Tuesday, August 04, 2009

World Fantasy Award Nominees: 2009

From SF Awards Watch:

Posted without comment. I’ll talk about stuff later. This is easily my favorite of the three awards I cover during the year. But, congratulations to all the nominees.

Best Novel
The House of the Stag, Kage Baker
The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan

Best Novella
“Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel”, Peter S. Beagle (Strange Roads)
“If Angels Fight”, Richard Bowes (F&SF 2/08)
“The Overseer”, Albert Cowdrey (F&SF 3/08)
Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman
“Good Boy”, Nisi Shawl (Filter House)

Best Short Story
“Caverns of Mystery”, Kage Baker (Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy)
“26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss”, Kij Johnson (Asimov’s 7/08)
“Pride and Prometheus”, John Kessel (F&SF 1/08)
“Our Man in the Sudan”, Sarah Pinborough (The Second Humdrumming Book of Horror Stories)
“A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica”, Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld 5/08)

Best Anthology
The Living Dead, John Joseph Adams, ed.
The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Ellen Datlow, ed.
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008: Twenty-First Annual Collection, Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, & Gavin J. Grant, eds.
Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, Ekaterina Sedia, ed.
Steampunk, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, eds.

Best Collection
Strange Roads, Peter S. Beagle
The Drowned Life, Jeffrey Ford
Pretty Monsters, Kelly Link
Filter House, Nisi Shawl
Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan

Best Artist
Kinuko Y. Craft
Janet Chui
Stephan Martinière
John Picacio
Shaun Tan

Special Award, Professional
Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant (for Small Beer Press and Big Mouth House)
Farah Mendelsohn (for The Rhetorics of Fantasy)
Stephen H. Segal & Ann VanderMeer (for Weird Tales)
Jerad Walters (for A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft)
Jacob Weisman (for Tachyon Publications)

Special Award, Non-Professional
Edith L. Crowe (for her work with The Mythopoeic Society)
John Klima (for Electric Velocipede)
Elise Matthesen (for setting out to inspire and for serving as inspiration for works of poetry, fantasy, and SF over the last decade through her jewelry-making and her “artist’s challenges.”)
Sean Wallace, Neil Clarke, & Nick Mamatas (for Clarkesworld)
Michael Walsh (for Howard Waldrop collections from Old Earth Books)

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I've only read The Graveyard Book. To be honest, I was not that impressed, but I think it will win lots of awards anyway.

I'm interesting in hearing your comments.

Joe said...

Thanks. I haven't read any of the novels and the The Graveyard Book is STILL on hold at the library.

I'll probably focus more on the stories (as I tend to do)

Greyweather said...

I liked the The Graveyard Book, but it is a simple story centered around simple ideas. Given that Gaiman wrote it with a younger audience in mind you can't really call these flaws, but chances are the other nominated novels have a lot more to offer.

Overall the nominated novels look to have a lot more merit than last year's (Territory being the only stand-out work IMHO), but I won't know for sure till I read the other four.

I've read two of the collections so far. Ford's was good but Link's was a disappointment.

Joe said...

I thought Ysabel was also a standout last year. I can't argue that win (though I loved Territory). Either would have been a worth winner. The other three - not so much.

Filter House won the Tiptree, and I meant to read it at that time, so now I've no excuse.

What I really want to get my hands on is the Peter Beagle collection. It's a 1000 copy edition published by one of my two local SFF bookstores. I assume there are copies left.