BFS Awards Shortlist

The British Fantasy Society is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2012 British Fantasy Awards. Determined by the 952 recommendations from BFS members and FantasyCon attendees and overseen by the BFS Award Jury, the shortlist is:

Novel:
 
The Heroes; Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz)
11.22.63; Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton)
Cyber Circus; Kim Lakin-Smith (NewCon Press)
A Dance with Dragons; George RR Martin (Harper Voyager)
The Ritual; Adam Nevill (Pan)
Among Others; Jo Walton (Tor Books)

There will be two awards in the best Novel category: The August Derleth Award for best horror novel and The Robert Holdstock Award for best fantasy novel...

I'll let you click through to read the rest.

Oh, yes, and... BFS Awards 2012...

I AM JUDGING YOU!

Along with fellow jurists:

• James Barclay
• Maura McHugh
• Esther Sherman
• Damien G. Walter

So I hope all you BFS members are nominating some cool shit for me to read.

SFF Translation Awards Prize Draw Fundraiser

The clue is in the title. Yes, the jury for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards are currently considering the various nominees, but in order to give prizes to the winners they need money. So, a fundraiser is afoot in which you can win prizes. I'm donating a signed copy of my poetry collection, Songs for the Devil and Death, and I note that Steve Berman of Lethe Press has donated a prize including hardback of Wilde Stories 2011, containing "Oneirica" by yours truly. So if either of those pique yer interest -- and there's more neat swag to be won besides that -- click on through and add yer support.

Lambda Winner

Congratulations to Sandra McDonald, who just nabbed herself a Lambda Award for her collection, Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories. Which is, I might note, available as an ebook from Wizard's Tower Press.



Now, what was it I said about this book when Steve Berman sent me an ARC on the off-chance of a blurb? Oh, yeah, it was:

''In that grand tradition of the fantastic that runs from Ray Bradbury to Jeffrey Ford -- and sitting happily beside those writers at their richest and most enchanting -- McDonald's collection is a book to fall in love with: a beautiful truth at the heart of every whimsy; every tale turning us back to history, to reality, even as it reinvents our world; and the collected whole even greater than the sum of its exquisitely interwoven parts.''

So, yeah, now do you believe me? And if you do, why haven't you picked up a copy yet, huh?

No, really, go buy one. It's a wee gem of a book.

Translation Awards Press Release

Just in. Figured it was as easy to give you the whole thing as to quote.

***

Finalists for the 2011 SF&F Translation Awards

The Association for the Recognition of Excellence in Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation (ARESFFT) is delighted to announce the finalists for the 2011 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards (for works published in 2010). There are two categories: Long Form and Short Form.

Long Form

The Golden Age, Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland (Dalkey Archive Press). Original publication in Czech as Zlatý Věk (2001).

The Ice Company, G.-J. Arnaud [Georges-Camille Arnaud], translated by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier (Black Coat Press). Original publication in French as La Compagnie des Glaces (1980).

A Life on Paper: Stories, Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated by Edward Gauvin (Small Beer Press). Original publication in French (1976­2005).

Four Stories till the End, Zoran Živković, translated by Alice Copple- Tošić (Kurodahan Press). Original publication in Serbian as Četiri priče do kraja (2004).

Short Form

“Wagtail”, Marketta Niemelä, translated by Liisa Rantalaiho (Usva International 2010 , ed. Anne Leinonen). Original publication in Finnish as “Västäräkki” (Usva (The Mist), 2008).

“Elegy for a Young Elk”, Hannu Rajaniemi, translated by Hannu Rajaniemi (Subterranean Online, Spring 2010 ). Original publication in Finnish (Portti, 2007).

“Bear’s Bride”, Johanna Sinisalo, translated by Liisa Rantalaiho (The Beastly Bride: Tales of the Animal People, eds. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Viking). Original publication in Finnish as “Metsän tutt” (Aikakone (Time Machine), 3/1991).

“Midnight Encounters”, Hirai Tei’ichi, translated by Brian Watson (Kaiki: Uncanny Tales from Japan, Vol. 2, Kurodahan Press). Original publication in Japanese (1960).

The winning works will be announced at the 2011 Eurocon in Stockholm on the weekend of June 17-19 < http://eurocon2011.se/ >. Each winning author and translator will receive a cash prize of US$350. ARESFFT Board member, Cheryl Morgan, will be present to make the announcement.

In addition to the standard awards, the Board of ARESFFT will present a special award to British author and translator, Brian Stableford. No less than seventeen of the nominees in Long Form from 2010 were translated by Stableford. The ARESFFT Special Award for Services to Translation will therefore be presented to Stableford in recognition of the excellence of his translation work.

The money for the prize fund was obtained primarily through a 2010 fund-raising event for which prizes were kindly donated by Neil Gaiman, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Gary K. Wolfe, Peter F. Hamilton, Kari Sperring, Nick Mamatas, Pyr Books, Nanopress and Tachyon Publications.

The jury for the awards was Terry Harpold, University of Florida, USA (Chair); Abhijit Gupta, Jadavpur University, India; and Dale Knickerbocker, East Carolina University, USA.

ARESFFT is a California Non-Profit Corporation funded entirely by donations. This is the first year that the awards have been presented.

Contact
info@sfftawards.org; http://www.sfftwards.org/
Cheryl Morgan

***

So there you go. Congrats and best of luck to all the nominees.

Spectrum Award

A wee piece of awesome news: my story, "The Behold of the Eye" just picked up a Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Short Fiction. Which is awesomesox in part because it's great to see the LGBT community respond to it and in part because it's one of my favourite (and most personal) stories. You can read it online at Lone Star Stories, where it was first published. You can pick up a copy in Wilde Stories 2009. And you can even hear it read over at Podcastle.

So, yeah... cool.

Shortlists and Shouting

Awesomeness! I am, it seems, up for the Tähtivaeltaja award again this year! I feel almost guilty about keeping my fingers crossed for this one, cause it's just being greedy. But, hey, I'm not really known for my self-control, am I? Anyways, congrats to the other nominees:

• Herran tarhurit (The Year of the Flood) by Margaret Atwood (Otava)
  Description of an apocalypse of biblical proportions that preaches against humankind’s endless greed and immorality
• Mielenpeli (Mindplayers) by Pat Cadigan (Avain)
  Self and personality are written anew in a book that looks deep into the foundation of identity
• Tohtori Veriraha (Dr. Bloodmoney) by Philip K. Dick (Like)
  Little people look for their place in a post–nuclear war described in a surprisingly warm and humane way
• Muste (Ink) by Hal Duncan (Like)
  A metaphorical novel dives vigorously into a breathtaking network of myth and reality
• Kirkkaan selkeää by Maarit Verronen (Tammi)
  A protagonist, fallen outside the society, witnesses the rising class distinction and destruction of nature in a wrenching vision of the near future

In other news, I'll be performing at the upcoming Initial Itch. That'd be at the 13th Note, Monday 4th April, 7:30 to 10:30. No idea where I'll be in the line-up, so come early to get yer seat and make sure ye don't miss me.

Busy Busy Busy

While I beaver away on Assault! On Heaven! and leave this blog with tumbleweed rolling through it, it's perhaps ironic that this whistling emptiness is one of the things for which I'm nominated for a Last Bird Drink Head Award, for Gentle Advocacy (to which at least one comment has been, "Gentle?!") Anyway, yes, that's swellegant news (albeit last week's) so yay! And congrats to all the other nominees too, of course.

In other news, anyone who liked the "Rules for New Writers" posts (I'll try and get some of the other rules covered properly when I can, I swear,) may well be interested in this interview I just did over at Creative Writing Now:

Actually, I don't think of them as rules for writers to follow so much as rules of how it all works that you want to get your head round. Like, "POV [Point of View] is not a communal steadicam," is really a summation of the inherent differences between written and cinematic/televisual media, and the differences within written narratives between the omniscient narrator and multiple third person limited, the problems that emerge when you muddle them.

So, rules five to seven basically set out a series of relationships between these aspects of narrative – voice, character, action and setting – that it will stand you in good stead to understand. As I put it: voice makes character; character makes action; action makes setting. That's not to say that voice is required to create character, mind, or that you can't effectively conjure setting with pure description in which nothing happens, in which the nearest you come to activity is the movement of an omniscient narrator's roving eye. What I mean is simply that imbuing a narrative with voice automatically conjures the POV character via that voice, that action will read more effectively as action the more it is presented not just as activity but as activity that has import for your characters, and that setting really comes alive when it's presented to the reader through that activity, when the character is engaging with it...

That is all. For now.

The Tähtivaeltaja Award...

... is mine! Mine, I say! Mine! Yes, in an act of typical wonderfulness, bless em, the Helsinki Science Fiction Society has given the 2010 Tähtivaeltaja Award to Vellum! As has been, I just this very moment discovered, reported on the front page of the Helsingin Sanomat online news site -- full story here. For those of you as don't read Finnish, here's Tero Ykspetäjä's English language version of the press release. Man, I even had a live radio interview and got filmed for the six o'clock news -- so I shall be on t' telly tonight, hurrah! Take that, World Cup!

So, yeah, I'm well chuffed, needless to say. You only need to look back over the past winners to see that it's damn fine company to be in! And now there's no need for the evasions and outright fibs of the last few days as to my "just being in Helsinki for a wee holiday." (Apologies to all of yez who've been subject to them. I was sworn to secrecy.) Cause, yeah, there was actually a wee bit of an extra reason to come. But, hey, given how awesome Finnish fandom is, that random holiday cover story is... kinda true on a thematic level, you could say. It's like a holiday plus, as far as I'm concerned, crashing with Hanna & Joonas, catching up with all my Finnish friends. I've been having way too good a time to actually get a chance to blog, so will have to recount all me adventures at a later date. But, yanno, obviously this had to have a Grand Announcement!

So, yeah... as the saying goes...

SQUEEEEE!!!!!!

Le Prix Spécial du Jury

I'm told that ENCRE -- the French translation of INK -- has been awarded the (first ever) Prix Spécial du Jury du Cafard cosmique. For them as reads French:

Une grande première cette année : le Jury du Prix du Cafard cosmique 2010 a décidé a une très large majorité de décerner cette année un Prix Spécial au roman Encre de Hal Duncan, publié par les Editions Denoël Lunes d’Encre.

Ce roman ne faisait pas partie des 5 oeuvres placées en tête de liste par les internautes mais, comme chacun le sait, le Peuple lui-même n’est pas infaillible ! Le Jury a donc voulu mettre également en lumière le formidable diptyque du Livre de Toutes les Heures de ce jeune auteur écossais, publié chez Denoël, dans la collection Lunes d’Encre.

And congratulations to Greg Egan, of course, for winning Le Prix du Cafard cosmique 2010 with his Océanique!