Hugo Award Nominees on BookBanter

And the list is out for the official Hugo Award nominees for 2010, as well as the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.  Delighted to see both a number of authors interviewed on BookBanter, as well as a number of books reviewed too.  Just click on the links below to find said interview or book review to help you decide who should win.

Best Novel

• Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)

• The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)

• Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)

• Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)

• Wake, Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)

• The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

Best Novella

• “Act One”, Nancy Kress (Asimov’s 3/09)

• The God Engines, John Scalzi (Subterranean)

• “Palimpsest”, Charles Stross (Wireless)

• Shambling Towards Hiroshima, James Morrow (Tachyon)

• “Vishnu at the Cat Circus”, Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days)

• The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, Kage Baker (Subterranean)

Best Novelette

• “Eros, Philia, Agape”, Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 3/09)

• “The Island”, Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2)

• “It Takes Two”, Nicola Griffith (Eclipse Three)

• “One of Our Bastards is Missing”, Paul Cornell (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three)

• “Overtime”, Charles Stross (Tor.com 12/09)

• “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast”, Eugie Foster (Interzone 2/09)

Best Short Story

• “The Bride of Frankenstein”, Mike Resnick (Asimov’s 12/09)

• “Bridesicle”, Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 1/09)

• “The Moment”, Lawrence M. Schoen (Footprints)

• “Non-Zero Probabilities”, N.K. Jemisin (Clarkesworld 9/09)

• “Spar”, Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 10/09)

Best Related Book

• Canary Fever: Reviews, John Clute (Beccon)

• Hope-In-The-Mist: The Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees, Michael Swanwick (Temporary Culture)

• The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction, Farah Mendlesohn (McFarland)

• On Joanna Russ, Farah Mendlesohn (ed.) (Wesleyan)

• The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of SF Feminisms, Helen Merrick (Aqueduct)

• This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is “I”), Jack Vance (Subterranean)

Best Graphic Story

• Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?, written by Neil Gaiman; penciled by Andy Kubert; inked by Scott Williams (DC Comics)

• Captain Britain And MI13. Volume 3: Vampire State, written by Paul Cornell; penciled by Leonard Kirk with Mike Collins, Adrian Alphona and Ardian Syaf (Marvel Comics)

• Fables Vol 12: The Dark Ages, written by Bill Willingham; pencilled by Mark Buckingham; art by Peter Gross & Andrew Pepoy, Michael Allred, David Hahn; colour by Lee Loughridge & Laura Allred; letters by Todd Klein (Vertigo Comics)

• Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm, written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colours by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)

• Schlock Mercenary: The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse, written and illustrated by Howard Tayler

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

• Avatar, screenplay and directed by James Cameron (Twentieth Century Fox)

• District 9, screenplay by Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell; directed by Neill Blomkamp (TriStar Pictures)

• Moon, screenplay by Nathan Parker; story by Duncan Jones; directed by Duncan Jones (Liberty Films)

• Star Trek, screenplay by Robert Orci & Alex Kurtzman; directed by J.J. Abrams (Paramount)

• Up, screenplay by Bob Peterson & Pete Docter; story by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, & Thomas McCarthy; directed by Bob Peterson & Pete Docter (Disney/Pixar)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

• Doctor Who: “The Next Doctor”, written by Russell T Davies; directed by Andy Goddard (BBC Wales)

• Doctor Who: “Planet of the Dead”, written by Russell T Davies & Gareth Roberts; directed by James Strong (BBC Wales)

• Doctor Who: “The Waters of Mars”, written by Russell T Davies & Phil Ford; directed by Graeme Harper (BBC Wales)

• Dollhouse: “Epitaph 1”, story by Joss Whedon; written by Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon; directed by David Solomon (Mutant Enemy)

• FlashForward: “No More Good Days”, written by Brannon Braga & David S. Goyer; directed by David S. Goyer; based on the novel by Robert J. Sawyer (ABC)

Best Editor, Long Form

• Lou Anders

• Ginjer Buchanan

• Liz Gorinsky

• Patrick Nielsen Hayden

• Juliet Ulman

Best Editor, Short Form

• Ellen Datlow

• Stanley Schmidt

• Jonathan Strahan

• Gordon Van Gelder

• Sheila Williams

Best Professional Artist

• Bob Eggleton

• Stephan Martiniere

• John Picacio

• Daniel Dos Santos

• Shaun Tan

Best Semiprozine

• Ansible, edited by David Langford

• Clarkesworld, edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, & Cheryl Morgan

• Interzone, edited by Andy Cox

• Locus, edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi

• Weird Tales, edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal

Best Fan Writer

• Claire Brialey

• Christopher J Garcia

• James Nicoll

• Lloyd Penney

• Frederik Pohl

Best Fanzine

• Argentus, edited by Steven H Silver

• Banana Wings, edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer

• CHALLENGER, edited by Guy H. Lillian III

• Drink Tank, edited by Christopher J Garcia, with guest editor James Bacon

• File 770, edited by Mike Glyer

• StarShipSofa, edited by Tony C. Smith

Best Fan Artist

• Brad W. Foster

• Dave Howell

• Sue Mason

• Steve Stiles

• Taral Wayne

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer [Not a Hugo]

• Saladin Ahmed

• Gail Carriger

• Felix Gilman

• Seanan McGuire

• Lezli Robyn

“Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and its People” by Barry Cunliffe (Oxford University Press, 2001)

“Stretching from Iceland and North Africa, the peoples who live long the thousands of miles of the Atlantic seaboard have one vista – the seeming infinity of the ocean.”

In this wonderful tome, spanning from 8000 BC to AD 1500, Barry Cunliffe has brought a masterpiece to light.  Having spent years in research and study, the world now has a definitive edition on the ancient Atlantic peoples.  Iceland, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar; all are linked together by one fact: each day they look out at the great Atlantic Ocean.  It is a detail that brings these people, the Celts, Bretons, Galicians, closer together – kith and kin.

The reader is taken on a most unique journey through many words and details, with beautiful photos and drawings from an ancient past that we never knew existed, along with a hefty index, should one get lost along the way.

If you liked this review and are interested in purchasing this book, click here.

Originally published on November 12th 2001.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.

“Conquistadors” by Michael Wood (University of California Press, 2001)

In this latest work on the Spanish conquistadors, an adaptation from the BBC television series, by Michael Wood, we have a whole new aspect of how the conquistadors behaved with their control over the New World.

It is almost as if Wood had once been a conquistador himself, as he retells of those brave soldiers walking in this alien terrain and fighting for their lives in an effort to civilize (or ethnically cleanse, perhaps?) those savage Indians who don’t know better.  While this may come as a shock to some, from a historical and even cultural aspect, the readers gets an entire one-sided view of what the conquistadors thought of the Indians.

This glossy book, full of color photos, drawings and paintings, as well as an in-depth index, represents a useful historical source for anyone’s rich library, especially if they have a viewpoint in any way similar to Woods.

If you liked this review and are interested in purchasing this book, click here.

Originally published on November 12th 2001.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.

“The Devil’s Larder” by Jim Crace (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001)

Food For Cracian Thought

English author, Jim Crace, winner of last year’s National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction with Being Dead, brings another novel of a most unique variety.  The Devil’s Larder is a collection of sixty-four very short stories, all with one thing in common – food.

Here Crace has really stretched his creative talents, producing a masterpiece of the most unusual kind.  It’s not easy writing short prose and capturing all the necessary details and happenings within that restrictive space; Crace does a masterful job, picking perfect word for the perfect places.  If this isn’t done right, it simply does not work.  The Devil’s Larder is an example of the process working really well.

In story number seven, we have the owner of a restaurant who is unable to trust his waiters – they keep eating the food he makes as they deliver it to the table.  So he imposes a rule: the waiters have to whistle every time they bring out food.  This fails, as the waiters tend to leave food wherever they can, and eat it on the way back to the kitchen.  So the owner modifies that rule so that they have a whistle coming out and going in; this then annoys the customers.  The owner has little choice left: he brings out the meats and fish himself, serving the customers, while everything else is left to the waiters – he just has to trust them.

In number thirty-three, we have a spot that people like to frequent on the beach.  It is lush with green grass and growing fruit.  So when the people are there, they pick and eat the fruit.  Little do they know, as we the readers do with the viewpoint of the narrator, sitting on her balcony watching all this, that the reason the area is so alive with growth is because that’s where the next-door neighbor emptied her cesspit – the fruits are grown from the seeds from her waste.

In story forty-one: “Spitting in the omelet is a fine revenge.  Or overloading it with pepper.  But take care not to masturbate into the mix, as someone in the next village did, sixty years ago.  The eggs got pregnant.  When he heated them they grew and grew, becoming quick and lumpy, until they could outwit him (and all his hungry guests waiting with beer and bread out in the yard) by leaping from the pan with their half-wings and running down the lane like boys.”

And with number sixty-one, a great cod is caught by three boys.  They are so impressed that they hand it high up on the wall.  Next year, times are hard, and they have little choice but to eat the mounted cod.  It is now thin and shriveled, so to enlarge it, they leave it in a vat of extremely salty water.  It grows beyond their control and is miraculously brought back to life.  As the boys fight to catch it, it sneaks pas them, back into the water from whence it came.  The boys much now starve.

The Devil’s Larder has stories of every kind imaginable, from all possible viewpoints and aspects.  This is what keeps the reader turning the pages: they never know what to expect next.  And with Crace, it is always a well-written surprise.

Originally published on November 12th 2001.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.