If You Can't Say Anything Nice...

Award News

Slowly seeping in, the list of Aurora nominees, and I'm pleased to find that "Mayfly" by the inestimable Peter Watts and the estimable Derryl Murphy is on the ballot for short fiction. I'll also note that the competition looks much heavier than it has in the recent past, when stories from Joe's House Of Pancakes 'n' Fiction stood as good a chance of making the ballot as stories from bigger publications. Perhaps the fact that the number of ballots increased by almost fifty percent in this category has something to do with the quality of the list:

• "She's Such a Nasty Morsel", Julie E. Czerneda (Women of War, DAW)
• "Transubstantiation", Derwin Mak (Northwest Passages: A Cascadian Anthology, Windstorm Creative)
• "Identity Theft", Robert J. Sawyer (Down These Dark Spaceways, Science Fiction Book Club)
• "Alexander's Road", Karl Schroeder (The Engine of Recall, Robert J. Sawyer Books)
• "Going Harvey in the Big House", Douglas Smith (Cicada, Jan/Feb 2005)
• "Like Monsters of the Deep", Hayden Trenholm (On Spec #61 Summer/2005)
• "Mayfly", Peter Watts and Derryl Murphy (Tesseracts Nine, Edge)

Like Peter, I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that we don't win. The only thing that may tip the scales our way is that I am the only person on that list who does not live in Ontario, so maybe a mad rush of Ontarians voting amongst themselves will cancel all the other centre-of-the-universe votes. Unfortunately, Hayden may live in Ontario (or at least, did), but his connections out west will soften my own base. Peter and I don't maintain any sort of active fan community, we don't blog overmuch, and the fact that we're the best-looking (male) authors on the list will be moderated by the fact that Doug Smith is also sorta-handsome, and that Karl can cut a good jib himself if you squint just right. Rob's jib obviously isn't so much cut as it is, well, not-cut, but he of course has the whole name recognition and monster-sized presence going for him. And Julie is so darned nice, people who meet her on the street are soon promising anything for her within minutes. As for Derwin, he wins the religious vote, and believe it or not, there is such a thing in this community.

Quality of the stories, you say? Hmm. Hadn't thought of that.

In the meantime, I also note that in Best English-Other, Tesseracts 9 (where "Mayfly" appeared), Fantastic Companions (where my Matt Walker story appeared), On Spec (where I am the Art Director), and Neo-Opsis (where I once published a story) are all nominated. There are also two radio productions on the list, and since I listen to radio, I'm going out on a limb and announcing that I'm actually responsible for every one of those nominations. Pretty cool, huh?

I anxiously await news on the Artist list, and promise you my wrath will be fearful (and colourful) if Elaine Chen is not nominated. More will follow on that, as well as an announcement when the ballot is available for bathroom reading.