A Dribble of Ink

Once I posted an April Fools Day blog post with this title. Now it’s true. Is it news? Sure. At least we know for sure that it will hit its July 12th, 2011 release date. Word is that recording of the audiobook is already underway.

Rejoice.

What’s better than free fiction? Free fiction that’s considered some of the best published in the past year. Here’s a rundown of the Hugo-nominated short stories, novellas, novelettes, and even a novel that’re legally available for free reading.

Best Novel

Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold — Download via Baen Books

Best Short Story
“Amaryllis” by Carrie Vaughn — Read on Lightspeed
“For Want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal — Read on Robinette’s website
“Ponies” by Kij Johnson — Read on Tor.com
“The Things” by Peter Watts — Read on Clarkesworld

Best Novelette
“Eight Miles” by Sean McMullen — Read on McMullen’s website
“The Jaguar House, in Shadow” by Aliette de Bodard — Read on de Bodard’s website
“Plus or Minus” by James Patrick Kelly — Read on Kelly’s website
“That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made” by Eric James Stone — Read on Stone’s website

Best Novella
“The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window” by Rachel Swirsky — Read on Subterranean Press
The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang — Read on Subterranean Press
“The Sultan of the Clouds” by Geoffrey A. Landis — Download a PDF from Asimov’s

That should keep you busy for a while, huh? Enjoy!

From the Renovation website:

Best Novel
Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)
Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)
Feed by Mira Grant (Orbit)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)

Best Novella
“The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window” by Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Magazine, Summer 2010)
The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
“The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” by Elizabeth Hand (Stories: All New Tales, William Morrow)
“The Sultan of the Clouds” by Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s, September 2010)
“Troika” by Alastair Reynolds (Godlike Machines, Science Fiction Book Club)

Best Novelette
“Eight Miles” by Sean McMullen (Analog, September 2010)
“The Emperor of Mars” by Allen M. Steele (Asimov’s, June 2010)
“The Jaguar House, in Shadow” by Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s, July 2010)
“Plus or Minus” by James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s, December 2010)
“That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made” by Eric James Stone (Analog, September 2010)

Best Short Story
“Amaryllis” by Carrie Vaughn (Lightspeed, June 2010)
“For Want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s, September 2010)
“Ponies” by Kij Johnson (Tor.com, November 17, 2010)
“The Things” by Peter Watts (Clarkesworld, January 2010)

Best Related Work
Bearings: Reviews 1997-2001, by Gary K. Wolfe (Beccon)
The Business of Science Fiction: Two Insiders Discuss Writing and Publishing, by Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg (McFarland)
Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea (Mad Norwegian)
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 1: (1907–1948): Learning Curve, by William H. Patterson, Jr. (Tor)
Writing Excuses, Season 4, by Brandon Sanderson, Jordan Sanderson, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells

Best Graphic Story
Fables: Witches, written by Bill Willingham; illustrated by Mark Buckingham (Vertigo)
Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse, written by Phil and Kaja Foglio; art by Phil Foglio; colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Grandville Mon Amour, by Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse)
Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, written and illustrated by Howard Tayler; colors by Howard Tayler and Travis Walton (Hypernode)
The Unwritten, Volume 2: Inside Man, written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross (Vertigo)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, screenplay by Steve Kloves; directed by David Yates (Warner)
How to Train Your Dragon, screenplay by William Davies, Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders; directed by Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders (DreamWorks)
Inception, written and directed by Christopher Nolan (Warner)
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, screenplay by Michael Bacall & Edgar Wright; directed by Edgar Wright (Universal)
Toy Story 3, screenplay by Michael Arndt; story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton & Lee Unkrich; directed by Lee Unkrich (Pixar/Disney)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Doctor Who: “A Christmas Carol,” written by Steven Moffat; directed by Toby Haynes (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: “The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang,” written by Steven Moffat; directed by Toby Haynes (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: “Vincent and the Doctor,” written by Richard Curtis; directed by Jonny Campbell (BBC Wales)
Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury, written by Rachel Bloom; directed by Paul Briganti
The Lost Thing, written by Shaun Tan; directed by Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan (Passion Pictures)

Best Editor, Short Form
John Joseph Adams
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Sheila Williams

Best Editor, Long Form
Lou Anders
Ginjer Buchanan
Moshe Feder
Liz Gorinsky
Nick Mamatas
Beth Meacham
Juliet Ulman

Best Professional Artist
Daniel Dos Santos
Bob Eggleton
Stephan Martiniere
John Picacio
Shaun Tan

Best Semiprozine
Clarkesworld, edited by Neil Clarke, Cheryl Morgan, Sean Wallace; podcast directed by Kate Baker
Interzone, edited by Andy Cox
Lightspeed, edited by John Joseph Adams
Locus, edited by Liza Groen Trombi and Kirsten Gong-Wong
Weird Tales, edited by Ann VanderMeer and Stephen H. Segal

Best Fanzine
Banana Wings, edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
Challenger, edited by Guy H. Lillian III
The Drink Tank, edited by Christopher J Garcia and James Bacon
File 770, edited by Mike Glyer
StarShipSofa, edited by Tony C. Smith

Best Fan Writer
James Bacon
Claire Brialey
Christopher J Garcia
James Nicoll
Steven H Silver

Best Fan Artist
Brad W. Foster
Randall Munroe
Maurine Starkey
Steve Stiles
Taral Wayne

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Award for the best new professional science fiction or fantasy writer of 2009 or 2010, sponsored by Dell Magazines (not a Hugo Award).
Saladin Ahmed
Lauren Beukes
Larry Correia
Lev Grossman
Dan Wells
Note: All finalists are in their 2nd year of eligibility.

My first thoughts? Meh.

I dunno, beyond the Campbell nominees, the list just doesn’t excite me. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was good, but not Hugo-worthy. Cryoburn is the nth volume in a long-running series that I’ve not read. Blackout and All Clear were published as two volumes and should be counted as such. Feed keeps appearing on awards lists, but nothing I’ve heard about it seems even vaguely interesting (or above-average). I will admit to having keen interest in The Dervish House, and plan to read it later this year. The list of nominees kinda reminds me of the year Shakespeare in Love won the Oscar for Best Picture.

The Campbell list is great. I loved The Magicians by Grossman. Ahmed is one of my favourite short fiction writers (and I’m dreadfully excited for the 2012 release of the first volume of his Crescent Moon series) and Beukes is one of the most interesting young writers to hit the scene in years.

The editor lists look good. Daniel Dos Santos should win the Best Artist award. Semiprozine Award is strong and I’d be happy to see any of them win.

But don’t even get me started on the Best Fanzine and Best Fan Writer awards. Maybe I’m exposing my ignorance here, but beyond StarShipSofa, I haven’t heard of a damn one, nor am I familiar with any of the writers. My beef, obviously, is the lack of presence of blogs, bloggers and online writers. Where’re the Nialls (Harrison and Alexander)? Where’s Abigail Nussbaum or Adam Whitehead? No nod for SF Signal? Really?

I know the root of the awards and the SF/F fan-writing is firmly rooted in ‘zines, but it’s time for the writers and the voters to grow up and recognize that the online sphere is producing some of the best commentary on the genre and reaches a far greater audience. Hell, my blog boasts only a slightly lower number of monthly readers than Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s and Interzone (Source: Warren Ellis, numbers are from 2008 and have likely dropped even further since), all of which are considered professional magazines, and I’m a small fry compared to many of the other blogs and fan writers on the web. I can only imagine that the reach of the ‘zines is even smaller than that. The entirety of eFanzines.com, which hosts several of these ‘zines, gets less than half the traffic that A Dribble of Ink does. The name and nature of the award both need a looking at. At least Ansible wasn’t nominated again.

Does anyone know when we’ll see a full list of votes cast? What are your thoughts on this list?

According to Time Magazine, George R.R. Martin, scribe of the enormously popular A Song of Ice and Fire, is one of the 100 most influential people on the planet.

Here’s what they had to say about Martin:

I had two missions last summer. One was to watch The Wire because I was tired of admitting I hadn’t seen it. The other was to read George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.

The experiences turned out to be surprisingly similar. Both kidnapped me to intimately drawn worlds with stories of a grim conflict and characters so achingly human that you end up rooting, tragically, for both sides. And neither one has dragons in it — at least, not at first. Martin, 62, is as fine a researcher as he is a storyteller, and he packs in enough miserable fact about the meanness of medieval life that it occasionally echoes Baltimore in its harshness.

With HBO’s adaptation and Martin’s long-awaited fifth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series about to be published, my endorsement isn’t necessary. But I’ll still feel compelled, like all those fans of The Wire, to pull you aside and tell you that Tyrion Lannister is the best character in fiction since Stringer Bell and that if you have not read these books, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Also included on the list?

• Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post
• Hamada Ben Amor, a 21-year-old musician whose song helped spur the political uprising in Tunisia
• Mark Zuckerberg, (co?)founder of Facebook
• William and Kate Middleton, the royal couple©
• and… Jusint Bieber.

The list itself is chock full of everything from sport stars to media moguls to political activists and leaders to authors (Martin’s not the only one, Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom is also mentioned among others). It’s a list that both identifies and (in some cases) celebrates those people who have had a significant cultural, political or societal impact on the world in the past several months and will continue to do so in the future.

Martin’s inclusion on the list is, of course, wonderful news for fans of genre fiction. The inclusion of an author like Franzen is expected, for he’s a critical darling and taking nine years to write a follow-up to a modern classic (sound familiar?) sure gives your fans and the general public to get literary blue-balls, but the inclusion of a Fantasy author like Martin is another weight added to the scales slowly tipping in favour of the genre. Sure, he’s there more on the strength of his recently-debuted television series than his long-running series of novels, but if the anecdotal evidence provided by my blog stats are any indication (on Monday, the day after the premiere of Game of Thrones aired, nine of the top ten most-viewed articles on my blog related to Martin, his books or the television series), his star is going to rise quickly and his already large audience will grow even bigger.

Like him or not, Martin’s about to find the overnight success that he’s worked so bloody hard for these past 35-or-so-years, and his inclusion on the list is just. Congrats, Mr. Martin.