It’s Hugo nomination season and, for your consideration, if you’re so inclined and such, I’m mentioning the fact that Chicks Unravel Time, edited by Deb Stanish and me, is eligible in the Best Related Work category.
If you’re reading this blog you’ve probably already seen me mention this book once or twice, but just in case: it features 34 writers from round the world examining every season of Doctor Who from 1963 through to season 6 of the reboot with a fresh, feminist eye. There are many fantastic writers amongst our contributors, including Barbara Hambly, Aliette de Bodard, Una McCormack, Amal El-Mohtar, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Lynne Thomas, Rachel Swirsky, Seanan McGuire and Martha Wells. We’re awfully proud of this book and would be honoured if you’d consider it.
Hugo nominations are open until March 10th, and you can nominate if you’ve a Worldcon membership (full or supporting) to this year’s LoneStarCon, last year’s Chicon, or next year’s Loncon, and buy your membership before January 31st.
Now that’s over with, here’s some awesome stuff that I’m nominating:
Best Fancast: The Writer and the Critic. I love these guys. They are delightful and cheer me immensely whilst igniting my enthusiasm for a whole lot of books I’d never have considered buying otherwise. I have a particular wee pile of books sitting on a table; I call it The Writer and the Critic pile.
Best Fan Writer: I was very much “I have no idea” here until reading someone else’s list of stuff they were nominating and they linked to Foz Meadow’s blog. I clicked over and it looked terribly familiar. And then realised, yes, I had been there before. Kind of a lot. For she says a lot of good stuff. Smart, informative and terribly interesting stuff.
Best Short Story: I’ve managed to read a lot of pretty great short stories this year, and in order to save myself kind of a lot of typing, I’m just going to mention my very favourite: Scattered Along the River of Heaven by Aliette de Bodard. I know Immersion’s getting a lot of attention (and it’s set in the same ‘verse, if I’m not mistaken?) but River of Heaven’s the one that makes me flail with delight. I love the world-building, the characters, the conflict. Reading it, I felt the same joy as when I was first discovering so much ‘Golden Age’ sci-fi as a young teenager, but, y’know, without having to ask “where are the women?”
Best Semiprozine: Apex Magazine. There are quite few ezines I read semi-regularly, but Apex is the one I’m always straight off to have a look at as soon as it’s published. Reading it, I find myself gently shoved out of my comfort zone, and persuaded to expand my reading choices, which I think is rather marvellous.
Best Graphic Story: Saucer Country: Run by Paul Cornell and Ryan Kelly. I feel *slightly* guilty about this one, cause I don’t really read comics thus very much not qualified to say what the best graphic story was last year. But I love this. The premise: Arcadia Alvarado is running for President of the United States…and she was abducted by aliens. Taking a wonderful, ridiculous idea like that and treating it deadly seriously is the sort of thing I draw little hearts around. It’s exciting, marvellously compelling reading, and it’s not terribly easy to get me to read a comic…graphic story, whatever. It’s really, really good is what I’m saying.
Best Fan Artist: Katy Shuttleworth. There’s a confident humour, an infectious joy, in her art that makes me want to lock her in a room and make her draw things for me all day. I would never do that, obviously, because kidnap is wrong. And also she’s very far away, so, y’know, effort. Her tumblr has many of the lovely things she’s made here: http://jigglykat.tumblr.com/tagged/i-did-this.
I feel a bit rubbish at completely failing to nominate any novels, but turns out I read only one novel published in 2012 in 2012, and I’m *fairly* sure Bring Up the Bodies isn’t SFF. It is, however, superb, and everyone should read it.
Lizbeth Myles 