Category Archives: BSFA Awards

UPDATE Jeff Noon Interview to be STREAMED LIVE and at a new BIGGER venue

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On Wednesday 27th January 2016 we’ll be trying our best to stream January’s Jeff Noon interview, live online. Between now and then a public domain recording of The Planet’s by Gustav Holst will be playing and we’d like your feedback on it. Just open the link & let us know what you hear.

MP3 audio only
http://bit.ly/JeffNoonJan2016Interview

For the last few months Chad Dixon has been valiantly trying his best to broadcast BSFA interviews with Periscope, it’s a little error prone so if it doesn’t work we’ll just do the audio. Cheers Chad!

Audio and Video – on the night.
https://periscope.tv/BSFA

NEW LOCATION
Due to the popularity of this event we are moving to a new BIGGER venue which luckily is close by. Andrea has surpassed herself finding this venue 🙂

The Reliance, 336 Old Street, EC1V 9DR
MAP LINK: https://goo.gl/maps/cKQsbT9HDE12

BSFA Awards 2014 – Shortlist Announced

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We are pleased to announce the following shortlisted nominees for the BSFA Awards 2014.

Voting will now be opened to BSFA members and attending members of Eastercon. The  winner will be announced at a ceremony at the 66th Eastercon aka Dysprosium, taking place at the Park Inn, Heathrow from 3-6 April 2015.

Watch this space for details of the presenters and MC for this event, which will be announced shortly.

Once again, BSFA members will receive a commemorative BSFA Awards booklet with details of all the nominees.

Best Artwork:

Richard Anderson for the cover of Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley, published by Angry Robot Books.

Blacksheep for the cover of Bête by Adam Roberts, published by Gollancz

Tessa Farmer for her sculpture The Wasp Factory, after Iain Banks.

Jeffrey Alan Love for the cover of Wolves by Simon Ings, published by Gollancz

Andy Potts for the cover of Mars Evacuees by Sophia McDougall, published by Egmont

Best Non-Fiction:

Paul Kincaid for Call and Response, published by Beccon Books

Jonathan McCalmont for ‘Deep Forests and Manicured Gardens: A Look at Two New Short Fiction Magazines’

Edward James, for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers and the First World War

Strange Horizons: various authors for The State of British SF and Fantasy: A Symposium

Karen Burnham for Greg Egan, published by University of Illinois Press

 

Best Short Fiction:

Ruth E J Booth for “The Honey Trap”, published in La Femme, Newcon Press

Octavia Cade for The Mussel Eater,  published by The Book Smugglers

Benjanun Sriduangkaew for  Scale Bright, published by Immersion Press

 

Best Novel:

Nina Allan, for The Race, published by Newcon Press

Frances Hardinge, for Cuckoo Song, published by Macmillan

Dave Hutchinson, for Europe in Autumn, published by Solaris

Simon Ings, for Wolves, published by Gollancz

Anne Leckie, for Ancillary Sword, published by Orbit

Claire North, for The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, published by Orbit

Nnedi Okorafor,  for Lagoon, published by Hodder

Neil Williamson, for The Moon King, published byNewcon Press

 

  • The number of nominees in this category is due to a tie for fourth place.

 

Congratulations to all the shortlisted nominees, and thanks to our members for nominating.

BSFA Awards Deadline Approaches…

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Dear Members,

As members of the BSFA you are all eligible to nominate for the BSFA Awards.  This is a membership only nominations system and these are your Awards..

I am writing now to ask you to raise awareness that the nominations period closes on 31st January.

The BSFA committee met in December and discussed our objectives with the award.  We want the BSFA Award (and the BSFA itself) to represent the full range of the genre and the diversity of talent and ability behind those working across the spectrum of short fiction, novels, art and nonfiction. Our starting point is to make sure that the suggestions list is as complete and representative of the best work as possible.

Please consider using your nominations.  You’ll see that this year we’ve asked people to put forward four nominations per category for the Awards and then click on this link to add to the recommendations section as well.

This is designed to promote as many authors and artists as possible.

If our Awards are going to reflect the best in SF published in Britain in 2014, then we need members to actively help to promote that quality. We hope you will support our aims.

It could well be that many of our members are biding their time, but we’d really like to hear from you. Everyone is just as qualified as everyone else to make their nominations.

Lastly, for your information, the rules are:

Nominations are restricted to four per category.

  • Nominations shall open in October each year and run to January 31st.
  • A minimum of three nominations will be required for a work to be
    included on the ballot; if there are fewer than three works achieving
    this level of support, the category will not be awarded.
  • You may not make multiple nominations for a single work.
  • Please do not nominate your own work.

Find out more about how to nominate here:

The deadline for nominations is 31st January 2015.

Happy New Year and best wishes

Donna Scott

Chair

 

Suggest Items for BSFA Awards

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Members may already be aware that nominations are now open for the BSFA Awards until January 31st.

We have made some changes to the nominations process, limiting the number of nominations members can make in each category to just 4, and so we thought it would be useful to also have a suggestions form where anyone can make suggestions for things that are eligible for nomination.

The form to make your suggestions is located here.

Items, as they come in, will be listed here.

We will add a link for this suggestions list and form to the Awards page.

Who can make suggestions?

Absolutely anyone, and it doesn’t even matter if you have an interest in the category. You can be the writer, illustrator or publisher. You can be the suggested person’s mum. Or, you can just be someone who has read and loved a book, story or article, or seen a cover you liked the look of. You don’t have to be a BSFA member to suggest anything either. This list is there to give BSFA members an idea of what may be eligible. It will not influence the results in any other way than making sure that BSFA members can see your suggested item in a list, making it less likely for them to forget about it.

Items will appear in the list almost immediately after you have clicked submit, and we will need to check and tidy them up when we can. Do let us know if you see anything amiss that we don’t seem to have tidied up in a timely manner – there’s a corrections section to the form.

Our immense gratitude goes to member Stephen Theaker who helped us put this form together.

 

Happy suggesting!

BSFA Award Winners Announced

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Congratulations to our award winners, announced at a ceremony this evening at the 65th Eastercon at the Crowne Plaza, Glasgow.

The ceremony was hosted by Alice Lawson and Steve Lawson with guest presenters Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Jim Burns, Andrew J. Wilson and Stephanie Saulter.

Best Non-Fiction: Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer.

Best Art: cover of Tony Ballantyne’s Dream London by Joey Hi-Fi.

Best Short Fiction: Spin by Nina Allan

Best Novel: ties between Gareth L. Powell for Ack Ack Macaque and Ann Leckie for Ancillary Justice.

Congratulations to all the winners.

BSFA Awards: the Shortlist

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It’s finally here!

The British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) is delighted to announce the shortlist for its annual BSFA Awards for works first published in 2013. The BSFA has been running the awards since 1970, awarding the first Best Novel award to John Brunner’s 1969 novel Stand on Zanzibar.

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The 2012 BSFA Award Winners

The BSFA Awards draw on nominations from their membership, and in the case of the Best Novel Award are open to UK publications only.

Best Novel

God’s War by Kameron Hurley (Del Rey)

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit)

Evening’s Empires by Paul McAuley (Gollancz)

Ack-Ack Macaque by Gareth L. Powell (Solaris)

The Adjacent by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)

Best Short Fiction

Spin by Nina Allan (TTA Press)

“Selkie Stories are for Losers” by Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons)

“Saga’s Children” by E. J. Swift (The Lowest Heaven, Pandemonium)

“Boat in Shadows, Crossing” by Tori Truslow (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

Best Artwork

Cover for Tony Ballantyne’s Dream London by Joey Hi-fi (Solaris)

Poster for Metropolis by Kevin Tong (tragicsunshine.com)

“The Angel at the Heart of the Rain” by Richard Wagner (Interzone #246)

Best Non-Fiction

Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer (Abrams Image)

“Going Forth by Night” by John J. Johnston (Unearthed, Jurassic)

“Sleeps with Monsters” by Liz Bourke (Tor.com)

The winners will be announced in a ceremony at the Satellite4 Eastercon convention the Crown Plaza Hotel, Glasgow Sunday 20th April 2014. BSFA Prize-winners will receive a coveted BSFA trophy. Also in the ceremony will be the annual James White Award announcing its short story competition winner.

Awards Season Hots Up – Clarkes and Kitschies

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At the BSFA, we have counted up our award nominations, and are buzzing with excitement to tell you which works have been shortlisted… but you have to wait!

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Tom Hunter, Director of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, revealed the total number of submissions of novels by female writers this week – and it was a staggering 33. Last year, there were only 18 out of 82 books. But how many books will have been submitted overall? Tom is teasing us with that number and won’t tell us! But what he did tell us was that he hoped releasing this list first  would be “a positive contribution towards further raising the profile of women writers of science fiction in the UK and beyond.” Nice one, Tom.

The full list of submissions will be announced next Thursday. Our BSFA representatives, Duncan Lawie and Ian Whates, along with all the other judges, will be reading like mad to try to get through them all and be ready to announce their collective shortlist on March 18th. Then, the glamorous Royal Society in London will host the awards ceremony once again on May 1st.

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Waving its tentacles in our general direction next come The Kitschies – the shortlists having been announced this week. The Kitschies are an annual prize for books
containing elements of the “speculative and fantastic”. Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry have been running The Kitschies for the past 5 years, and their quest this year was to find the most “progressive, intelligent and entertaining” fiction of 2013 (and give the writers some rum! Probably…)

This year’s shortlists are selected from a record 234 submissions, coming from over fifty different publishers and imprints.

The Red Tentacle (Novel), selected by Kate Griffin, Nick Harkaway, Will Hill, Anab Jain and Annabel Wright:

  • Red Doc> by Anne Carson (Jonathan Cape)
  • A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)
  • Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon (Jonathan Cape)
  • More Than This by Patrick Ness (Walker)
  • The Machine by James Smythe (HarperCollins / Blue Door)

The Golden Tentacle (Debut), also selected by the above panel:

  • Stray by Monica Hesse (Hot Key)
  • A Calculated Life by Anne Charnock (47 North)
  • Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
  • Nexus by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot)
  • Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan (Atlantic)

The Inky Tentacle (Cover Art), selected by Craig Kennedy, Sarah Anne Langton, Hazel Thompson and Emma Vieceli.

  • Dreams and Shadows by C. Robert Cargill (Gollancz) / Design and illustration by Sinem Erkas
  • The Age Atomic by Adam Christopher (Angry Robot) / Art by Will Staehle
  • Homeland and Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow (Titan)  / Design by Amazing15
  • Stray by Monica Hesse (Hot Key)  / Art by Gianmarco Magnani
  • Apocalypse Now Now by Charlie Human (Century) / Art by Joey Hi-Fi

The winners will be announced in a ceremony at the Seven Dials Club on 12th February and will receive a total of £2,000 in prize money, as well as one of the prize’s distinctive Tentacle trophies and bottles of The Kraken Rum.

Will any of The Kitschies shortlist titles be reflected in the shortlists for the BSFA awards, which will be announced next week? What do you think? I know, but… my lips are sealed!