Category: awards

September BSFA London Meeting: Jo Fletcher Interview – 28th September 2011 – Free entry

 On Wednesday 28th September 2011 from around 7pm:

JO FLETCHER (Editor of Jo Fletcher Books) will be interviewed by Tom Hunter (Arthur C. Clarke Award Administrator).

Venue:

Upstairs Room
The Antelope Tavern
22, Eaton Terrace
Belgravia
London
SW1W 8EZ

Nearest Tube: Sloane Square (District/Circle)
Map:here.
All welcome! (No entry fee or tickets. Non-members welcome.)
Interview will commence at 7.00 pm, but the room is open from 6.00 (and fans in the downstairs bar from 5).
There will be a raffle (£1 for five tickets), with a selection of sf novels as prizes.

FUTURE EVENTS:

26th October 2011 – TANITH LEE interviewed by Nadia Van Der Westhuizen

23rd November 2011* – STEPHEN BAXTER interviewed by Paul Cornell

(No meeting in December.)

25th January 2012 – CHRISTOPHER PRIEST interviewd by Paul Kincaid

* Note that this is a month with five Wednesdays. The meeting will be on the fourth, not the last, Wednesday of the month.

Awards to come

This weekend’s awards were the Hugos. (See the survey of initial reactions at Strange Horizons.) The UK and the UK SF community did fairly well out of them, even if this country-as-setting was, by many accounts, the weak point in the best novel winner of Blackout/All Clear. Still, between Claire Brialey, James Bacon, Dr Who episodes, and relatedly Chicks Dig Time Lords, Britain would not have done half badly, if this were a country contest. Which it is not.

But the BSFA awards are to some degree, and, although BSFA members can nominate year-round for them, we are coming up to that time of year when nominations are officially open for the awards: the beginning of September.

In the meantime, the rules and guidelines for the 2012 BSFA awards have just gone live over on the BSFA website.

Best novels of 2011 so far

I knew it was halfway through the year when my thing-a-day calendar required flipping on the fourth of July. And halfway through means another quarter has passed and you have read more books.

Back in April, these were the books suggested for next year’s award nominations:

  • Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City (Published 2011 in the US)
  • Daniel Abraham’s The Dragon’s Path
  • James S.A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes.
  • Joe Abercrombie’s The Heroes.
  • Jo Walton’s Among Others
  • Andrea Hairston’s Redwood & Wildfire
Are these still the best contenders for next year’s novel awards, or have new books trumped or added to them since? What would you nominate as of now?

Guessing the winner of the 2011 Arthur C Clarke Award

We have a winner, not “just” of the Clarke Award itself, but of a certain contest too.

In the weeks leading up to the 2011 Arthur C Clarke Award ceremony, we ran a contest here on Torque Control to guess the winner of this year’s award, in conjunction with the Clarke Award itself and NewCon Press.

The winner will be receiving two prizes, both generously donated by NewCon Press.

The first is Fables from the Fountain, the recently-published anthology edited by Ian Whates from NewCon press. Fables is a collection of all-original stories written as homage to Arthur C. Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart and published in honour of the Clarke Award’s twenty-fifth anniversary. The volume includes new stories by Stephen Baxter, Ian Watson, Paul Graham Raven, James Lovegrove, Neil Gaiman, Colin Bruce, Liz Williams, Charles Stross, Eric Brown, Steve Longworth, Henry Gee, Andy West, David Langford, Andrew J Wilson, Peter Crowther, Tom Hunter, Adam Roberts, and Ian Whates. You can order a copy of Fables here (if you haven’t already done so!), with a share of profits going directly to support the Clarke Award’s current fund raising efforts. (A good cause!)

The second part of the prize is Celebration, an anthology of all-original stories published in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of the BSFA (which publishes Vector, of course), also edited by Ian Whates. It includes stories, original to this volume, by Ken MacLeod, Kim Lakin-Smith, Ian Watson, Tricia Sullivan, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, M. John Harrison, Molly Brown, Brian Stableford, Dave Hutchison, Liz Williams, Brian Aldiss, Martin Sketchley, Alastair Reynolds, Ian R. MacLeod, Christopher Priest, Adam Roberts, and Stephen Baxter.

The book which won the Clarke Award was, of course, Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City, which means that the eleven people who chose that book off the shortlist as their entry, complete with reason why it should win, were all eligible to win this contest.

In order to choose the contest winner, our judge, Tom Hunter, put all eleven eligible names into the “ceremonial Clarke Award hat”*, from which the winning name was drawn by independent witness Kat Havelock.

And the winner is… Adam Christopher!

Congratulations to Adam! Tom Hunter will contact you shortly about getting the prizes to you, if he has not already done so.

* Intriguing! Is the hat photogenic?

Arthur C Clarke Award Winner, 2011

Congratulations to Lauren Beukes, whose Zoo City yesterday won the juried Arthur C Clarke Award for the best work of science fiction published in the UK in 2010!

<strike>Twelve</strike> Eleven people correctly guessed the winner from the shortlist of six books. Next week, we will find out which of those twelve is the lucky winner of two short story collections, Fables from the Fountain, NewCon Press’ homage to Arthur C. Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart; and Celebration, an anthology published in honour of the BSFA’s fiftieth anniversary.

P.S. Abigail rounded up reviews of the shortlist, pre-award announcement.
After the award announcement: Alison Flood at the Guardian; Paul Graham Raven at CultureLab; Niall at Strange Horizons

BSFA Award Winners

The winners of the BSFA Awards for the best works published in 2010 were awarded at Eastercon on Saturday night in a ceremony hosted by Paul Cornell, assisted by hard-working BSFA Award Administrator, Donna Scott.

Best Novel: The Dervish House, Ian McDonald

Best Short Story: “The Shipmaker“, Aliette de Bodard (PDF)

Best Non-Fiction: “Blogging the Hugos” at Big Other, Paul Kincaid (Part 1)

Best Artwork: Cover for Zoo City, Joey Hi-Fi

Thank you to everyone who nominated and voted, and congratulations to the winners!

Next Year’s Art Awards

Has 2011 brought any science fictional artistic highlights with it for you? Cover art? Print? Paintings? Watercolours? Mosaics? Sculptures? What work from this year so far might you consider nominating for next year’s awards?

I left this question until last for a specific reason: Eastercon begins tomorrow. And at Eastercon – and quite likely other conventions this weekend – there will be an art show.

For those of you attending Eastercon, consider, as you walk around the art show, if any of the work there strikes you as worth nominating for next year’s art awards. Indeed, consider keeping this in mind at whatever conventions – or other venues for sharing science fictional artwork – you run across this year.

There’s nothing the least bit wrong with nominating good cover art; but it’s not the only place that good science fictional artwork is being produced.

BSFA Award Deadline(s)

Today is the last day for BSFA members to send in their votes for the BSFA Awards in advance. You have until midnight tonight to email in your votes.

After that, it’s still possible to vote – but only if you will be attending Eastercon, where both BSFA and Eastercon members will be able to submit their votes on Friday (and possibly part of Saturday). Then, that evening, the winners will be announced at a ceremony at the convention!

The shortlists are here. Email ranked votes and BSFA membership number to awards@bsfa.co.uk.

Next Year’s Short Story Awards

What about the short stories of 2011 so far? Three months in, and what highlights have stuck with you? What short stories have you read recently, from this year, which you would seriously consider nominating for next year’s science fiction awards?

P.S. Thank you for all your award nomination suggestions so far!