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2013 Bram Stoker Award Winners!
The Horror Writers Association have announced the 2013 Bram Stoker Award winners. The winner for Superior Achievement in a Novel is Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. Mr. King beat out the competition including his son Joe Hill. That will make for some interesting conversation at their next family gathering.
See the complete list of winners in all categories on the official press release.
Forays into Fantasy: Pulp Fantasy and A. Merritt’s The Ship of Ishtar
Scott Lazerus is a Professor of Economics at Western State Colorado University in Gunnison, Colorado, and has been a science fiction fan since the 1970s. The Forays into Fantasy series is an exploration of the various threads of fantastic literature that have led to the wide variety of fantasy found today, from the perspective of an SF fan newly exploring the fantasy landscape. FiF will examine some of the most interesting landmark books of the past, along with a few of today’s most acclaimed fantasies, building up an understanding of the connections between fantasy’s origins, its touchstones, and its many strands of influence.
The 1920s saw a peak in interest in fantasy among “literary” writers. Modernist writers like James Joyce (Ulysses, 1922) and T. S. Eliot (The Waste Land, 1922), looking for universal themes among the technological, political, and social upheavals of the early twentieth century, increasingly incorporated mythology into their writing. Other literary writers of the decade took the further step of presenting mythological stories using all the tools of the modern novel. David Lindsay, Hope Mirrlees, Virginia Woolf, David Garnett, E. R. Eddison, Franz Kafka, Lord Dunsany, and James Branch Cabell all produced works that attempted to novelize the fantastic and the mythological.
While this literary strain of fantasy never entirely died out, it waned in subsequent years, as the second main strain of fantasy—that appearing in the pulp magazines—increased its dominance. The appeal to escapism and sensationalism associated with pulp fantasy and science fiction (as well as some atrocious writing) may have helped make the genre increasingly unacceptable to the literati, but the literary accomplishments of the 1920s are an indicator of what might have been, if the potential audience for these works had not been turned against the literary potential of fantasy by the reputation of the pulps, especially once the specialized genre pulps Weird Tales and Amazing Stories appeared with much success in the late 1920s.
2013 Shirley Jackson Award Nominees
The nominees for the 2013 Shirley Jackson Awards have been announced. The nominees are:
Novel
- American Elsewhere, Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
- The Ghost Bride, Yangsze Choo (William Morrow)
- The Accursed, Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)
- Night Film, Marisha Pessl (Random House)
- The Demonologist, Andrew Pyper (Orion UK; Simon & Schuster US)
- Wild Fell, Michael Rowe (ChiZine)
Single-Author Collection
- North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud (Small Beer)
- Before and Afterlives, Christopher Barzak (Lethe)
- In Search of and Others, Will Ludwigsen (Lethe)
- The Story Until Now, Kit Reed (Wesleyan)
- Everything You Need, Michael Marshall Smith (Earthling)
Anthology
- Where thy Dark Eye Glances: Queering Edgar Allan Poe, Steve Berman, ed. (Lethe)
- Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Tor)
- End of the Road, Jonathan Oliver, ed. (Solaris)
- The Grimscribe’s Puppets, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., ed. (Miskatonic River)
- The Book of the Dead, Jared Shurin, ed. (Jurassic London)
See the complete list of nominees in all categories on the official press release. What do you think of this list?
2014 Locus Award Finalists
The 2014 Locus Award Finalists have been announced. The nominees are:
- MaddAddam, Margaret Atwood (McClelland & Stewart; Bloomsbury; Talese)
- Abaddon’s Gate, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- The Best of All Possible Worlds, Karen Lord (Del Rey; Jo Fletcher UK)
- Shaman, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Neptune’s Brood, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman (Morrow; Headline Review)
- NOS4A2, Joe Hill (Morrow; Gollancz as NOS4R2)
- River of Stars, Guy Gavriel Kay (Roc; Viking Canada; HarperCollins UK)
- Doctor Sleep, Stephen King (Scribner; Hodder & Stoughton)
- The Republic of Thieves, Scott Lynch (Del Rey; Gollancz)
- Zombie Baseball Beatdown, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
- The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo)
- Homeland, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; Titan)
- The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
- The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel and Friends)
See the complete list of all categories in the official press release.
I have to say this one looks like a pretty good list overall. I like that Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill, are battling for another award: NOS4A2 and Doctor Sleep are also nominees for the 2013 Stoker.
2014 Arthur C. Clarke Award Winner!
The 2014 Arthur C. Clarke Award winner was announced last night in an exclusive award ceremony hosted by the Royal Society, London, as part of the SCI-FI-LONDON Film Festival. The judging panel, nominated by the British Science Fiction Association, the Science Fiction Foundation and SCI-FI-LONDON, selected: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit) as this year’s winner.Ann Leckie received a check for £2014.00 and a commemorative engraved bookend trophy. Congratulations to Mz. Leckie for the win and to all the other nominees:
- God’s War by Kameron Hurley (Del Rey)
- The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann (Gollancz)
- Nexus by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot)
- The Adjacent by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)
- The Machine by James Smythe (Blue Door)
So what do you think of the result?
