw the Arthur C Clarke Award shortlist announced, and the Philip K Dick Award has just been called for Bitter Angels by C L Anderson – the latter being both a book and author of whom I am completely unaware.
If nothing else, the genre scene’s ability (and will) to debate the merits of the the work produced within it (and, in some cases, beyond it) shows little sign of going away… and as far as I’m concerned, that’s the very best thing about all these awards. I’m much less bothered by who wins than I am by the discussions they generate about the winners, the losers and the utterly overlooked.
But I was thinking perhaps I should start some sort of Futurismic annual-awards-type-of-thing, if only because our reader demographic here is skewed rather more away from regular fandom (if there can be said to be any such thing) than many other genre webzines. What do you think? Suggestions for categories and nominees more than welcome – pipe up in the comments. 🙂
CL Anderson is probably better known as Sarah Zettel.
I do wonder if, at this stage, we really need any more awards … the ‘market’ already feels terribly glutted. I fear that if we/you add any more they will just sink without trace.
Ian: aaaah, right.
Do it any way, The Futurismicos. Futurismicinos. Futurismics.
By reader poll. Keep the categories simple. The result would be interesting.
I kind of agree with Maureen about the award glut. Maybe what Futurismic should do is offer “read and appreciated” lists of books from someone besides the usual suspects. Ambling Along the Aqueduct does this every year. Their lists tend to incorporate a lot of feminist SF, so there’s certainly room for similar lists that focus on different areas.
And a brief commercial: You can catch up with CL Anderson (aka Sarah Zettel) on Book View Cafe, where we’re all very proud of her. Bitter Angels isn’t available as an e-book there, though.
I don’t think we need another popularity contest, but I like the idea of an annual list of recommended reading for Futurismic readers. Perhaps you could get a different “guest star” to contribute to the list each year?
Yes, I think a recommended reading list would be great. If only because then it would make clearer to the people making fiction submissions precisely what kind of ideas Futurismic is interested in 🙂
I think a list broken down into : Fiction, Non-Fiction, Film and TV and Art might be a good idea.
Recommended Reading lists definitely work for me. I tend to pay rather closer attention to them than I do to most awards (with a few honourable exceptions … Clarke, Tiptree, BSFA, Related Fiction Hugo)