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. 🙂