A succulent breast dispensing good recommendations (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} yendi) wrote,@ 2008-08-08 14:42:00 |
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World Fantasy Awards
As noted by Jeff VanderMeer, the World Fantasy Awards nominations for Best Novel are underwhelming, to say the least. The Servants was superb, of course, and Territory is wonderful and I'd be pleased as punch if either won the award, but when folks likeyuki_onna, Scott Lynch, David Anthony Durham, and Gregory Frost aren't even nominated, it's hard to invest much effort into caring about the awards this year it's hard to say that we're really talking about the best of the best here. ETA: My original sentiment was a little too harsh.
That said, I'm actually very happy with the non-novel nominations, which include lots of love for Logorrhea, which was one of my favorite anthologies of the last few years. "The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics," by Daniel Abraham, was my favorite short story from that collection (and of the year), and it's nice to see it finally nabbing a nomination somewhere.
I've only read two of the five collections, but both Pratt's Hart & Boot & Other Stories and Klages's Portable Childhoods blew me away. I'd be happy with either of them winning the award, although I don't doubt the other works are also damned fine (I mean, we're talking Lucius Shepherd here; once the library system here gets a copy, I don't doubt I'll enjoy it).
VanderMeer notes the lack of items from online magazines, and I'd be bothered by that if I saw a huge F&SF bias here, but it only scored two novella nominations (a length that doesn't tend to read as well online as short stories), while the short story field was split between Logorrhea (which might be from a big publisher, but which is certainly a cutting-edge and fascinating anthology), small-press publishers, and Kij Johnson's amazing "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change." I don't doubt that there are at least five equally deserving stories in online magazines (and can think of more than that, actually -- there was some amazing stuff online last year), but I can't look at any of the nominees and say that they weren't superb (noting that I still haven't read a pair of them).
As noted by Jeff VanderMeer, the World Fantasy Awards nominations for Best Novel are underwhelming, to say the least. The Servants was superb, of course, and Territory is wonderful and I'd be pleased as punch if either won the award, but when folks like
yuki_onna, Scott Lynch, David Anthony Durham, and Gregory Frost aren't even nominated, That said, I'm actually very happy with the non-novel nominations, which include lots of love for Logorrhea, which was one of my favorite anthologies of the last few years. "The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics," by Daniel Abraham, was my favorite short story from that collection (and of the year), and it's nice to see it finally nabbing a nomination somewhere.
I've only read two of the five collections, but both Pratt's Hart & Boot & Other Stories and Klages's Portable Childhoods blew me away. I'd be happy with either of them winning the award, although I don't doubt the other works are also damned fine (I mean, we're talking Lucius Shepherd here; once the library system here gets a copy, I don't doubt I'll enjoy it).
VanderMeer notes the lack of items from online magazines, and I'd be bothered by that if I saw a huge F&SF bias here, but it only scored two novella nominations (a length that doesn't tend to read as well online as short stories), while the short story field was split between Logorrhea (which might be from a big publisher, but which is certainly a cutting-edge and fascinating anthology), small-press publishers, and Kij Johnson's amazing "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change." I don't doubt that there are at least five equally deserving stories in online magazines (and can think of more than that, actually -- there was some amazing stuff online last year), but I can't look at any of the nominees and say that they weren't superb (noting that I still haven't read a pair of them).
