Jason Sanford Recommendations

Jason Sanford has posted up his nominations for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards.  I already agree with some of it, and hopefully will be able to track down other that I haven't read.  Unfortunately, there are a few stories that I probably won't be able to because they're published in print zines that don't let their fiction out for free (unless it has already been nominated and then only during the voting period).

Also, I'm not sure about the eligibility of Paolo Bacigalupi's The Alchemist.  Or, Tobias Buckell's The Executioness, for that matter (not on Sanford's ballot, but it's a linked story).  Sort of like Mary Robinette Kowal's "Water to Wine", they were first published in 2010 by Audible.com and then in print by Subterranean Press in 2011.  Like MRK's novella, absolutely worth nominating if you feel strongly about it.  Worst case, it gets enough votes and we get a ruling on cases like this. 

Interzone Contest

Mark this one down for shameless and blatant promotion. Yeah, I posted about this back on the 12th, but hey, at least I'm telling you exactly what I'm doing and why: Basically, I want a free subscription to Interzone and I'm hoping to win one by doing this. So...yeah.

Here's the link to Jason Sanford's contest. The dude's pretty happy that Interzone published a story of his ("The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain"), so he's running the contest (along with Interzone, of course). He sent me a PDF of the story, so I hope I like it. We'll see.

Here's what Sanford has to say about Interzone

For those who don't know, Interzone is a bi-monthly British science fiction magazine often counted as one of the most influential genre publications of the last 25 years. Among the writers who got their start in their pages are Stephen Baxter, Greg Egan, Kim Newman, Alastair Reynolds and Charles Stross (per the magazine's Wikipedia entry). With a stable of authors like that, the 1980s and early 90s were truly glory times for Interzone.

Strangely enough, that's not an author list that sells me the magazine, but I know that's a fairly prominent and solid list of names. Despite that, Interzone is a magazine I've been interested in for a while (seriously, that's not just blatant promotional bullshit). I have a hard enough time finding Realms of Fantasy or F&SF, so a SF magazine from across the pond would be damn near impossible for me to get. Yeah, subscribe. Whatever. I'm po' and while I'm cool with single issue purchases (which is why I love stuff like Electric Velocipede which publishes twice a year), actually subscribing is well out of the budget for American publications, let alone British.

So, what's a guy to do?

Enter a contest. Do some shameless and blatant promotion.

I'd tell you all to go and help a brother out (not me, that Sanford guy), promote the contest and get your entries in, but that wouldn't exactly help this brother out, now would it? If you want to help out this brother then you won't go enter the contest at all. More entries lowers my chances. Of course, that's not really what Sanford's trying to do here, but if I'm being honest here (and being my blog, I'm nothing but honest), I figure I had to throw it out.

It is cool, though, that they're running a contest that will net some American (we need more stuff, you see) 6 issues of Interzone.

Oh, yeah. The contest is only open to U.S. Residents.