Thank you, Liana K!

I sent this note directly to the wonderful Liana Kerzner, who organized and hosted the Aurora Awards ceremony at the Montreal Worldcon earlier this month, but I'd like to share it publicly here as well:

Dear Liana,

You did a magnificent job. You were right, and I was wrong: the whole thing came off beautifully, despite the time constraints. Please accept my apology. I had a fabulous time, and was very, very impressed.

Congratulations!

All best wishes.

Rob

And, of course, let me add my congratulations to all the winners!

Pictured: Liana K and Robert J. Sawyer at San Diego Comic-Con 2008.

Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
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Aurora Voting deadline crunch

If you're voting by mail, tomorrow -- Wednesday, July 8, 2009 -- is the postmarked-by deadline.

If you're voting online, you have until Wednesday, July 15.

If you're a member of this year's Worldcon in Montreal (and a Canadian) you can vote for free; otherwise, there's a $5 charge to help defray the cost of manufacturing trophies.

The online and paper ballots are here.

Many fine nominees this year, including -- cough, cough -- my own Identity Theft and Other Stories.

Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com

Aurora Award banquet tickets can now be purchased online

... using PayPal. See here. Carolyn and I just bought ours.

Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com

Aurora Awards endcap display

So, I wandered into the local McNally Robinson here in Saskatoon, and what should I find in the science-fiction section but this wonderful endcap display honouring this year's Aurora Award nominees. W00t!

Titles pictured:

Identity Theft and Other Stories by Robert J. Sawyer

Marseguro by Edward Willett

After the Fires by Ursula Pflug

The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th annual collection

Nice! Canadians may vote for the Auroras here -- and voting closes in a week.

Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
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James Alan Gardner wins the Sturgeon

James Alan Gardner's "The Ray-Gun: A Love Story" is this year's winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for Best Short Story of the Year.

I'm thrilled because Jim is my friend; because Jim is in my little writers' group, and we workshopped the story; and because I'm reprinting the story next month in Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction, an anthology being published under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint.

Jim's story is also a current Hugo Award finalist -- don't forget to vote!

Way to go, Jim!

Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com

Hayden Trenholm for the Aurora

Yesterday, I put up a post pimpin' my Identity Theft and Other Stories, from Red Deer Press, which is one of five finalist for the Aurora Award for Best Long-Form Work in English this year. And, indeed, I owe it to the publisher, who invested a lot of money in publishing my book, to do what I can to help the book do well, including at awards time. :)

But let me tell you about another book that's also on the ballot, and why it, too, deserves your very serious consideration: Defining Diana by my writing student (from back in 1996!) Hayden Trenholm, brought to us by the good folks at Bundoran Press Publishing House in Prince George, British Columbia.

Their gorgeous trade paperback sports this blurb from me:

Hayden Trenholm is a true original; an exciting new voice, tinged with sly wit. Defining Diana will grab you on the first page and won't let you go.

Hayden's proven he's an award-calibre writer: he won last year's Best Short Form Work in English Aurora Award (and in 1992, he won the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest).

There's an excellent interview with Hayden by Edward Willett -- himself a very deserving Aurora finalist this year in the same category -- here, and Ed reivews Hayden's book here: you know there's something special about a book when the authors of its competitors for an award are singing its praises. :)

I'm the proud owner of the very first signed copy of Defining Diana -- a gift from Hayden (I was MC at the book-launch party for the novel held at Toronto's Ad Astra). And -- lucky me! -- I got to read the wonderful sequel, Steel Whispers (which will be launched at the Montreal Worldcon in August), in manuscript, and offered this blurb:

Hayden Trenholm's Steel Whispers is an edge-of-your seat amalgam of police procedural and razor-sharp science fiction. The streets of Calgary never seemed so mean! Fans of Dashiell Hammett and William Gibson will both love this; a great novel by Canada's fastest-rising SF star.

The quality of Hayden's book is, of course, first and foremost, the reason you should consider voting for it -- but there's another reason, too.

See that pretty lady with Hayden below? That's Virginia O'Dine, the publisher of Bundoran Press, and she and her business partner Dominic Maguire fund that little operation out of their own pockets, and, despite having done some fabulous books so far, with more in the pipeline, they still don't have a distributor (which means their books aren't yet widely available in bookstores).

Having an Aurora Award proclaiming that the best English-Canadian science-fiction book of the year was one of theirs just might help them get the attention of a distributor. And, after all, getting attention for deserving works and their publishers is what the pro Aurora Awards are all about.

So, when you go to fill out your Aurora ballot, please do consider all the wonderful works that are nominated, including the excellent Defining Diana from the amazing Bundoran Press.


(Pictured: Author Hayden Trenholm and editor Virginia O'Dine, the Publisher of Bundoran Press, at McNally Robinson in Winnipeg in May 2008.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Full text of "Identity Theft" novella online

My short-story collection Identity Theft and Other Stories from Red Deer Press is currently one of five finalists for the Aurora Award for Best Long Form Work in English.

In honour of that, I'm pleased to offer the Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated title novella, "Identity Theft," for free during the remainder of the voting period. You can read it right here.

All of the other nominees in this category are excellent, too -- and three of them are by my writing students:

• Impossibilia, Douglas Smith (PS Publishing)
  
• Defining Diana, Hayden Trenholm (Bundoran Press)
  
• Marseguro, Edward Willett (DAW Books)

So, one way or another, the odds are great that I'm going to be a happy man on Friday, August 7, 2009, when the Aurora Awards are presented at a banquet at this year's World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal.

Praise for Identity Theft and Other Stories:

"At every opportunity, Sawyer forces his readers to think while holding their attention with ingenious premises and superlative craftsmanship." —Booklist

"A collection of great stories; highly entertaining and thought-provoking. This book has something for almost any science-fiction fan." —Quill & Quire

Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com

Anticipation's Aurora Awards banquet -- a significant break from tradition

A few interesting facts about this year's Aurora Awards and the ceremony at which they will be presented, courtesy of the website for Anticipation, the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal, which is hosting the Auroras this year:

"Since the Awards will be held in Montreal, we are placing emphasis on access to French works, through translations and other efforts to make the output of French Canada available to international attendees."

One wonders if the Aurora Awards subcommittee of the 2003 Worldcon -- the previous Canadian one -- had issued a statement like the above about the Auroras, but with "Toronto" and "English" substituted for "Montreal" and "French," what the response would have been. Surely all of Canada's Aurora-Award-nominated works deserve to be highlighted for those coming to the Worldcon from outside Canada.

Anyway:

"The Awards will take place Friday, August 7th. Doors open at 17:30, Dinner and Awards start at 18:00. A cash bar will be available during the Awards."

Well, that's nice that they're having a banquet; those Aurora Award ceremonies that have included a banquet (starting, I believe, in 1997) have been the best.

"Due to time constraints, the Awards ceremony will take place during dinner."

Time constraints? But Anticipation bid to become the Canadian National Science Fiction Convention: it fought for the right to be the venue at which the Auroras are presented, and fought for the right to be designated not just the World Science Fiction Convention but also the CanVention, this year's Canadian National SF Convention. Surely they are setting an appropriate block of time aside for the Aurora Award ceremony, no?

"Therefore, open seating after the banquet is not available this year. If you want to attend the ceremonies, you must purchase a ticket. You must be a member of Anticipation to attend the banquet."

Who in the what now? This is a huge break in tradition. No one has ever had to pay to see the Auroras presented before. When there has been a banquet, it has always been followed by open seating, allowing people to see the awards be presented without having to pay. Indeed, the open seating normally hasn't even required people to have a convention membership to come in and watch. (I always go to the banquet when there is one, but that's not the point.)

Also, having often been master of ceremonies for, given keynote speeches at, and participated in many dozens of awards ceremonies and banquets over the years, both in and out of the SF field, I'll point out that you never give the awards while people are trying to eat. The noise level is too high and there are too many people distracted from paying attention to the presentation of the awards; it ruins both the meal and the awards ceremony.

"Tickets are $40 in advance, $50 on site. This is on top of the registration fees required for voting ... If you want to attend the ceremonies, you must purchase a ticket."

So, if you're nominated for an Aurora, and you actually want to attend the ceremony at which the winners will be announced, the fee is Cdn$240 for your membership in Anticipation plus Cdn$40 for your banquet ticket, if you buy in advance, for at total of Cdn$290 -- or more at the door.

In the past, nominees and others who are interested (even the general public) have been able to attend the actual ceremony for free, since the ceremony has always been held either as a standalone affair or after the banquet was over.

We've often had cases in the past where there have been surprise Aurora victories (meaning no one can confidently predict who is going to win in any given category), and many nominees -- both pro and fan -- will find $40 (for their own ticket) or $80 (the combined cost of their own and one for their significant other) too steep to bear.

It seems to me, therefore, that Anticipation is manufacturing a situation in which there will likely be winners who are attending the Worldcon but will not be able to come into the room to receive their trophies (or their applause) during the ceremony, because they've chosen not to (or been unable to) spend $40 on a banquet ticket on the off-chance that they might win.

Given that Anticipation seems unwilling to clear an appropriate block of time in its schedule for the Aurora Awards (and therefore is currently planning on trying to cram all of a cash bar, a sit-down meal, and the actual presentation of the awards into a small window of time), I personally think they'd do better to dispense with the banquet, and have a proper ceremony -- one that all of the nominees can attend -- instead.

But the real solution is for this year's Canadian National Science Fiction Convention -- that selfsame Anticipation -- to find the appropriate amount of time in the schedule for both the banquet and the awards ceremony. The current plan -- a rushed affair with a mandatory entrance fee -- is unfair to the nominees, to those on a budget, and to the dignity of the awards.

Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com

This year's Hugo and Campbell nominations

I was out of town (in Florida) when the Hugo nominees were announced for this year. I'm sure you've all by now seen the list of nominees.

It's a good list, and my hat's off to all the finalists (sincerely -- I had nothing that was eligible last year).

I'm particularly thrilled, though, by the nominations of James Alan Gardner for best novella, and my writing student Tony Pi for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

(That's my Hugo trophy for Hominids above; this year's design hasn't been unveiled yet.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Aurora Award nominees announced

The nominees for the 2009 Aurora Awards were announced this morning. My short-story collection Identity Theft and Other Stories is one of five finalists for the Best Long Form Work in English Award this year.

In the Long Form category, very unusually, three of the five nominees are short-story collections. Also, three of the five nominees are my writing students: Douglas Smith, Hayden Trenholm, and Edward Willett. Go team!

This is my 37th Aurora Award nomination to date; I've previously won the award 10 times -- that makes me both the biggest winner and the biggest loser on the English side of the awards. :)

The full list of nominees is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

James Alan Gardner is a Nebula finalist -- w00t!

I've been pimpin' for months on behalf of James Alan Gardner's remarkable "The Ray-Gun: A Love Story," as you can see here. And I was mightily disappointed when the final Nebula ballot was released last week, and it wasn't on it. This story made not one but two year's best anthologies, after all, and was one of only nine novelettes on the preliminary Nebula ballot.

Well, well, well, turns out SFWA made a mistake. A revised ballot has now been released, and Jim is on it (and so is another work accidentally left off the earlier version, "Mars: A Traveler's Guide" by Ruth Nestvold).

SFWA actually has a pretty long history of balloting screw-ups; I myself was victim of one in 2000, when the blindingly obvious fact that Flash Forward by Robert J. Sawyer and Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer were the same book escaped notice, and so the novel was left off the preliminary ballot (as was a work by William Barton that same year), and a few years before that Ursula K. LeGuin was left off the ballot, too (although that ballot, at least, was corrected and reissued).

Now, let us hope that there's no harm, no foul, in what just happened to Jim Gardner -- but the fact is that award nominations do tend to be cumulative, and in the crucial last couple of days of nominating for this year's Hugos and Auroras, SFWA blithely announced to the world that Jim's work wasn't, in fact, award calibre in the view of the membership -- only to reverse that stance after the nominating for the other awards had closed.

The Nebulas are a black box -- no one ever sees the nominating or voting tallies; the Hugos do release their nominating stats. If Jim misses that ballot by just a few nominations, well, we'll always wonder what happened in the alternate universe in which the preliminary Nebula ballots were dealt with correctly the first time.

For those who missed the story in the February Asimov's last year, and don't want to wait for the Dozois or Horton Year's Best anthologies (or my own forthcoming Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction, which will also include this story), the full text is here at Jim's site.

Oh, and: Congratulations, Jim!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Hugo and Aurora nominating deadlines are looming

I had dinner last night with my friend Diane Lacey, who is on the Hugo Awards committee for this year's Worldcon in Montreal, and she asked that I remind people that the deadline for nominations is drawing near -- as it also is for the Auroras.

You can nominate for the Hugos here.

And Canadians can nominate for the Auroras here.

Deadline for both is at the end of the month. :)

Oh, and my own suggestions for nominations for the Hugos and Auroras are in this thread.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Randy McCharles the Writer

Forget all that talk about Randy McCharles the great convention organizer. I'm totally thrilled to announce that Randy McCharles the great writer has just sold reprint rights to his novella "Ringing the Changes in Okotoks, Alberta" from Tesseracts 12 to David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer for the 2009 edition of their anthology Year's Best Fantasy.

(So: don't forget this story when you nominate for the Auroras and the Hugos!)

Randy is my writing student (and my friend!), having taken more writing workshops with me than anyone else. I'm very, very proud of him!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

K.A. Bedford wins Aurealis

I mentioned K.A. Bedford's Time Machines Reapired While-U-Wait in this post.

The book has just won Australia's Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year -- congratulations, Adrian! And congratulations to Brian Hades of Calgary's EDGE, which published the book. Woot! This is truly a case of nice guys finishing first!

The full list of Aurealis winners is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Rob's suggested nominees for the Hugo and Aurora Awards

I've posted thirteen messages with suggestions for this year's Hugo Awards (the top international honours in science fiction) and Aurora Awards (the Canadian national SF awards). You can see them all here.

Attending and supporting members of last year's World Science Fiction Convention in Denver and this year's one in Montreal may nominate for the Hugos.

Any Canadian may nominate (for free!) for the Aurora Awards -- the ballot is here and more information about the awards is here.

The Canadian SF Works Database provides info about additional works by Canadians that are eligible for both awards. It's a Wiki, so if you know of any omissions, feel free to add them in.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

My writing students for the Hugo and the Aurora

This is the thirteenth and final post in a series of blog posts in which I've discussed people and things that I think merit consideration for this year's Hugo and Aurora Awards; both sets of awards will be given at the Montreal Worldcon this year.

Last year, 2008, was a good one for my writing students.

I mentioned back in November 2008 that Tony Pi [who was my student at the University of Toronto in 2001] has stories all over the place (and I also mentioned that he's eligible for the John W. Campbell Award), and that Douglas Smith [Ryerson University 1997] had his first collection, Impossibilia, out from PS Publishing.

And I've already crowed about Hayden Trenholm's novel Defining Diana from Bundoran Press [Ifwa workshop in Calgary 1996]; he also had a story entitled "Love In its Season" in the Summer 2008 On Spec.

Also in 2008, my student Edward Willett [Banff Centre 2003 and 2005] had his first mass-market SF novel, Marseguro, published by DAW (and picked up by the Science Fiction Book Club).

Susan Forest [Ifwa workshop 2003] had a terrific short story called "Back" in the June 2008 Analog.

Matthew Johnson [University of Toronto 2005] had short story "Another Country" in the April-May 2008 Asimov's, and the short story "Lagos" in the August 2008 Asimov's.

And Randy McCharles, whom I've recommended for a fan Aurora for his work on the World Fantasy Convention, and who has taken more workshops with me than anyone else [Ifwa 1996, Ifwa 2003, and Banff Centre 2006], had his first major pro publication this year: the novelette "Ringing the Changes in Okotoks, Alberta" in Tesseracts Twelve, edited by Claude Lalumière.

I draw all of them to your attention for the Hugo and Aurora Awards.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Kotowych, Pi, and Sellar for the Campbell

This is the twelfth in a series of blog posts in which I'm going to discuss people and things that I think merit consideration for this year's Hugo and Aurora Awards; both sets of awards will be given at the Montreal Worldcon this year.

On the Hugo ballot, you also get to nominate for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. According to the Canadian SF Works Database wiki, three Canadians are eligible for nomination this year, and I commend their work to your attention:

• Stephen Kotowych
  
  
• Tony Pi
  
  
• Gord Sellar

Click on their names above to visit their websites and learn more about their work.

I note with beaming pride that both Stephen Kotowych and Tony Pi have been my writing students. Additional information about Stephen is here, and more about Tony is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Taral for the Hugo

This is the eleventh in a series of blog posts in which I'm going to discuss people and things that I think merit consideration for this year's Hugo and Aurora Awards; both sets of awards will be given at the Montreal Worldcon this year.

It astonishes me that Taral Wayne and I have known each other for over thirty years. Taral will be the Fan Guest of Honour at the Worldcon in Montreal this year. He's been nominated seven times previously for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist, and he's won the Rotsler Award, just this past year.

It would certainly be odd if he weren't on the Hugo ballot for Montreal. If you haven't encountered his work before, see here and here, and have a look at his Wikipedia entry here. Also, fellow Toronto-based Hugo winners Mike Glicksohn and Robert Charles Wilson offer appreciations of Taral here.

For the Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist:

• Taral

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Lloyd Penney for the Hugo and Aurora

This is the tenth in a series of blog posts in which I'm going to discuss people and things that I think merit consideration for this year's Hugo and Aurora Awards; both sets of awards will be given at the Montreal Worldcon this year.

You know why Locus -- the trade journal of the science-fiction field -- is called that? It's a pun. See, it started off as a fanzine -- an amateur publication -- and the heart and soul of many fanzines is the part where letters of comment (responses to earlier issues) are printed; in fact, one of the standard ways to get a fanzine is by having sent in a letter of comment.

Well, "letter of comment" is a mouthful, and fans just love abbreviations, so instead, they're usually called a "LoC" or "loc," and that abbreviation can be employed as both a noun and a verb, so Locus's title was an inviation for people to send in letters of comment: "LoC us!" Cute, huh?

The Hugos have a category for Best Fan Writer, and the Auroras have one for Best Fan (Other). A clever, voluminous letterhack (as those who write a lot of LoCs are affectionately known) is eligible for both those awards, and Canada has one particularly diligent letterhack: long-playin' Lloyd Penney.

In years gone by, you'd have to get an awful lot of fanzines to see Lloyd's output, but this is the online era, and Lloyd took my suggestion a while ago, and established an online repository for his clever, heartfelt, warm LoCs. You'll find them here.

For the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer:

• Lloyd Penney

For the Aurora Award for Best Fan (Other):

• Lloyd Penney for fanzine letters of comment

(For trivia fans, Lloyd Penney is tuckerized [another long-standing fannish tradition -- it means he appears as a character] in my novel Illegal Alien, and my novel Hybrids is dedicated to Lloyd and his wife Yvonne.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Michael Berman for the Aurora Award

This is the ninth in a series of blog posts in which I'm going to discuss people and things that I think merit consideration for this year's Hugo and Aurora Awards; both sets of awards will be given at the Montreal Worldcon this year.

I've already mentioned that Neo-Opsis and On Spec deserve your consideration for the Aurora Award for Best Work in English (Other) this year. Here's another suggestion for that same category.

Back in 2005, there was a wonderful academic conference at Brock University entitled "The Uses of the Science Fiction Genre." I gave the keynote address.

Michael Berman, a philosophy professor at Brock, has collected papers inspired by that conference into a terrific book published in 2008: The Everyday Fantastic: Essays on Science Fiction and Human Being, from Cambridge Scholars Publishing. You can find out more about it here, and if you download this sample PDF, you can read the table of contents, Michael's introduction, and my essay.

From the publisher:

The Everyday Fantastic is an anthology born in love. The love is for science fiction, in all its myriad forms: novels, television, movies, music, art, etc. Many writers from a plurality of disciplines, professions and walks of life share this disposition. This attitude cuts across national boundaries and has even outlasted the vagaries of popular culture fads. This collection of essays draws upon these feelings in terms of the different ways science fiction is engaged in different disciplines, viewing the genre beyond mere entertainment.

The papers collected here engage the fundamental questions explored in science fiction. Many of the essays were originally presented at an interdisciplinary conference in October 2005 at Brock University, highlighted by Robert J. Sawyer’s engaging keynote address. Additional chapters were in part inspired by these presentations. These essays represent a wide array of voices from the humanities, social sciences and sciences, and address a comparable range of topics and the media that use the science fiction genre.

For the Aurora Award for Best Work in English (Other):

• Berman, Michael. The Everyday Fantastic. Cambridge Scholars Publishing

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site