Sir Julius Vogel Awards

Sir Julius Vogel Awards 2011: Congratulations To The Winners!

Posted on June 9, 2011

The 2011 Sir Julius Vogel Awards – New Zealand’s annual awards for science fiction, fantasy and horror – were awarded at Queen’s Birthday Weekend at ConText, New Zealand’s 2011 national Science Fiction Convention.

I didn’t attend the Con, and didn’t have anything on the ballot, but I am glad to see some friends and familiar names among the winners. Congratulations, one and all! Here’s the official press release announcing the results, with some links I’ve added.

Sir Julius Vogel Awards for New Zealand Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror

2011 Results Announced

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ) is pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Sir Julius Vogel Awards. Categories and winners in each category are listed.

Professional Awards Section

Best Novel – Adult

Joint Winners:

The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe (Orbit)

The Questing Road by Lyn McConchie (Tor Books)

Best Novel – Young Adult

Winner : Summer of Dreaming by Lyn McConchie (Cyberwizard Publications)

Best Short Story

Winner: High Tide At Hot Water Beach by Paul Haines
(A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction), Random Static

Best Novella/Novelette

Winner: A Tale Of The Interferers – Hunger For Forbidden Flesh by Paul Haines
(Sprawl Anthology)

Best Collected Work

Winner : A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction
Edited by Anna Caro and Juliet Buchanan, Random Static

Best Professional Artwork

Winner: Frank Victoria – Tymon’s Flight cover
(HarperCollins Publishers Australia)

Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form

Joint Winners:

This Is Not My Life – Pilot Episode

Directors: Rob Sarkies & Pete Salmon
Executive Producers: Gavin Strawhan, Rachel Lang, Steven O’Meagher & Tim White
Producer: Tim Sanders
Associate Producer: Polly Fryer

Kaitangata Twitch – Pilot Episode

Production Shed TV
Producer: Chris Hampson
Director/Executive Producer: Yvonne Mackay
Executive Producer: Dorothee Pinfold, Jan Haynes
Associate Producer: Margaret Mahy
Writer: Gavin Strawhan, Michael Bennett and Briar Grace-Smith
Actors: Te Waimarie Kessell, George Henare

Best Professional Publication

Winner: White Cloud Worlds Anthology
Edited by Paul Tobin

Best New Talent

Winner: Karen Healey

Fan Awards Section

Best Fan Production

Winner: Doctor Who Podcast
Paul Mannering
Broken Sea Productions

Best Fan Writing

Winner: Jacqui Smith
Musings From Under The Mountain and Novazine Contributions

Best Publication

Winner: Novazine
Edited by Jacqui Smith

Special Awards

Services to Fandom

Winner: Ross Temple

Services to Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror

Winner: Simon Litten

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards 2011: Nomination Deadline Fast Approaching

Posted on March 10, 2011

I have been a very naughty boy.

Well, a slightly naughty boy, anyway. I meant to put up a post about the opportunity to nominate works and people for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards as far back as the end of January, and yet I’m only now getting around to it. Sorry for leaving it so late!

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards are the New Zealand awards for speculative fiction, awarded at each year’s New Zealand national science fiction convention. I was very pleased when Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, the anthology I co-edited with Mark Pirie, won in the Best Collected Work category in the 2010 Sir Julius Vogel Awards.

Given that the deadline for nominations is the end of March (to be precise, it’s 31 March 2011 at 8.00pm), I’m going to abandon my always-likely-to-be-unrealistic plan of taking a comprehensive look at potential nominees, and just tell you what I’m going to nominate in a few of the categories. Because NZ speculative fiction is so strong at the moment, there are lots of good books/stories/people out there for you to nominate, and I encourage you to go for it! (Suggestions, in any category, are welcome below in the comments).

First of all, SFFANZ and SpecFicNZ have details of the nomination process. The 2010 awards show the categories.

Semaphore Magazine has a guide to eligible works it has published, and Helen Lowe published a very useful guide to the categories, plus a list of some eligible novels in the Adult and YA categories.

The SFFANZ site has a number of lists of potentially eligible works – look at the works published in 2010 in each list.

So that’s plenty of information to be going on with. Here are the works I’m planning to nominate at this stage – I am sure I’ll think of others when I’m face to face with the nomination form:

– Best Adult Novel: The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe

– Best Young Adult Novel: Tymon’s Flight by Mary Victoria

– Best Collected Work: A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction, edited by Anna Caro and Juliet Buchanan

– Best Short Story: “Back and Beyond” by Juliet Marillier, the final story in A Foreign Country.

Time To Write One Of Next Year’s Nominees!

While you’re making your nominations, take a moment to check out the inaugural SpecFicNZ short story contest, which also closes on 31 March.

How To Vote In The Sir Julius Vogel Awards

Posted on June 9, 2010

Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, the anthology I co-edited with Mark Pirie, is on the final ballot in the Best Collected Work category at the Sir Julius Vogel Awards – and there are many fine works nominated in all the categories.

The administrators have now released this handy guide on…

How to Vote

To be eligible to vote, you must be a member of SFFANZ or an Attending or Supporting member of Au Contraire – the 31st New Zealand National Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention (taking in place in Wellington on 27-29 August 2010).

If you wish to vote but are not attending Au Contraire, postal and email voting options are explained here: http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/sjv/sjvNominations-2010.shtml

Postal and email voting starts now and will continue until 20 August 2010 inclusive. Voting actually started as soon as the email voting form was available, so if you have already voted, it is valid assuming all eligibility criteria has been meet.

If you are attending Au Contraire you may vote at Au Contraire. Please keep a look out for the SJV Ballot Box and SJV Table.

If you wish to vote, but are not a member of SFFANZ, you can join for NZ $10.00 and send in your vote with your membership fee. Cheques should be made out to “SFFANZ”

You may vote for one, some or all of the categories.

Many of the works are available at your local library or bookshop. There is plenty of time to read or preview the nominated works before voting closes. We also have more links to the nominated works at http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/sjv/sjvNominations-2010.shtml

Some of the nominated works are available to download whole, free-of-charge.

If you have any questions, please contact June Young, press (at) sffanz.sf.org.nz

Voyagers: More Good Reviews, Another Award Nomination

Posted on May 12, 2010

Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, the anthology co-edited by Mark Pirie and I that was published by Interactive Press in 2009, is continuing to make waves – or, if you prefer, ripples in the fabric of space-time. Here is a roundup of the latest news:

More Good Reviews for Voyagers

Joanna Preston has given Voyagers a good review in the May issue of “a fine line”, the magazine of the New Zealand Poetry Society. Joanna says:

More than 70 poets have work in Voyagers; from major luminaries like Fleur Adcock, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell and A.R.D. Fairburn, to protostellar entities like Katherine Liddy, Seán McMahon and Meliors Simms. Most are represented by only one or two poems, the vast majority of which are typical modern NZ free verse lyrics. They range in tone and mood from wonder (as in Nic Hill’s ‘Somewhere Else’), through gleeful weirdness (Helen Rickerby’s ‘Tabloid Headlines’) and ‘Martian’ strangeness (Tracie McBride’s ‘Contact’ and Jane Matheson’s gorgeous ‘An Alien’s Notes on first seeing a prunus-plum tree’), to the bleakness that has long made dystopian fiction one of science fiction’s classic concerns (Fleur Adcock’s brilliant dystopian epic ‘Gas’ being one of the collection’s highlights).

You can read the full review, other reviews, and sample poems, at the Voyagers mini-site.

Hot off the press comes Patricia Prime’s review of Voyagers in Takahe 69. Patricia ends this comprehensive rand generally positive review by saying:

… [there are] probably more contributors concerned with the insights into science fiction than we could have imagined from our community of poets.

Award Nominations

Voyagers is a finalist in the “Best Collected Work” category of the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s local equivalent of the Hugo Awards. My thanks go to all those who nominated Voyagers! The awards ceremony will be at Au Contraire, the 2010 New Zealand Science Fiction Convention, held in Wellington in August, which I’ll be attending. There is a strong lineup in “Best Collected Works”, and all the other categories – it’s a good guide to the present strength of science fiction, fantasy and horror in this country.

As previously reported, “Two Kinds of Time”, by Meliors Simms, is a nominee in the Best Short Poem category of the Rhysling Awards 2010. The Rhysling Awards, established in 1978, are the international awards for science fiction, fantasy and horror poetry. Meliors’ poem appears in the 2010 Rhysling Anthology, and the winners and runners-up will be announced at ReaderCon in Boston in July 2010.

Voyagers cover

You can buy Voyagers from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle e-book, or from New Zealand Books Abroad, or Fishpond.

You can also find out more about Voyagers, and buy it directly from the publisher, at the Voyagers mini-site.

Sir Julius Vogel Award Nominations Open For 2009 Calendar Year

Posted on January 10, 2010

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s equivalent of the Hugo Awards, have recently opened for nominations. Nominations close on 31 March 2010.

Grant Stone has listed some possible contenders for the Vogels on his blog, and I naturally endorse his selection of Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry From New Zealand as one of the candidates! You can find SFFANZ’s list of eligible novels on their site; I recently reviewed one of the listed novels, Lee Pletzers’ The Last Church.

Short stories and collections are also listed – look for the 2009 publication dates – and I was pleased to see Voyagers contributions and contributors included on the list.

I want to browse through the lists and catch up on some work that I’ve missed out on reading before deciding what I’d like to nominate – but if you are ready to go with your nominations, here is the official word on how to proceed.

Nomination Procedure

The Sir Julius Vogel sub-committee of SFFANZ is currently accepting nominations for science fiction and fantasy works first published or released in the 2009 calendar year.

Nominations open on 1 January 2010 and close on 31 March 2010 at 8pm.

For more information about SFFANZ and the SJV Awards, please go to the SFFANZ web-site http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/

To make a nomination please email sjv_awards (at) sffanz.sf.org.nz.. Anyone can make a nomination, and it is free of charge.

Please send one nomination per email and include as many contact details as possible for the nominee as well as yourself.

You can find full details about the nomination procedures and rules, including eligibility criteria at http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/sjv/sjvAwards.shtml

A detailed nomination FAQ can be found at http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/sjv/sjvAwardsNominationGuidelines.shtml

The voting will occur at Au Contraire, http://www.aucontraire.org.nz/ – the national science fiction convention being held in Wellington, New Zealand over the weekend of the 27 – 29 August 2010.

Voyagers, Vogels and Montanas, Oh My!

Posted on June 16, 2009

Voyagers

Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand is getting good exposure in the Dominion Post this week. Louis Johnson’s poem from the anthology, “Love Among the Daleks” was the Wednesday Poem in the DomPost, and in Saturday’s Indulgence section, there will be a short piece about the book written by Tom Cardy, whom I completely deny knowing since we were callow youths in Dunedin.

It bears repeating: You can buy Voyagers from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle e-book; New Zealand Books Abroad; or Fishpond. You can also find out more about Voyagers, and buy it directly from the publisher, at the Voyagers mini-site.

Bookshop distribution is taking longer to arrange – as an aside, one reason that Australian literature has a surprisingly low profile in New Zealand is that New Zealand bookshops seem reluctant to deal with Australian distributors – but books are trickling in here: at least, I know that Parsons in Lambton Quay, Wellington has a copy! But you may find that an online option is your best bet to buy the book at the moment.

UPDATE: There will be 5 copies in Unity Books, Wellington, from Friday 19 June.

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards 2009

It is long past time that I congratulated the winners in the 2009 Sir Julius Vogel Awards. Sadly for me, I wasn’t one of them; my cunning plan of competing against myself (with Transported and JAAM 26) allowed that up-and-coming author Elizabeth Knox to burst through the middle in the Best Collected Work category.

But my congratulations go to all the winners, and especially to Helen Lowe, who took out both Best Novel – Young Adult and Best New Talent, and Grant Stone, who won Best Short Story.

This Year’s Montana Book Awards Controversy

It wouldn’t be the Montana Book Awards without a controversy. Last year, the big fuss was over the judges for the Best Novel awards restricting the field to four candidates rather than the allowable five.

This year, Graham “Bookman” Beattie has criticised the elitism of the Best Novel shortlist, while Joanna Preston has noted that Auckland University Press and Victoria University Press have been the only publishers with works on the shortlist in the past two years, though other publishers have been represented there in the past.

One possible reason for the limited representation of poetry publishers is that, from the perspective of a small press publisher’s (or poet’s) budget, it is very expensive to enter these awards. To quote from the rules at http://www.booksellers.co.nz/documents/mnzba09_entry_forms_information.pdf:

9. An entry fee of NZ$100 (including GST)
will be charged for each submission. A fee of
NZ$150 (including GST) will be charged for
publishers who are not members of Booksellers
New Zealand.

For books with a print run of fewer than 1,000
copies an entry fee of NZ$85 (including GST) will
be charged. A fee of NZ$125 (including GST) will
apply in this instance to publishers who are not
members of Booksellers New Zealand.

(In addition, publishers have to supply five copies of each book entered.)

To punt this amount of money, a small press publisher or author has to be confident that the book in question has a good chance of winning – and, given the dominance of the university presses (in particular VUP and AUP) in this category, not many small press publishers or authors would have this confidence. Thus, the more AUP and VUP win, the less competition they will have in future – and, though the finalists are certainly worthy of that honour, I think it would be good to spread the net wider.

If you agree, or if there’s some other aspect of the awards that needs improving, you have a chance to do something about it. To quote another blog post by Joanna Preston:

Addendum: this year is the last year under Montana’s sponsorship, and so Booksellers New Zealand are reviewing the awards, and are calling for public submissions.

Submissions should be emailed to:
AwardsReview (at) booksellers.co.nz,
or mailed to Booksellers New Zealand, PO Box 13248, Johnsonville, Wellington 6440
by 1 July 2009.

Submissions will be listed online at http://www.booksellers.co.nz/bk_awards_review.htm, by name and date, from Wednesday 10 June. They will be available to download in full, in pdf format.

Voyagers for Sale, Stand Up Poetry, Online Voting for the Vogels, and James Dignan’s New Exhibition

Posted on May 13, 2009

Voyagers for Sale

Mark Pirie and I are still waiting for the contributors’ and review copies of Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand to make their way to the shores of Aotearoa, so we can start sending them out. But it is already possible to buy – or at least order – Voyagers online, as follows:

From Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle e-book (search for “Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry”)
From Fishpond in New Zealand.
From the publisher, via the Voyagers mini-site which also has information about and excerpts from the book.

And a poem from Voyagers has already gone cross-platform! (That sounds good – I hope it makes sense.) Meliors Simms has produced a video version of part of her poem “Two Kinds of Time”, which appears in the anthology. You can see it and read about it on Meliors’ blog, and also see it as part of Helen Rickerby’s initiative, NZ Poets on Video. It’s well worth watching.

Get Up, Stand Up

I will be the featured reader at Stand Up Poetry at Palmerston North City Library on Wednesday 3 June at 7pm. Helen Rickerby was the May reader, and it sounds like she had a great time; Harvey Molloy is reading in August; if someone can tell me who’s reading in July, I’ll mention them too. I’m looking forward to it – come along if you are in the Palmerston North area and hear my repertoire of anecdotes for the first time!

UPDATE: As Helen Lehndorf has reminded me, and I should have remembered, Glenn Colquhoun is the June reader. Helen Heath will be reading in September.

Online Voting for the Vogels

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s equivalent of the Hugo Awards, will be awarded at ConScription, this year’s National Science Fiction Convention, being held in Auckland at Queen’s Birthday Weekend. There’s a very strong field of finalists, and yours truly has two finalists (Transported and JAAM 26) in the field for Best Collected Work.

Members of ConScription and of SFFANZ, the administering body, are eligible to vote – and if you join SFFANZ (it costs $10 per annum) you can vote online until 27 May 2009. I encourage you to do so.

James Dignan’s New Exhibition

Dunedin artist and reviewer James Dignan has his fifth solo exhibition, “The Unguarded Moment”, at the Temple Gallery, 29 Moray Place, Dunedin from May 15-28, with the opening this Friday (the 15th) from 5.30-7.30pm. I recommend it! You can find out more about the exhibition, James’s art, music and writing, and his past exhibitions on his website.

SFFANZ Press Release: Finalists for the 2009 Sir Julius Vogel Awards Announced – Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Authors Nominated

Posted on March 22, 2009

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand is pleased to announce its list of finalists for the 2009 Sir Julius Vogel Awards celebrating consumer choice and excellence in science fiction, fantasy and horror. Eligible works are from the 2008 calendar year.

Christchurch author Helen Lowe, author of “Thornspell”, is one of the finalists in the category of “Young Adult Novel”. Other finalists in this category are Ella West for “Anywhere But Here”, Fleur Beale for “Juno of Taris”, Margaret Mahy for “The Magician of Hoad” and Glynne MacLean for “The Spiral Chrysalis”.

Young Adult works feature very strongly on this year’s nominations. Helen Lowe and Ella West have also been nominated in the category of “Best New Talent”, while Glynne MacLean has also been nominated in the Novella category for “The Time Stealers”.

Auckland writer Nalini Singh, author of “Mine to Possess” and “Hostage to Pleasure” has been nominated for both works in the category of Best Novel. Hamilton author Russell Kirkpatrick has also been nominated in this category for his work “Dark Heart”, the second book of the Husk trilogy. Both authors will be attending Conscription as New Zealand Literary Guests of Honour.

For more information about Conscription — including how to obtain tickets to attend — please visit http://www.conscription.co.nz/ConScription/index.htm.

Voting for the SJV Awards will take place at Conscription, the 30th New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention, which will be held in Auckland, New Zealand over Queen’s Birthday Weekend, 29 May – 1 June 2009. Conscription is taking place at the Grand Chancellor Hotel in Mangere. Winners will be announced after the Conscription banquet on the Sunday night of the convention.

A full list of finalists by category can be seen at http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/sjv/sjvNominations-2009.shtml. Other categories include “Best Short Story” and “Best Collected Work”, with Tim Jones having two works in this latter category.

Tim adds:

If you check out the link to the list of finalists, you’ll find several people with connections to this blog. One of them is me: I’ve been nominated both for my short story collection Transported, which you can buy online from Fishpond and New Zealand Books Abroad, and as the editor of JAAM 26, from which Darian Smith’s fantasy story “Banshee” has also been nominated. Lyn McConchie and Helen Lowe also had work in JAAM 26.

Helen Lowe has been nominated both for her excellent novel Thornspell, which I read this past week, and as Best New Talent – and talented she surely is.

Pat Whitaker is another multiple nominee. I met Pat a few weeks ago and was very impressed by the energy and commitment he puts into his writing. And Regina Patton, nominated for her short story “The Derby”, is a recent guest blogger right here.

It’s nice to see other old friends and new nominated as well, among them Sally McLennan, Yvonne Harrison, Dan McCarthy and Maree Pavletich (the latter two for Services to Fandom – either would be a worthy winner). The best of luck to all the nominees!

Reclaiming Gravity: The Birth of a New Zealand Writers’ Association

Posted on March 11, 2009

This is a guest post by Regina Ripley Patton. Ripley Patton lives mostly in her head but occasionally comes out to enjoy the scenery of the remote hills of the South Island that rise around her home. She writes speculative fiction because truth has always fascinated her more than fact. Her work has appeared in AlienSkin, Quantum Muse, The Lorelei Signal, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, Reflection’s Edge, and the new Wily Writers website for Speculative Fiction Downloads. She currently has a science fiction story in the running for a Sir Julius Vogel Award for best short story. You can find a window into her mind and writing at http://rippatton.livejournal.com.

Reclaiming Gravity: The Birth of a New Zealand Writers’ Association

No one warned me I’d be weightless in New Zealand. It is one of those assumptions we make wherever we go. Gravity works. When I moved to the South Island in August of 2006, I expected particles of matter to attract one another just as they always had.

I am a writer particle, a speculative fiction particle, to be exact. Speculative fiction, for those unfamiliar, is the current umbrella term for the collective genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism, paranormal, and all the blends of and in between. Basically it’s the writing of those who love to “wildly speculate”. That’s me.

In the Pacific Northwest of the US, where I come from, there were quite a few particles like me. These particles collected in masses through writers associations, workshops, frequent conventions, and other various joyful excuses to bump into one another. Because the particles were many, and close together, their pull on one another was fairly strong, producing a fine, heady gravity. I rarely felt as if I was going to just float off into space alone, never to be seen again.

And then I moved. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my new country with its sheep, and inspiring scenery, and sheep. I was thrilled to be here, and one of the first things I did was sail off searching for like particles to bump into. Whee!

First, I looked up speculative fiction writers organizations. I found The New Zealand Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writers Association (NZSFW). Its website had not been touched since 2000 and a quick poke with a stick revealed it to be decidedly dead. I continued my search for weeks, shuffling through the lifeless and abandoned websites of New Zealand speculative writers who had died, moved to Australia, or simply floated off into the void, never to be heard from again. I began to grow lighter. I bought heavier shoes, weighted my pockets with stones, and avoided the open sky, but if was obvious to me that my weightlessness was growing worse by the day. Without other like particles to pull on me, it was only a matter of time before I became just another minuscule speck lost in the great blackness of space. Gravity had betrayed me.

One particularly light day, when my husband had tied my safety tether to the clothes line so I could hang the wash, I had a revelation. There had to be other particles like me out there somewhere, clinging desperately to their own small chunks of New Zealand. If I could just find them, shake them loose, encourage them that they weren’t alone, then collectively our gravity would increase. The more particles I could find, the more pull we’d have to attract even more particles. It didn’t matter if there were only a few to start. If we bumped against one another, and stuck it out, eventually gravity would be restored to us all.

And so began a search, a quest, if you will, to find speculative fiction writers in New Zealand who wanted to network, develop a writers organization, and not only gain some weight but possibly throw it around sometime in the future.

As of now, there is a core group of eleven such particles, including myself. We include a mix of genders, ages, genres and geographic locations. Among us is Lee Pletzers, the founder of Masters of Horror, myself, a Sir Julius Vogel Nominee, Grant Stone, an acceptee to the Australian Horror Writers Association 2009 mentorship program, Marie Hodgkinson, the editor of Semaphore e-zine, Anna Caro, a member of the 2010 Con committee, and the rest are just as talented and dedicated. This last weekend we decided on an official name (yet to be revealed) and will be moving forward in developing an organizational charter.

And if you’re interested, we’re still looking for core members. The more particles we get, the easier the load and the heavier the gravity. Our plans are to take our time, grow this thing well, and burst onto the scene in a Big Bang sometime in early 2010. Anyone keen to give up their weightlessness should contact Regina Ripley Patton at give(underscore)a(underscore)rip(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)uk

Either way, if you are a writer of speculative fiction in New Zealand, we hope to support you through a quality writers association in the near future.

In the meantime, write with one hand, and hang on to something heavy with the other.

For Your Consideration: The Sir Julius Vogel Awards 2009

Posted on December 20, 2008

As I mentioned earlier this month, nominations are now open for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards 2009, New Zealand’s equivalent of the Hugo Awards. They recognise excellence in a number of fields related to science fiction, fantasy and horror. The 2009 Awards are for works published in 2008.

Nominations close on 28 February 2009. You can find details of the categories and how to nominate on the SFFANZ site, and also lists of works eligible to be nominated (these lists are not comprehensive, and can be added to as further works are nominated).

Anyone can nominate works for the awards, although voting is restricted to members of SFFANZ and/or the 2009 National Science Fiction Convention, Conscription.

So who are the contenders? I’m not well qualified to talk about the fan or media categories, but I can think of a few possible contenders for Best Novel, Best Collected Work and Best Short Story. I should emphasise here that what follows is my opinion – it’s up to the organising committee to decide what works qualify in which categories.

Best Novel

There are a very healthy number of contenders listed on the SFFANZ site.

My personal favourite is Helen Lowe’s Thornspell. Other contenders include two SF novels published by writers better known for work in other genres: The Jigsaw Chronicles by Kevin Ireland, and Chinese Opera by Ian Wedde. And one mustn’t forget Jack Ross’s EMO!

Best Collected Work

On the SFFANZ list, Transported is the only short story collection listed for 2008 – a worrying state of affairs, as there needs to be competition in each category! I intend to nominate JAAM 26, since it contains quite a few eligible short stories, as suggested below.

Best Short Story

There are lots of candidates here! Here is my list – again, not an official list – of stories from JAAM 26 and Transported which I think are eligible. I have only listed the stories from JAAM 26 which seem to me to fit within the relevant genres. The list from Transported is quite short, as stories have to be first published in 2008 to be eligible, and many stories in Transported are reprints.

JAAM 26

Tracie McBride, Last Chance to See [sf]
Renee Liang, Voodoo [fantasy/horror]
Esther Deans, Breathing in Another Language [fantasy/magic realism]
Ciaran Fox, In the End Our Apathy Will Desert Us [sf]
Darian Smith, Banshee [fantasy]
Helen Lowe, Ithaca [alternate history/mythology]
Michael Botur, Historic Breakfasts [alternate history]
Lyn McConchie, Just a Poor Old Lady [horror]

If you think your story should be on this list, please let me know and I’ll add it.

Transported

The New Neighbours [sf]
The Wadestown Shore [sf]
Filling the Isles [sf]
Measureless to Man [alternate history]
The Seeing [sf]
Going Under [sf]
Cold Storage [sf/horror]

Happy nominating!