From Tor.com:

SHORT STORY

• WINNER: “Ponies,” Kij Johnson (Tor.com 1/17/10)
• WINNER: “How Interesting: A Tiny Man,” Harlan Ellison® (Realms of Fantasy 2/10)
• “Arvies,” Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed 8/10)
• “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno,” Vylar Kaftan (Lightspeed 6/10)
• “The Green Book,” Amal El-Mohtar (Apex 11/1/10)
• “Ghosts of New York,” Jennifer Pelland (Dark Faith)
• “Conditional Love,” Felicity Shoulders (Asimov’s 1/10)

NOVELETTE

• WINNER: “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made,” Eric James Stone (Analog 9/10)
• “Map of Seventeen,” Christopher Barzak (The Beastly Bride)
• “The Jaguar House, in Shadow,” Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s 7/10)
• “Plus or Minus,” James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s 12/10)
• “Pishaach,” Shweta Narayan (The Beastly Bride)
• “The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara,” Christopher Kastensmidt (Realms of Fantasy 4/10)
• “Stone Wall Truth,” Caroline M. Yoachim (Asimov’s 2/10)

NOVELLA

• WINNER: “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window,” Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Summer 2010)
• The Alchemist, Paolo Bacigalupi (Audible; Subterranean)
• “Iron Shoes,” J. Kathleen Cheney (Alembical 2)
• The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
• “The Sultan of the Clouds,” Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s 9/10)
• “Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance,” Paul Park (F&SF 1-2/10)

 NOVEL

• WINNER Blackout / All Clear, Connie Willis (Spectra)
• The Native Star, M.K. Hobson (Spectra)
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit UK; Orbit US)
• Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
• Echo, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
• Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW)

BRADBURY AWARD BEST DRAMATIC PRODUCTION 

• WINNER: Inception, Christopher Nolan (director), Christopher Nolan (screenplay) (Warner)
• Despicable Me, Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud (directors), Ken Daurio & Cinco Paul (screenplay), Sergio Pablos (story) (Illumination Entertainment)
• Doctor Who: “Vincent and the Doctor,” Richard Curtis (writer), Jonny Campbell (director)
• How to Train Your Dragon, Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders (directors), William Davies, Dean DeBlois, & Chris Sanders (screenplay) (DreamWorks Animation)
• Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, Edgar Wright (director), Michael Bacall & Edgar Wright (screenplay) (Universal)
• Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich (director), Michael Arndt (screenplay), John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, & Lee Unkrich (story) (Pixar/Disney)

ANDRE NORTON AWARD

• WINNER:  I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; Harper)
• Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
• White Cat, Holly Black (McElderry)
• Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press; Scholastic UK)
• Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, Barry Deutsch (Amulet)
• The Boy from Ilysies, Pearl North (Tor Teen)
• A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner (Greenwillow)
• Behemoth, Scott Westerfield (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

So, congrats to all the winners! Glad to see Swirsky take home Best Novella, though I’ve not yet read ‘The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window’. I think I’ll set aside a chunk of time this summer to catch up on all the Nebula- and Hugo-nominated short stories, novelettes and novellas. There’s some good reading on those lists. I’m particularly interesting in the stories from Barzak, de Bodard and El-Mothar.

What books are fillin’ your Rapture Saturday?

A huge update from George R.R. Martin about A Dance with Dragons. A few of the most interesting tidbits:

Now that the dust is settling at last, I thought I’d take a deep breath and look back at what a long strange trip this has been. If the process interests you, read on. But beware — past this point, there may be some SPOILERS lurking amidst my discussion. Read on at your own peril.

[…]

At 1510 pages, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS come in just slightly shorter than A STORM OF SWORDS, which was 1521 pages in manuscript, with the same software, settings, and margins.

At one point late in the process DANCE was considerably longer. The page count had gone beyond 1600 and was creeping up toward 1700, to my alarm. (At 1700 pages the book could not have been published in a single volume). Several things happened to bring it back down.

Shorter than A Storm of Swords, in the end. With all the fears of the novel being split up into two volumes, it looks like Marting and his publisher did everything they could to ensure that that didn’t happen. Martin solved this problem several ways. The first was moving some chapters into the next volume:
Read More »