First is first, I picked up a best short story nomination for 'R' which appeared in Agog! Smashing Stories and a nomination for the William Atheling Jnr Award for criticism for my post on Haruki Murakami. Both of them are real nice. Thanks for those who read and nominated.
The Atheling nominations are going to cause a bit of a ruffle, I reckon. The people in charge of the award this year decided to bring the award nominations back for a specific piece of writing, which kind of fucked people who have been building a body of work in reviews, since that has been what has mostly gone on and what has previously been nominated. Hardcore criticism is dead in the local scene, so actually allowing for nominations based off a years work has, in my opinion, made the nominations stronger. It's not a slight upon the writers who are nominated (and I'm one of them) but this year does feel weaker, with Jason Nahrung up for 'Why Are Publishers Afraid of Horror' which was published in the Courier Mail in Queensland, Rob Hood up for his review of Weight of Water and and me for my bit on Murakami. Still, maybe it will inspire some more critical work this year, though where it would be published outside blogs and websites (where both Rob's piece and mine came from a site and blog) I don't know.
Short Stories
q Deborah Biancotti: Number 3 Raw Place, Agog! Smashing Stories, April
q Rjurik Davidson: The Interminable Suffering of Mysterious Mr Wu, Aurealis #33
q Margo Lanagan: Singing My Sister Down, Black Juice.
q Ben Peek: R, Agog! Smashing Stories, ed by Cat Sparks
q No award
Novella or Novelette
q Simon Brown: Water Babies, Agog! Smashing Stories, April
q Stephen Dedman: The Whole of the Law, ASIM 13
q Paul Haines: The Last Days of Kali Yuga, NFG Magazine, Volume 2 Issue 4, August 2004
q Richard Harland: Catabolic Magic, Aurealis #32
q Cat Sparks: Home by the Sea, Orb #6, July
q No award
Novel
q Richard Harland: The Black Crusade
q Maxine McArthur: Less than Human
q Sean Williams: The Crooked Letter
q No award
Collected works
q Agog! Smashing Stories: ed Cat Sparks
q Black Juice: Margo Lanagan.
q Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine: ed Lyn Triffitt, Edwina Harvey, Andrew Finch,
Zara Baxter, Robbie Matthews & Tehani Croft
q Orb 6: ed Sarah Endacott
q Encounters: ed Donna Hanson and Maxine McArthur, CSFG Publishing
q No award
Pro Artwork
q Les Petersen: cover of ASIM 12
q Kerri Valkova: cover of The Black Crusade, Chimaera Publications
q Cat Sparks: Agog! Smashing Stories cover
q Les Petersen: Encounters Book Cover
q Les Petersen: cover and internal ASIM 16
q No award
Fan Art
q Sarah Xu,
q No award
William Atheling Jnr Award for Criticism or Review
q Robert Hood: review of Weight of Water at HoodReviews, asking "is this film a ghost story?" http://www.roberthood.net/reviews/index.html
q Jason Nahrung: Why are publishers afraid of horror, BAM, Courier Mail, 20 March 2004
q Ben Peek: review of Haruki Murakami's work in the Urban Sprawl Project, http://www.livejournal.com/users/benpeek/231224.html
q No award
Note that this category was originally conceived and run for a single important piece of work. There has been drift in this perception towards life work or work over the whole year. There are, however, other areas for this longer focus writing, such as fan writing, professional achievement or even fan website/zine. After consultation with others, all persons who made nominations that did not fit within the original conception of the Award had an attempt made to contact them to give them a chance to amend their nomination from a ‘whole of work’ to a single article that best represented the reviewer’s work over the year. Please vote in accordance with this.
Pro Achievement
q The Clarion South Team (Fantastic Qld - convenors Robert Hoge, Kate Eltham, Robert Dobson & Heather Gent): negotiating with the US Clarion people, then promoting and establishing Clarion South which gives emerging writer the chance to work with the best in the business.
q Cat Sparks: editing and writing including winning third place in the writers of the future award
q Margo Lanagan: for Black Juice
q Maloney, Geoff: Tales of the Crypto-System, his short story publications
q Sean Williams for The Crooked Letter and efforts in teaching
q Jonathan Strahan for work over the year in internationally published reviews and in editing anthologies
q No award
Fan achievement
q Super Happy Robot Hour
q Conflux convention committee
q Continuum 2 convention committee
q No award
Fan writer
q Edwina Harvey
q Gillespie, Bruce
q No award
Fan webite/zine
q Antipodean SF: ed Ion Newcomb
q SF Bullsheet: ed Edwina Harvey & Ted Scribner
q Gynaezine: ed Emma Hawkes and Gina Goddard
q No award
New Talent
q Barnes, Chris
q Barrow, Stuart
q Dugan, Grace
q Haines, Paul
q Robson, Barbara
q Smith, Brian
q No award
