Miscellany

By Cheryl Morgan

The deadline for Hugo voting is Midnight, Pacific Daylight Time, 31^st July 2006. You don’t have many days left. The online ballot can be found here. You need a supporting or attending membership of L.A. Con IV in order to vote.

As usual I am hoping that as many people as possible vote. This is where I remind you that typically only around 20% of the people who are eligible to vote bother to participate. This is embarrassing. If the turnout for elections was that low people would be talking about a major loss of faith in the system. If you have a vote, please use it.

I note also that I’m up for an award again, as is Emerald City. I don’t expect to win. Indeed, I very much hope that I don’t. You only have to look at the competition. Dave Langford is a much better writer than I am, and Locus is a much better magazine than Emerald City. There would, I think, be a considerable upset if they didn’t win.

I know people get sentimental about the Hugos. There is a lot of voting based on the idea that it someone’s turn to win. But honestly, if you are voting on those lines the nominee that is most deserving is the New York Review of Science Fiction. I’ve been told I didn’t deserve to win my Hugo so often now that I’ve started to believe it myself. Let’s not go through all that nonsense again, huh? The rockets are supposed to go to the nominees that are the best. Let’s keep it that way.

Kevin has our copy of the July Locus, which contains the detailed breakdown of the Locus Poll results. I understand that Emerald City came 7^th in Best Magazine, up from 8^th last year. Wow! Thank you everyone who voted for us.

The John W. Campbell Memorial Award (a judged award for US-published novels) went to Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer. While Paolo Bacigalupi’s "The Calorie Man" is winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for short fiction (I believe judged by the same people). I note in passing that the Sawyer book managed to beat three Hugo nominees (Accelerando, Learning the World, and Spin).

The Prix Aurora results were announced this month. The winner of the Best English Language Novel category was Cagebird by Karin Lowachee. Beaten nominees included Robert Sawyer’s Campbell-winning Mindscan and Robert Charles Wilson’s Hugo-nominated Spin. The Auroras are voted on by Canadian fans. A full list of the results can be found here.