A Dribble of Ink

You watched a lot more stuff than I did this year. I couldn’t speculate on the visual stuff. Glad to see you give Lassen a nod too at Editor.

Good choices all around except….

ADWD? REALLY?!?!?!

@Justin — Yeah, ADWD might be a little out of left field, but I feel that, despite how it might measure against the other volumes in A Song of Ice and Fire, it was still head-and-shoulders above the other epic fantasies released.*

@Joe — I asked around on Twitter and no one could give me a straight answer, so I included it on these two criteria:

Any generally available non-professional publication devoted to science fiction or fantasy which by the close of 2011 has published four (4) or more issues (or the equivalent in other media), at least one (1) of which appeared in 2011, and which in 2011 met at least two (2) of the following criteria:
1. Had an average press run of at least 1,000 copies per issue,
2. Paid its contributors and/or staff in other than copies of the publication,
3. Provided at least half the income of any one person,
4. Had at least 15% of its total space occupied by advertising,
5. Announced itself to be a semiprozine.

I suppose it’s probably considered professional, but I feel that they deserve a nod for their non-fiction (which is paid at token rates, unlike their short fiction.) And not just because I was published there in 2011.

*Note, I’m not a Malazan fan, so don’t hold The Crippled God above my head, please.

I would kill to see a Best Novel category filled with books like that.

And WTF, man? No Skiffy and Fanty Show? :(

I really want to check out all the novels you mentioned that I haven’t read, especially The Night Circus and Of Blood and Honey!

Do you think The Tiger’s Wife will get any traction? I saw it mainly marketing as literary fiction, and that tends to influence awards, IMHO.

@Kathleen I held it back from my nominations for that reason, right or wrong. It was probably the best book I read last year, but it feels like a stretch for me to call it SFF.

Leviathan Wakes and The Dragon’s Path were number 5 and 6 on my list. Both just missed making my ballot.

oops. tag screw up. sorry!

Out of curiousity, how do you define ‘professional’ in the sense of Writing Excuses? Presumably Brandon, Dan, Mary, Howard and Jordan aren’t paid for their work on it. This sort of debate seems like more evidence that the name ‘Fancast’ is silly. Do we need a ‘Best Semi-procast’ category to capture those podcasts that, like Writing Excuses, operate in a professional manner? If so, do other podcasts of similar stature to Writing Excuses (like PodCastle, Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, or The Agony Column) also belong in ‘Best Related Work’ until this is sorted out? Too confusing.