BSFA Awards: Last day for nominations

[coalescent]

[Poll #905941]

The current list of nominations is here; send your nominations to BSFA.Awards@gmail.com. As Ian says, just because something's on that list doesn't guarantee it's going to make it to the shortlist: it might have received one nomination, it might have received fifty. If the Hugo nomination stats are anything to go by, this is going to be especially true of the short fiction -- the nomination field tends to be broad but relatively shallow. So if you see a story -- or anything else you like -- already on the list, it's still worth adding your nomination.

Comments

[dougs.livejournal.com]

I am a BSFA member, I have not nominated for the awards, I consider this an honourable course of action since I have not read any sufficiently recent work.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

But you could go and look at the artwork nominations, which are almost all linked ... :)

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

What you said.

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

As Niall said, at least look through the existing artwork links for anything you feel worthy of nominating; also, of course, the covers of the nominated novels and magazines.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

The only artworks linked are those which are already nominated. While some of them I may feel are worthy of nomination, it hardly seems right to only base my nominations off a subset...

So, no.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Go and click on the link to the Locus cover art directory already. :p

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

I did. I got a server error.

The non-existent nepotist in me hasn't even nominated my best friend (Wendy Waring, Stone Sentinels, Interzone 207) for her eligible work because I haven't read the finished product.

Me, slack? Yes. I am a lost cause :P

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the entireity of locusmag.com seems to have gone down. I'd like to think this is because of the hundreds of people clicking on my link, but somehow I doubt it. Don't worry, I'll send you a reminder comment when the site comes back up. :p

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's been boingboinged.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Curse that Cory Doctorow! CURSE HIM!

Oh, wait, the site's back up. Never mind.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

It's back up.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

Bollocks. The Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine cover attributed to Brian Smith is actually by Connie Valentina.

*goes to email*

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

While this is undoubtedly a constructive response, I have to admit it's not the one for which I was hoping. ;-)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

There are also many, many more pieces of cover art (although of course things other than cover art are eligible) here.

And I'm sure I've said this before, but I personally think the "I haven't read enough recent fiction" line is a bit crap. You can tell if something is a very good book; if you think something is a very good book, I would say it deserves to be nominated.

[yalovetz]

How about the "I haven't read any recent fiction" line? Or the "I have read some recent fiction but it was all crap and not worth nominating" line?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

That, of course, is perfectly acceptable. :)

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Sadly, my positon as well. I have read (I think) three-and-a-half 2006 novels. One is good, but I won't nominate it because it's not sf, despite the author's impeccable sf credentials, and the others are not, in my view, good enough.

I did nominate a non-fiction book, though.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

I haven't, to my knowledge, read anything published in the last year.

I nominate where I feel I know the "market" enough to nominate the works which are both representative and good. I only nominate for Australian awards, for example, when I've read everything published. I find nominating for anything where I haven;t read everything problematic at best.

But I recognise I'm a bit idiosyncratic about this.

I really should just avoid these threads...

[brassyn.livejournal.com]

I am not a BSFA member. My life is a hollow sham.

Oh how you cut me to the quick!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

You know it's the truth!

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

Some variation on option three.

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am deeply ashamed, I have not yet nominated myself. Almost as if I knew exactly when the deadline was, and could afford to wait for (literally) the very last second...

[pennski.livejournal.com]

You think that's bad? I spent yesterday catching up with lj in chronological order, meaning I missed this post until today, when it's too late to nominate the book I contributed to. My life is therefore not a hollow sham, but a tragi-comedy in which the gods of time mock mere mortals.

On the other hand, being married to a previous BSFA Awards administrator, I am chuffed to bits that the interweb has enabled many more nominations to be received than was previously possible.

Hooray!

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, I see my mum's been nominating! I've put a version of Bad Gifts online so that people can see it if they like. Note that it's correctly attributed as the cover of Plokta 36, not the "Plokta Christmas Catalogue"... that was a "joke". I'm not sure who I should tell to get the link added to the BSFA website.

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

That would be me. Link added, thanks.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

I am so AWESOME I nominated books which weren't even eligible. I win.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't worry about it: so have a bunch of other people, it seems.

[fishlifter.livejournal.com]

It makes me so very happy not to be the person having to worry about that this year. (Although I did conscientiously attempt to check my own nominations before sending them off, that was more to avoid embarrassment when I really should know better.)

At the same time, I miss not being able to see the burgeoning spreadsheet of nominations right now! And then I remember the matching feeling of deep anxiety that some of the categories seemed to be heading for an enormous tie and a shortlist of multitudes.

Never mind the potential horror that the Wrong Things might be favoured by the majority. Hope I'm not making Ian depressed here, at all...

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

It seems like it ought to be more obvious how to quickly the publication date, but Amazon doesn't really help, as it doesn't tell you if a book is imported.

I'm considering just changing the damn rules next year.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Option 1: look at the publisher -- there's no Eos over here, for instance. Option 2: trust Locus.

[fishlifter.livejournal.com]

The way in which Amazon usually does give a clue is if they give the US list price before the UK price they've crossed out and replaced with their special bargain-ruin-your-local-bookshop price. It's a signal that it's worth going to check whether there's also a UK edition in the right year or not.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Is there an easy way to find out if I'm still an actual BSFA member? I (re-)joined two or three years ago, but I don't recall paying for more than a year's membership. And yet the Vectors and Matrices keep coming.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I've emailed the membership secretary -- hopefullly he'll be along soon with an answer.

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

According to the list I've been given, you're a member without an expiry date...

That means, as far as I'm concerned, you get to nominate, but you might want to follow that up with the membership secretary at some point.

[gummitch.livejournal.com]

Which means, I presume, that it's either a life membership or it's on behalf on Tor because of the review books we get from them. The former would give nominating (and voting) powers; the latter (I presume) wouldn't.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Really must get around to rejoining at some stage....

Come to think of it, I've a box of floppies somewhere with a bunch of old Matrixes in WP5.1 format.

[gummitch.livejournal.com]

Is there any way you could get copies of the contents of those to the BSFA?

[oursin.livejournal.com]

First I've seen of it, noticed at least one startling lacuna, have taken action.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Thank you for confirming that my life is, in fact, a Meaningless Sham - as I so often complain to Delia when I can't find my other slipper or can't think of a plot for a short story or have forgotten to pick up the milk, etc. She just laughs at me. She doesn't understand.

[grahamsleight.livejournal.com]

And the remarkable thing is, *all of that would be solved* if you only joined the BSFA!

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

You mock me.

(But I am laughing too hard to care! Good one, Graham.)

[grahamsleight.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm mocking Niall...

[ajr.livejournal.com]

I cannot fill in your poll because none of the three provided answers suit me. My answer would be "I have not nominated for any awards as I am a fool who can't remember if he renewed his BSFA membership or not, and I really should get around to working out who I need to ask to find out."

In short, my life is quite possibly a hollow sham.

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

Not according to my list; your membership expired 04/2006.

Of course, if you were to somehow have nominated in the past before your membership expired, then all would be well, but short of time travel, I don't see how that's going to happen.

[ajr.livejournal.com]

Whoops. Who do I contact regarding renewing my membership, then?

[truecatachresis.livejournal.com]

http://www.bsfa.co.uk/index.cfm/section.join