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:

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New Episode of Galactic Suburbia is up (after a few problems) to be downloaded by the manner of your choosing!

In which we keep it short (truly) through restraint and perseverance, despite setting Tansy off on a tangent about Lego and lots of crunchy gender bias stuff to chew through.

News

Nebula shortlist

Stoker shortlist

Paul Cornell on Panel Parity

Elizabeth L Huede on National Year of (Gender Biased) Reading

Tansy’s thing: new feminist Doctor Who blog Doctor Her

Can princesses play with Lego? (Lego friends petition at Change.org)

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: Vorkosigan – Shards of Honor, Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
Alex: The Islanders, Christopher Priest
Tansy: After the Apocalypse, by Maureen McHugh (collection)

Feedback episode coming soon!

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

In which we pop the cork on the champagne bottle to welcome in the beginning of the 9 month science fiction awards season – hooray!

News

Responses to the Galactic Suburbia Award.

Crawford nominees and winner: Genevieve Valentine’s Mechanique.

BSFA nominees

SF Translation Awards Fundraiser – donate and win awesome books

The Kitschies: yes really, rum and tentacles.

LOCUS Recommended Reading List! [and Poll]

Young Australian of the Year who founded Robogals: Marita Cheng

Women of SF in their own words, reviewed by Brit Mandelo

Diana Peterfreund: following up on Brave New Love [and how the internet often fails to pick up the pieces after a controversy has died down]

Women Writing Horror (it’s new, who knew?)
[and the other Guardian article patronising genre readers, taken apart by Smart Bitches Trashy Books]

10 Great SF books for “girls”

Creature Court trilogy giveaway – we’ll be drawing it next episode, email us to tell us about one book you read because of us & you’ll enter the draw to win all three books by Tansy

Creature Court Spoilerific Blog Post – only for those who have read Creature Court Book Three, Reign of Beasts, by Tansy Rayner Roberts

What Culture Have we Consumed?
The new episode is up! Go grab it and chug it down like a glass of semi-expensive sparkling white.

Alisa: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby; The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson

Alex: Clockwork Rocket, Greg Egan; A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula le Guin; The Business of Death, Trent Jamieson; Skyrim

Tansy: Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti; Batgirl: the Lesson; Redwood & Wildfire by Andrea Hairston; Blake’s 7: The Turing Test [Big Finish], Doctor Who: Foe From the Future [Big Finish]

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

The Science Fiction Translation Awards are running a fundraiser, accepting donations now towards the running of their awards, which aim to promote and celebrate great science fiction translated into English, and to provide a substantial cash prize to the original author as well as translator.

It’s a great cause, and there are a bunch of great book prizes up for grabs for a few lucky donors. I’ve contributed a complete Creature Court trilogy (feels so GOOD to be able to offer that!) and it’s in some very good company.

Speaking of the Creature Court trilogy, Sean the Blogonaut wrote a lovely review of Book 2: The Shattered City: “Action, blood and lust and a little bit of dressmaking. If you enjoy well written action, political intrigue, anime like transformation of characters into monstrous beasts and well written sex scenes give the whole series a go.”

I’ve been enjoying Tor.com’s current theme of military SF – I don’t think of myself of a fan of that particular subgenre, and yet I am familiar with so many of the works they discuss! I guess that means something. I liked this post about Starbuck and gender in Battlestar Galactica. Ahh, Battlestar Galactica. You got it so right, before you got it so wrong…

Speaking of military SF, over at i09 Jen Heddle makes a compelling argument that they should have brought Robotech back already. Hell, yes they should! Want me to write it?

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This is a resource for the Australian Women Writers 2012 National Year of Reading Challenge.

If you spot any awards or writers I am missing that you think might be relevant, let me know! I’m starting with the most obvious SF & Fantasy awards but consider this post a work in progress, mostly because there were only so many awards lists I could read tonight before my eyeballs exploded. Come back later to find out what’s been added…

Works marked with a double asterisk have received international awards.
I have included YA work in with the adult and created a separate children’s section. Just because.
I know the challenge is about books but while I was trawling through lists for info I thought I might as well note the Australian women winning short story awards too. That will follow in a later post.

To make this really useful I am also thinking of differentiating between those books still in print and those not – if you try hunting for any of these and discover they are impossible to access, please let me know in comments! I started trying to use alphabetical order and decided in the end that starting with the most recent and moving down means the books near the top of the lists are the most current ones.

I may reorganise all this data in different combinations at any time. You have been warned.

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Howie needs a Hat

Hurry over to Podbean or iTunes now to get the new episode! Or just sit back, relax and read the show notes.

News

World Fantasy Awards!

Realms of Fantasy sinks for the third time

Graham Joyce calls BFS Extraordinary General meeting December 9th –

Authors kickstarting their own projects:
Matt Forbeck – 12 novels in 12 months.
Laura Anne Gilman’s novella
CE Murphy’s novella
(mentions also of self publishing projects of Tracy & Laura Hickman, and Liz Williams)
Catherynne Valente’s Omikuji project looking for subscribers in order to keep the project going.
And Tobias Buckell talks about how just because you’re self publishing doesn’t mean you have to be a …

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: Power and Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts, The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood

Alex: the Stone Key and The Sending, Isobelle Carmody; I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett; end of Life on Mars S2; This is Not a Game, Walter Jon Williams; Distress, Greg Egan

Tansy: Ally Condie, Matched; Lisa Goldstein, The Uncertain Places; Gail Simone, Secret Six: Six Degrees of Devastation; Geek Tragedy, Nev Fountain

Feedback: well overdue!

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

I was working at the university this morning, so only able to sneak the occasional peek at my Twitter feed as the World Fantasy Awards tweets started up, and I almost caused a Serious Disruption to some poor chap’s exam when I discovered that our Alisa had picked up her first World Fantasy Award, this time for Special Award Non-Professional.  Some day, when she manages to pay herself for all the work she does to publish and promote Australian speculative fiction, I know she’ll be up for a matching Professional award too!

I’m so very proud to be a Twelfth Planet author.

My, but the trophy is on the dour side.  Does anyone want to volunteer to knit a jaunty beret or bonnet or something for hers, to cheer him up a bit?

The whole list of winners can be found here.

Congratulations to all the winners – I am absolutely squeeful about the magnificent Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor winning best novel, but all the winners were worthy, and I hope very much that all the finalists are just as proud of themselves and their achievements.  It was a great shortlist this year.

Thanks to Cat Sparks who pointed me in the direction of the following vid.  You can see Alisa’s award at about the 35 minute mark.  It’s just a shame that the microphone discriminated against short people! But knowing Alisa, she was probably quite happy to be mostly hidden behind the podium.  I hope she had a great celebratory evening afterwards, and a good night’s sleep.  We’ll be interrogating her about her experience on the next episode of Galactic Suburbia!

I woke up this morning to find Twitter a’twitter about the latest awards debacle. I hope this story puts things into perspective for those people for whom an ‘awards scandal’ means a result they personally wouldn’t have voted for.

The National Book Awards (in the US) have covered themselves in the very opposite of glory this week, when a misheard phone conversation (WTF, seriously) led to the wrong book being included in their five book shortlist for young people’s literature. This book, Lauren Myracle’s SHINE, deals with serious issues to do with gay hate crimes, and is highly regarded by many, but it was Franny Billingsley’s CHIME that had been intended for the huge, career-changing honour.

The embarrassing situation was not helped by the vacillations of those behind the award, who began by insisting all six books were worthy, and later backflipped, asking Myracle to withdraw her own book for consideration “to preserve the integrity of the award and the judges’ work.”

I feel so bad for her! It goes to show how one moment of incompetence can completely ruin someone else’s week, and how insensitivity can only compound the hurt and humiliation.

Libba Bray’s insider rant has been quite rightly linked to all around the traps, and I think she says it best.

The LA Times talks about the important themes dealt with in Myracle’s book as well as the awards debacle.

Nicola Griffith reports the story with an added helping of angry author perspective.

Tobias Buckell talks about why he bought Lauren’s book today.

At Myracle’s request, the National Book Awards have made a $5000 donation in her name to the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Winning the WSFA Small Press Award last year for Siren Beat (accepted in Washington by my awesome publisher Alisa) was one of the highlights of my year, and gave me huge confidence to spend a goodly chunk of this year turning Nancy Napoleon, angsty damaged heroine, and her world of sea monsters and irresponsible gods into a novel.

So I’m delighted to see another strong, diverse shortlist for this year’s prize and particularly that another Australian indie publisher is represented here, Tehani Wessely’s Fablecroft.

It’s a wonderful award and comes with a FREAKING BEAUTIFUL TROPHY, so I wish all the finalists the very best of luck.

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My plan was for today’s Friday links to be all about the SF gateway, but in breaking news, the World Fantasy nominations were released, and I’m SO EXCITED that Alisa Krasnostein has her first nomination! It’s for Best Non-Professional Achievement (some day she will be able to start paying herself and it will be Best Professional!) and I love that it is for Twelfth Planet Press rather than all the volunteer work she does in the community for projects like ASif & Swancon – much though I appreciate her work in that area, TPP is her future and for it to be the reason she has her first WF nomination is fabulous.

Congrats to all the nominees – I’m particularly delighted by the diverse and exciting novel shortlist, but also crowing over Rachel Swirsky’s novella “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window,” Jonathan Strahan’s anthology “Swords and Dark Magic,” and Angela Slatter’s exceptional collection, Sourdough and Other Stories. Also, extra congrats to Charles A Tan & Lavie Tidhar for their nods in the same category as Alisa, for Bibliophile Stalker and the World SF blog respectively.

But now, links!

I haven’t spotted quite as much analysis as I had expected about the significance of the SF Gateway, but here are some key posts from the last week or so:

The Announcement
Nicola Griffith on being one of the Gateway authors.
Cheryl Morgan on The Gateway Opens
io9 presents a vid of authors talking about their favourite out-of-print SF classics
Over at the Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan & Gary interview John Clute about the SF Encyclopedia, and how it ties into the SF Gateway project.

And now some more random linkage:

Chris Alpha of The Ood Cast has been writing a season by season recap of Doctor Who, in haiku. Oh yes, he has.

Apologies for the LJ links at this time of great LJ unreliability, but these ones are worth it. Michelle Sagara talks about how to be a good panellist at a convention, and what not to do.

Catherynne Valente is delighted by the sheer writerfantasy of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

Cheryl Morgan is republishing Linda Nagata’s SF novels as e-books.

Diana Peterfreund blogs about choosing surnames for your fictional characters.

Mary Robinette Kowal continues her interesting blog series on the writerly/practical use of Google Plus: in this case, how to teach a class using Google Hangouts.