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Finalists for the 2017 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award
Finalists for this year’s Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short science fiction have been selected. The awards will be presented during the Campbell Conference Awards Banquet on Friday, June 16, as part of the annual Campbell Conference.
- Nina Allan, “The Art of Space Travel,” Tor.com, 27 July 2016.
- Amal El-Mohtar, “Seasons of Glass and Iron,” The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, eds. Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe, Saga Press, 2016.
- Carolyn Ives Gilman, “Touring with the Alien,” Clarkesworld, April 2016.
- Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom, Tor.com, February 2016.
- Ian R. MacLeod, “The Visitor From Taured,” Asimov’s, September 2016.
- Sam J. Miller, “Things with Beards,” Clarkesworld, June 2016.
- Dominica Phetteplace, “Project Empathy,” Asimov’s, March 2016.
- Catherynne M. Valente, “The Future is Blue,” Drowned Worlds, ed. Jonathan Strahan, Solaris Books, 2016.
- Kai Ashante Wilson, A Taste of Honey, Tor.com, 13 October 2016.
The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award recognizes the best science fiction short story of each year. It was established in 1987 by James Gunn, founder of the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at KU, and the heirs of Theodore Sturgeon, including his partner Jayne Engelhart Tannehill and Sturgeon’s children, as an appropriate memorial to one of the great short-story writers in a field distinguished by its short fiction.
The Campbell Conference has been held each year since 1978, usually in Lawrence, Kansas. It includes a Friday-evening banquet where the annual Theodore Sturgeon and John W. Campbell Memorial Award are presented; a round-table discussion with scholars, scientists, and writers of science fiction; and several other events.
This year’s Campbell Conference celebrates James Gunn and the mission of the Gunn Center – “Saving the world through science fiction.” The Conference takes place on June 16-18, where we return to the University of Kansas Student Union for most of our activities, including a mass signing by the attending authors and editors. We continue adding more special guests throughout May and early June.
2017 Andre Norton Award Winner!
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have announced the winner of the 2017 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy:
Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine (Tor)
The award was announced with the Nebula winners over the weekend.
Our congrats to David D. Levine and all the nominees:
- The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (Algonquin Young Readers)
- The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi (St. Martin’s)
- The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan UK; Abrams)
- Railhead by Philip Reeve (Oxford University Press; Switch)
- Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies by Lindsay Ribar (Kathy Dawson Books)
- The Evil Wizard Smallbone by Delia Sherman (Candlewick)
What do you think of this result?
2016 Nebula Award Winner!
The 2016 Nebula Awards were presented at a ceremony held in the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center in Pennsylvania on the evening of May 20, 2017. The best novel winner is:
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)
Our congrats to Charlie Jane Anders and all the other nominees.
- Borderline by Mishell Baker (Saga)
- The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris US; Solaris UK)
- Everfair by Nisi Shawl (Tor)
Locus has the full list of winners in all categories.
All the Birds in the Sky is up for the 2017 Hugo Award and the 2017 Locus Fantasy Award and, with this win, has made it onto our Award Winning Books by Women Authors list.
What do you think of this result?
Star Trek: Discovery – First Look Trailer
So we finally get to see what the new Trek is going to look like. Well, not too bad I’d say though the trailer is not quite as exciting as I would have liked. What do you think?
2017 Locus Award Finalists
The finalists for the 2017 Locus Awards have been announced. Here they are for the novel categories:
- Company Town by Madeline Ashby (Tor)
- The Medusa Chronicles by Stephen Baxter & Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz; Saga)
- Take Back the Sky by Greg Bear (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Visitor by C.J. Cherryh (DAW)
- Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Death’s End by Cixin Liu (Tor; Head of Zeus)
- After Atlas by Emma Newman (Roc)
- Central Station by Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon)
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday; Fleet)
- Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
- All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)
- Summerlong by Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon)
- City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett (Broadway)
- The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay (NAL; Viking Canada; Hodder & Stoughton)
- The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu (Saga; Head of Zeus)
- The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (Del Rey; Picador)
- The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar (Small Beer)
- The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
- Necessity by Jo Walton (Tor)
- The Reader by Traci Chee (Putnam)
- Waypoint Kangaroo by Curtis Chen (Dunne)
- The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi (St. Martin’s)
- The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig (Greenwillow; Hot Key)
- Roses and Rot by Kat Howard (Saga)
- Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris US; Solaris UK)
- Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine (Tor)
- Infomocracy by Malka Older (Tor.com Publishing)
- Everfair by Nisi Shawl (Tor)
- Vigil by Angela Slatter (Jo Fletcher)
- Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo (Holt)
- The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (Algonquin)
- Double Down by Gwenda Bond (Switch)
- Truthwitch by Susan Dennard (Tor Teen; Tor UK)
- Poisoned Blade by Kate Elliott (Little, Brown)
- Burning Midnight by Will McIntosh (Delacorte; Macmillan)
- Goldenhand by Garth Nix (Harper; Allen & Unwin; Hot Key)
- Revenger by Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz; Orbit US ’17)
- This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab (Titan; Greenwillow)
- The Evil Wizard Smallbone by Delia Sherman (Candlewick)
For the complete list of noms in all categories check out the official press release from Locus. Winners will be announced during the Locus Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, June 23-25, 2017; Connie Willis will MC the awards ceremony. Our congratulations to all the nominees!
What do you think of these lists? Any surprises? Any favorites? How do you like the expanded 10 noms per category?
What’s Your Science Fiction Fantasy?
Have you ever wanted to write a science fiction novel? Do you picture yourself as the hero? Be honest – do you have what it takes to be a great protagonist? And just what kind of adventure would you want to have?
Novels, unlike real life, and especially for science fiction, can be about anything. But let’s get really far out. Let’s imagine you have died, and you regain consciousness. You’re in an empty room with another being. Let’s not be so pedestrian as to call it God. Let’s just say it’s a very advanced being with great powers. The being tells you how reincarnation works. You can now be sent anywhere in the multiverse to live again. Just pick. The multiverse is so infinite anything you can imagine exists somewhere. Just think what you want. Or you can volunteer to be randomly placed.
Do you have a favorite book or movie you’d like to live? Have you been refining a personal fantasy for years you want to try out? Think hard and long, because like a Genie with three wishes, your decision can come back to bite you in the ass. Do you want to stay on Earth, or venture out into the solar system, or beyond? Do you want to be rich? Have lots of sex? Travel far and wide? Invent wonderful machines? Do great deeds? Be a great leader? Spend a lifetime being compassionate?
Think about your favorite novels. Good ones usually involve much adversity and danger. Have you ever read Replay by Ken Grimwood? Jeff Winston, the novel’s protagonist dies at 43 and wakes up back in 1963, in his 18-year-old body to live his life again. He remembers his first life, so he tries to make his second life better. It doesn’t work out like he plans. (Do plans ever work out like planned?) Jeff dies again and gets yet another chance. Thus the title. This 1986 novel came out well before Groundhog Day in 1993. This is one of my favorite fantasies.
When I was younger, I would have picked being a colonist on Mars. Either like Heinlein’s Red Planet or Robinson’s Red Mars. Or maybe a person using suspended animation to see the future like Heinlein’s The Door Into Summer. Of course, having a time machine like the traveler in H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine would be fantastic. I can’t think of anything more rewarding than going up and down the timeline of Earth to see what happens in both the past and the future.
However, I’d still pick the Ken Grimwood type of adventure. I’d like to reincarnate into my 12-year-old self and try this life again, starting in 1963. (Strange that Grimwood and I both picked 1963.) That was the year my family moved from Miami to South Carolina. I’ve always wondered if I could have convinced my folks to let me stay with my grandmother instead. She lived alone and managed an apartment building for old people. I even met a woman there who had been on the Titanic. My grandmother could have used the help, and I could have made a much better life knowing what I know now – if I had tried harder. It would be rewarding to live another life doing everything differently.
Hinduism invented the idea of reincarnation to improve the soul. It’s a rather elegant idea once you think about it. Especially, if you could reincarnate into your own life for a second try. It’s taken me almost seven decades to figure out how things work. Would knowing what I know now at puberty make much of a difference? It would be fascinating to find out.
Science fiction is really a literature of imagining alternate lives using all of time and space. Most of the time we explore wishes gone bad. I think that’s why I’ve always loved the twelve Heinlein juvenile novels the most of any science fiction stories. Those stories published from 1947-1958 had a lot of bad things happen to the characters, but the sense-of-wonder adventures made up for any of the sufferings.
If you have the time, leave a comment about the choice you’d make.
BLADE RUNNER 2049 – Official Trailer
Starting to get excited by this one now that we get to see a bit more. What do you think?
2016 Shirley Jackson Award Nominees
The nominees for the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award have been announced. The noms in the novel category are:
- The Girls by Emma Cline (Random House)
- The Wonder by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown)
- Lily by Michael Thomas Ford (Lethe)
- Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones (Morrow)
- I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid (Gallery/Scout)
- Foxlowe by Eleanor Wasserberg (Fourth Estate UK/Penguin US)
The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology. You can see the complete list of noms in all categories at LOCUS.
Our congrats to all the nominees! What do you like from this list? Any surprise inclusions?
THE DARK TOWER – Official Trailer (HD)
Well, this looks pretty damn epic to me and I love Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey so I’m in for sure. What do you think? How does this compare to the books from what little we’ve seen thus far?
