The 2013 World Fantasy Awards

The 2013 World Fantasy Awards Final Ballot nominees have been announced:

NOVEL

• The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz; Doubleday)
• The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)
• Crandolin, Anna Tambour (Chômu)
• Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (Grove; Corvus)
  

NOVELLA

• ‘‘Hand of Glory’’, Laird Barron (The Book of Cthulhu II)
• ‘‘Let Maps to Others’’, K.J. Parker (Subterranean Summer 2012)
• “The Emperor’s Soul”, Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon)
• ‘‘The Skull’’, Lucius Shepard (The Dragon Griaule)
• ‘‘Sky’’, Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls)

SHORT FICTION

• ‘‘The Telling’’, Gregory Norman Bossert (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 11/29/12)
• ‘‘A Natural History of Autumn’’, Jeffrey Ford (F&SF 7-8/12)
• ‘‘The Castle That Jack Built’’, Emily Gilman (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/26/12)
• ‘‘Breaking the Frame’’, Kat Howard (Lightspeed 8/12)
• ‘‘Swift, Brutal Retaliation’’, Meghan McCarron (Tor.com 1/4/12) 

ANTHOLOGY

• Epic: Legends of Fantasy, John Joseph Adams, ed. (Tachyon)
• Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, Eduardo Jiménez Mayo & Chris N. Brown, eds. (Small Beer)
• Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, Jonathan Oliver, ed. (Solaris)
• Postscripts #28/#29: Exotic Gothic 4, Danel Olson, ed. (PS Publishing)
• Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Random House)
  
  COLLECTION
• At the Mouth of the River of Bees, Kij Johnson (Small Beer)
• Where Furnaces Burn, Joel Lane (PS Publishing)
• The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories Volume One: Where on Earth and Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands, Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer)
• Remember Why You Fear Me, Robert Shearman (ChiZine)
• Jagannath, Karin Tidbeck (Cheeky Frawg)

ARTIST

• Vincent Chong
• Didier Graffet & Dave Senior
• Kathleen Jennings
• J.K. Potter
• Chris Roberts
  

SPECIAL AWARD – PROFESSIONAL

• Peter Crowther & Nicky Crowther for PS Publishing
• Lucia Graves for the translation of The Prisoner of Heaven (Weidenfeld & Nicholson; Harper) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• Adam Mills, Ann VanderMeer, & Jeff VanderMeer for Weird Fiction Review website
• Brett Alexander Savory & Sandra Kasturi for ChiZine Publications
• William K. Schafer for Subterranean Press

SPECIAL AWARD - NON-PROFESSIONAL

• Scott H. Andrews for Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• L. Timmel Duchamp for Aqueduct Press
• S.T. Joshi for Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction, Volumes 1 & 2 (PS Publishing)
• Charles A. Tan for Bibliophile Stalker blog
• Jerad Walters for Centipede Press
• Joseph Wrzos for Hannes Bok: A Life in Illustration (Centipede Press)

 Award already announced: LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

• Susan Cooper
• Tanith Lee

Tartarus news

The 2012 World Fantasy Awards have been announced; details here. Many congratulations to all the winners and runners-up.

Tartarus Press received the Special Award Non-Professional category. Tartarus's Ray Russell says: "We are absolutely delighted that Tartarus Press won the 'Special Award Non-Professional' at the World Fantasy Convention last weekend. Of course, the award doesn't just go to us, but is shared by Mark Valentine and Reginald Oliver (who both had their own individual nominations for awards), along with Michael Reynier, Tim Lees and Rhys Hughes, all of whom were published by Tartarus is 2011. And, posthumously, we should add Sarban, Gautier and Aickman to the list. Many thanks to Michael Dirda for collecting the award for us, and to everyone who has supported Tartarus for over twenty years."

Ray adds: "The latest of our Robert Aickman reprints is due to be published next week, Intrusions. In his Introduction Reggie Oliver writes that Robert Aickman ‘was one of the most original and interesting short story writers of the late twentieth century... I wonder if the adjective 'inconclusive', so often applied to Aickman, is quite the mot juste. His stories all have a beginning, a middle and an end. They conclude, but the conclusion is not absolute: puzzles remain. How like life! Aickman is both a realist and a surrealist: or, to put it another way, his surrealism is real."

2009 World Fantasy Awards Judges

Whilst on the subject of the World Fantasy Awards (see a previous post), I've learned that the 2009 judges, covering the 2008 award year, have been appointed. They are:

Jenny Blackford, Peter Heck, Ellen Klages, Chris Roberson and Delia Sherman

Vist the WFA for addresses, if you wish to submit material

Here Comes The Judge!

I was asked by Jo Fletcher if I wanted to be a judge for the World Fantasy Awards a few months into 2008. The request came out of the blue and left me stunned. I've never considered myself an expert although I like to think I was -- am -- widely read. It was an honour, of course, and so I agreed. I soon found myself working alongside -- in a virtual world sense -- Robert Hoge, Dennis L. McKiernan, Mark Morris, and Steve Pasechnick. And pretty quickly the books started arriving. Sometimes they came singly or in parcels of two or three. Sometimes huge boxes arrived pack full of hardcovers and trade and mass paperbacks.

The judges soon agreed on a score-keeper, to whom we were to send comments and scorings. It sounds harsh, but it came down to marking a book or story or collection out of ten (plus a comment or two); there was no other way. I also kept my own notes -- a notebook full of them -- in order to keep track of everything. My dining room became a library, with publications stacked all over the place. And then all the books and magazines needed reading.

As far as I was concerned, I wasn't simply looking for stories, novellas and novels I liked and enjoyed -- I was looking for books (and stories and novellas) that stunned me. I believed that an award winner should be outstanding. Thus the daunting task wasn't quite as bad as I was able to pass on from one title to the next. Of course, the more I enjoyed a book the more of it I read -- all of the it -- which takes time (I am not the fastest of readers). Many books were put into 'I must read this book next year' heap -- interesting and intriguing titles, but not quite there.

I was impressed by the quality of the novellas. This is a story length that suits fantasy, I feel, and those I read demonstrated this perfectly. Novels that formed part of a series were more difficult to judge. It took a lot more work to get into the story, especially if a knowledge of the previous title was a prerequisite. I felt that this put series books at a disadvantage, but ultimately each volume had to be judged on its own, not as part of a trilogy (or whatever). Some publishers seemed to have sent everything they produced in 2007, some were more selective, and some didn't bother sending anything without a reminder. I was especially pleased with the overall quality of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, so much so that I've now subscribed to it (but to be fair, I used to read it when Andromeda Bookshop sold it ... when Andromeda Bookshop still existed, actually).

In due course, we judges completed our tasks and following many, many emails bouncing between us we came to our shortlists and winners. I am more than happy with the finalists, even if my own favourite didn't get the prize. talking to judges from previous years, my experience pretty well matches theirs, so I felt I did a good job. Alas, I didn't get to convention in Calgary for the Awards presentation last Autumn; I suspect the winners all had a good time.

A couple of issues from this process. One is that the judges were criticised for being all white men. The complaints suggested that the Administrators were lazy and didn't search hard enough for a 'balanced' jury. Before I saw these comments it never occurred to me that a World Fantasy Award judge would be swayed by a writers' gender or colour or, perhaps, sexual orientation or religion. Yes, these moans did annoy me. I was told by one of the Award Administrators that securing the services of a 'balanced' jury was proving to be more and more difficult because more and more of those approached decline due to the heavy workload demanded of a judge.

The other thing is this: early on in the process, Jo Fletcher warned me that several judges in the past had found it difficult to retain the reading habit. She was right. Since I no longer have to read books, I find myself starting an awlful lot of them, but finishing few. I seem to be picking up more non-fiction -- such as a book on quantum mechanics recently (and no, I still don't understand it).

But, at the end of the day, when all is done, when the fat lady had sung, etcetera, etcetera, it was an experience well worth ... experiencing.

To remind you, here are the winners:

Life Achievement: Leo & Diane Dillon and Patricia McKillip
Novel: Ysabel Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada/Penguin Roc)
Novella: Illyria Elizabeth Hand (PS Publishing)
Short Story: "Singing of Mount Abora" Theodora Goss (Logorrhea, Bantam Spectra)
Anthology: Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural Ellen Datlow, Editor (Tor)
Collection: Tiny Deaths Robert Shearman (Comma Press)
Artist: Edward Miller
Special Award—Professional: Peter Crowther for PS Publishing
Special Award—Non-professional: Midori Snyder and Terri Windling for Endicott Studios Website

For more information, visit the WFA website.