Awards Round Up - Nebulas and Stokers

Last month I posted a message about the Nebula Award nominees. Rather belatedly, here is a link to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website, where the winners are listed.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Presented the Nebula Awards® for 2007 at the Omni Austin Hotel Downtown in Austin, Texas on April 26, 2008.

Novel: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
Novella: "Fountain of Age" by Nancy Kress
Novelette: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang
Short Story: "Always" by Karen Joy Fowler
Script: Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro

Stoker Awards
Each year, the Horror Writer's Association presents the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement, named in honor of Bram Stoker, author of the seminal horror work, Dracula. Click here for information about the awards and this year's winners announced March 30, 2008.

Novel: The Missing by Sarah Langan
First Novel: Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Long Fiction: Afterward, There Will Be A Hallway by Gary Braunbeck
Short Fiction: "The Gentle Brush of Wings " by David Niall Wilson
Fiction Collection: (Tie)Proverbs for Monsters by Michael A. Arnzen and 5 Stories by Peter Straub
Anthology: Five Strokes to Midnight edited by Gary Braunbeck and Hank Schwaeble
Nonfiction: THE CRYPTOPEDIA: A Dictionary of the Weird, Strange & Downright Bizarre by Jonathan Maberry & David F. Kramer
Poetry Collection: (Tie)Being Full of Light, Insubstantial by Linda Addison and Vectors: A Week in the Death of a Planet by Charlee Jacob & Marge Simon
Lifetime Achievement Award: John Carpenter, Robert Weinberg
Richard Laymon President's Award: Mark Worthen, Stephen Dorato, Christopher Fulbright

Science fiction news

I was reading Locus, the magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field, for April 2008, when I noticed one or two bits of awards news that might be of interest (awards lists are great sources of books to be put on your personal "to be read" list).

John Harrison's Nova Swing won the 2008 Philip K. Dick Award, given for distinguished science fiction published in the US as a paperback original in 2007. The announcement was made March 21, 2008 at Norwescon 31, the convention of the Northwest Science Fiction Society in Seattle. Find this book in our catalog.


The Hugo Awards nominations have been announced as reported by me in this blog on March 24. Now click here for the official Hugo blog, where you can find out how to become eligible to vote on your favorite and also receive free books.



The Nebula Awards, administered, voted and presented by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) to acknowledge excellence in science fiction writing, will be awarded at the convention April 25-27, 2008 at Houston, TX. Click here to see the final ballot.

Michael Moorcock To Be Awarded SF Prize

According to Shelf Awareness of Monday, March 3, 2008, "Michael Moorcock will be honored as the next Damon Knight Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America during its Nebula Award Weekend in Austin, Tex., April 25-27." Click here for more about the 2008 Nebula Awards.

The SFWA wrote: "Named one of the 50 greatest postwar British writers by
the Times of London, Moorcock is best-known for his stories featuring
the albino swordsman Elric of Melnibone. Other popular characters
created by the prolific Moorcock include Jerry Cornelius and Hawkmoon,
characters that, like Elric, are linked by their stories in what has
come to be known as the Eternal Champion cycle."

Some of the Moorcock titles to be found in Harford County Public Library:

Elric: The Stealer of Souls Find this book in our catalog.
Jacket Notes:
Over the years since he first appeared, Elric of Melnibon has spawned role-playing games, comic books, and numerous imitators. Now this first of six illustrated omnibus volumes brings back the classic fantasy tales of Elric, out of print for more than a decade.

City of the Beast: Or Warriors of Mars Find this book in our catalog.
Jacket Notes:
Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion returns as Kane of Old Mars, a brilliant American physicist whose strange experiments in matter transmission catapult him across space and time to the Red Planet. Kane's is a Mars of the distant past - a place of romantic civilizations, fabulous many-spired cities and the gorgeous princess Shizala. To win her hand and bring peace to Mars, Kane must defeat the terrible Blue Giants of the Argzoon, whose ravaging hordes threaten the whole planet!

The White Wolf's Son: The Albino Underground Find this book in our catalog.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 05/23/2005
In British author Moorcock's latest installment in an epic fantasy saga that began in 1965, Prince Gaynor the Damned and his sidekick, Klosterheim, plot the end of the created universe and try to capture a 12-year-old English girl, Oonagh von Bek, to attain their ends. The Dreamthief's daughter, Oona (who's Oonagh's grandmother); Elric of Melnibon; and others who constantly fight to restore, maintain and sometimes destroy the Cosmic Balance seek to protect the girl and, eventually, another youngster kin to Elric and Oona. Told from the viewpoint of young Oonagh and filtered through her later adult perspective, the adventure starts in Yorkshire then spans the multiverse and several versions of Mirenburg to reach its climax in the Dark Empire of Granbretan. Informative philosophizing by various characters adds to, rather than impedes, the complex and entertaining plot. In lesser hands such intrusions as Una Persson's spiel on Elric's Dream of a Thousand Years probably wouldn't work, but from the ever original, vastly influential Moorcock (The Dreamthief's Daughter ), they only enhance a triumph of mature talent and imagination.