Ditmar nominations are open! These are fan awards for the best Australian spec fic awesomeness of the year. I won some of them last year and cherish them dearly – even more so when I went back through the history and discovered that only six women had won Best Novel in the whole history of the award, going back to the 1970′s.

You can run over there right now and nominate as many things as you want – you don’t have to be a member or supporting member of a recent convention, though that’s a helpful thing to cite if you think the committee might not know you. (the whole ‘known to committee’ thing isn’t about elitism, it’s about checking you’re a real person) Otherwise you may need a reference, someone who has attended a recent con who has interacted with you in real life or online and is prepared to say ‘yep, this is a real person.’

If you can’t remember all the stuff you read and liked this year, then there’s a Wiki trying to keep track of Australian spec fic that eligible – it’s not all-encompassing so if you see a gap there, please add the book/person etc. that you know is missing.

If you are keen to nominate any of my work, here for reference is what I published last year:

Novel:
The Shattered City (Creature Court 2), Tansy Rayner Roberts, HarperCollins.

Short Stories
“The Patrician”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press
“Julia Agrippina’s Secret Family Bestiary”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press.
“Lamia Victoriana”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press.
“Last of the Romanpunks”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press.
“Taking Leaves,” Tansy Rayner Roberts, Love2Read website

Collected Work:
Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, Twelfth Planet Press.

Fan Publication
Galactic Chat, Alisa Krasnostein,Tansy Rayner Roberts and Sean Wright.
Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Alex Pierce.

If anyone is keen to nominate me again for the William Atheling for Criticism & Review, I’m probably proudest of my ongoing “Pratchett’s Women” series of posts, all but the most recent having appeared last year, but I am more than happy to sit this one out.

Hmm, on the other hand, the blog series “Watching New Who – in conversation with David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely” probably fits better there than under ‘fan writer’ if people like that series and would like to nominate us.

And here are some things I especially liked, or people whose work I heartily recommend, from last year!

Novels:
Burn Bright, Marianne de Pierres, Random House Australia.
Debris (The Veiled Worlds 1), Jo Anderton, Angry Robot Books.
Stormlord’s Exile, Glenda Larke, HarperCollins.
The Courier’s New Bicycle, Kim Westwood, HarperCollins.
The Shattering, Karen Healey, Little, Brown.

Short Stories:
“Alchemy”, Lucy Sussex, in Thief of Lives, Twelfth Planet Press.
“Breaking the Ice”, Thoraiya Dyer, in Cosmos 37.
“Catastrophic Disruption of the Head”, Margo Lanagan, in The Wilful Eye, Allen & Unwin.
“Cross that Bridge”, Deborah Biancotti, in Bad Power, Twelfth Planet Press.
“Dying Young”, Peter M. Ball, Eclipse 4.
“Head Case”, Kate Orman, in Cosmos 41.
“Nation of the Night”, Sue Isle, in Nightsiders, Twelfth Planet Press.
“Palming the Lady”, Deborah Biancotti, in Bad Power, Twelfth Planet Press.
“Thief of Lives”, Lucy Sussex, in Thief of Lives, Twelfth Planet Press.

Collected Works: [omg this one is going to be pretty damn competitive this year]
Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, Twelfth Planet Press.
Eclipse 4, Jonathan Strahan, Night Shade Books.
Nightsiders by Sue Isle, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, Twelfth Planet Press.
Thief of Lives by Lucy Sussex, edited by Alisa Krasnostein, Twelfth Planet Press.
The Wilful Eye (Tales from the Tower 1), Isobelle Carmody and Nan McNab, Allen & Unwin.
Yellowcake by Margo Lanagan, Allen & Unwin.

Artwork:
“Finishing School”, Kathleen Jennings, for Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories, Candlewick Press.
“The Freedom Maze,” Kathleen Jennings, cover, Small Beer Press [this one's not on the wiki. Does that mean *I* have to figure out how to do it? This could go badly for everyone]

Fan Writers:
Alexandra Pierce
Ian Mond
Sean the Blogonaut
Jason Nahrung

Fan Artist:
Kathleen Jennings for her tanaudel website but especially The Dalek Game

Fan Publications: (ie mostly where we put podcasts)
Bad Film Diaries podcast, Grant Watson. (Bad Film Diaries)
Boxcutters podcast, episode 269, “Making SciFi TV for Adults” by Josh Kinal, John Richards, et. al.
Dark Matter, Nalini Haynes. (not a podcast! See, I have breadth!)
The Coode Street Podcast, Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan
The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond.

Best New Talent
Jo Anderton

William Atheling for Criticism and Review
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am overwhelmed by the sheer length of the list of reviews listed here in the wiki. Anyone wants to make more personal recommendations about a specific piece of work – something that stood out from the crowd, let me know! I might have to go reading some to find some recs I can stand behind.

There’s still a bunch of stuff I haven’t read yet, too, and would like to – especially the Ishtar collection of novellas and Lisa Hannett’s collection Bluegrass Symphony. How exciting that we are so spoilt for choice. Is this the golden age of Australian speculative fiction or what?

Tags: australian specfic, awards, ditmars