Clarkesworld Magazine's year in slush

Clarkesworld Magazine has a fascinating post up detailing the last year of handling their slush pile. Here's the breakdown:

  • Total Submissions 4269
  • Days open 320
  • Avg. Subs Per Day 13.3
  • # of Authors 2721
  • Highest # of Subs from a Single Author 25

Those numbers indicate the incredible hurdles emerging writers have to overcome to be published in a pro magazine. 2721 authors submitted 4269 stories in 2009 to Clarkesworld. Wow! Since Clarkesworld only publishes 48 24 stories each year (two per month), that means you have a 1% .5% chance of having your story accepted. Add in that half of the stories Clarkesworld publishes are set aside for "established" authors, and that lowers the odds even more for new writers.

Of course, the quality of your writing can dramatically change the odds. For example, somehow I suspect the author who submitted 25 stories to Clarkesworld in 2009 was not creating professional level stories. Still, new writers should keep these numbers in mind when they consider what it will take to become published.

UPDATE: Thanks to Jay Lake and Robert Laughlin for pointing out my mistaken math (both times). Duh on me. Obviously 2 x 12 is 24, not 48. Guess my brain wasn't working too well this morning. And as Robert pointed out, the actual percentage is .56%, which should be rounded to .6%, but I left it at .5 because I hate rounding.

Russian SF magazine ESLI

Cover of Russian SF magazine ESLI My contributor's copy of the Russian SF magazine ESLI (IF in English) arrived today. They purchased the reprint right to my story "The Ships Like Clouds, Risen By Their Rain" (PDF download), which was originally published last year in Interzone, and subsequently reprinted in Year's Best SF 14.

ESLI is a beautiful magazine, about the size and thickness of a double issue edition of Asimov's or Analog before they went to their new size. Since I don't read Russian, I can't comment on the quality of the content. But there appears to be a good mix of original Russian SF stories and translations of stories. In addition to my story, there are translations of "Boojum" by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, "Fury" by Alastair Reynolds, and "The Others" by Lawrence C. Connolly.

Russian art for "The Ships Like Clouds..." The best thing about ESLI is the amazing black and white line art for each story.

At left is the art for my story. Without giving too much away, the art perfectly captures in an abstract way the essence of my tale. Great art. I wish I knew the artist's name so I could give him or her credit. I also figured out that the wording at the top of the page is my name in Russian.

Russian art for "Boojum" by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette At right is the art for "Boojum" by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, one of my favorite science fiction short stories of recent years. Unlike the art for my story, this artist took a realistic approach to a story which could have been dang hard to illustrate. But the artist captured the story perfectly, and in the process created a small masterpiece.

I wish I could read Russian because ESLI looks like a great SF magazine. Definitely a great place to be reprinted in (and from a financial point of view, they paid promptly, which is always a good thing).

John Scalzi and privilege

Dear John Scalzi:

When I first read your "privilege" comment on my post about professional rates for short stories, so many responses popped to mind. I thought about pointing out I was unable to respond until now because I've been working all day to support my family, which meant I didn't have the privilege of an immediate answer. Or that of course $250 is better than $100--especially on my family's tight budget--but sometimes people defer short-term gain so we can reach our long-term goals.

And most importantly that yes, I am privileged, as is anyone with a full-time job these days. But that you are also privileged to have worked your way to such writing success that you can draw a line in the ink and say below this cash point, I will not publish.

But I don't have to respond with any of that because of Jeff VanderMeer's amazing comment (pan through the comments section to find it), which to me is the final word on all this. He described so perfectly the reasons and strategies which cause writers to submit to different publications. So please read Jeff's words. And let me simply add a small "Hell yeah, Jeff! Wish I'd said that!"

Yours in privilege,

Jason Sanford

Is Worldcon Dead?

In the current issue of the SFWA Bulletin (Oct./Nov. 2009), Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg rip into Worldcon. As Resnick says, Worldcon used to draw 6,000 to 7,500 people all the time, but now brings less than half that. Add in poor planning--recent Worldcons like Denver and Montreal spread attendees across 7 to 10 hotels over a mile apart--and the fact that so many of the conventions are held outside the U.S., and what results is a cycle of death and incompetence which pushes editors and publishers toward friendlier venues like Comic Con, the World Fantasy Con, and DragonCon.

And where editors and publishers go, so go the writers.

Resnick made similar statements in his editorial for Baen's Universe earlier this year. And while I haven't been to a Worldcon before, I'd love to go some day. But since I'm raising a family and working full-time, my money and time are closely guarded. Next year I plan to attend the World Fantasy Con, and after that I'd like to go to DragonCon. But Worldcon? Not on the radar screen. I don't see where it brings enough bang for the buck, even if it would be fun.

According to Resnick, more and more it's the older writers who go to Worldcon, a demographic which is obviously trending only one way. So I wonder: Is Worldcon truly dead? Or is a new generation ready to embrace the convention and breathe new life into it?

Politics as sport

I grew up in Alabama, a college football obsessed state. I now live in Ohio, another college football obsessed state. While I don't obsess on any sport, it was fun watching the University of Alabama beat Florida last week. Ohio State fans I've spoken to were also thrilled to see Florida go down. After all, the Gators smashed the Buckeyes in the 2007 National Championship Game.

It's been written many times before that sports is a modern version of ancient warfare.  A way for people to show their tribal colors without engaging in actual blood and death. While this theory rings true--there's definitely something deep inside humans which finds satisfaction as part of a group competing against another groups--I've long been troubled by the people who sprout this theory. Such smug looks on their constipated faces as they use this theory to look down on those who enjoy sports.

But this need to be part of the winning team is in all people. I've seen people who wouldn't know the difference between football and baseball get into screaming matches over that other sport of modern life, politics. Because I dare you to say that politics in countries like the United States isn't played for anything but sport.

In the U.S.A., we gin up the political outrage over issues and problems which both sides have no desire to actually solve. Never mind that these problems are people's lives. And never mind that by playing politics as sport we are consenting so many problems to be ignored. This is a shame. Making sport of problems instead of tackling them is the perfect way to never make a difference in people's lives.

Yes, far too much of politics these days is merely played as sport. The people playing have no other goal but to destroy as many enemies as possible.And that's the difference between politics as sport and true sports. When the football play is done and the quarterback's down, another player--often from the other team--is there to lend a hand and help him back up.

When was the last time you saw that happen in politics?

Avoid Nebula embarrassment next year by nominating The Windup Girl for the final ballot

Nominations for the 2010 Nebula Awards are trickling in. I've already made a few, and plan to finish them up in the coming weeks by adding more stories and novels to the mix. However, I worry that a major embarrassment may be building for the Nebula Awards in that there's a chance The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi won't be on the final ballot.

I've praised The Windup Girl at length in my earlier SF Signal review, and I've heard from many people that this is the most amazing novel they've read in years. In addition, Time Magazine recently named it to their top ten fiction list for 2009, while Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly both gave it starred reviews and also added it to their annual best books lists (see here and here). Finally, BookPage said The Windup Girl "will almost certainly be the most important SF novel of the year."

I'll take that a step forward and say this is easily one of the best SF novels of the last decade, and one which will be recognized as a literary classic for many years to come.

But to my surprise, the novel has only four Nebula nominations so far (with one of those being mine). Under the new rules, the top six stories in each category make the final ballot. While four nominations is nothing to dismiss, I'd expected so many more.

Part of the problem may be that The Windup Girl is not an easy novel to read.  Niall Harrison addressed this issue recently in his Strange Horizons review as he described the novel's disturbing aspects. This caused one reader to comment "Your excellent review has convinced me I won't be missing much if I skip The Windup Girl." Niall's response: "Damn! That wasn't my aim. I was hoping to convey that it's a tough read in a number of ways, but a fascinating, worthwhile one. Ah well."

I hope the fact that The Windup Girl tackles disturbing topics isn't why so few people are nominating it.

The complaint about the old Nebula rules was that deserving stories and novels rarely made the final ballot. For me, whether or not Bacigalupi's novel makes the final ballot will be a key test of the new rules. If we see the same old same old up there, while a break-through novel like The Windup Girl misses out, well, so much for improving the Nebulas.

Maybe I'm being a bit premature in my worry since the nominating period is open through Feb. 15. But I want people to read this book and consider it for a nomination while there is still time. 

SFWA members can read the novel online here through the member-only website. Or better yet, buy a copy. And prepare yourself for the best new SF novel out there.

CliffsNotes to the great short story rate fail debate

Don't know where to start wading through the great community angst and anger session some are already calling rate fail? Never fear, CliffsNotes are here.

  • John Scalzi starts with a rant against Black Matrix Publishing for paying nothing for nothing. Unable to let the dead horse remain dead, Scalzi beats the horse over and over and over (in process coining phrase "Aspiring Writer Stockholm Syndrome" and causing one blogger to proclaim him a genius).
  • Naturally writers are offended, both at Scalzi for insulting their publishing credits, at Black Matrix for paying so little, at writers for being so insulted over being insulted (say it isn't so), and at the unfair publishing world, which ignores far too many of the writers taking part in this entire debate. (Again, say it isn't so).
  • And now, as the bombs die down, a few brave souls emerge from the wreckage to offer their summaries of what all this means. Definitely read this, and this, and this.

As for myself, I'm now officially sick of all this. How about we return to more traditional sources of angst and anger in the genre community. Like how everyone hates the use of red matter in the new Star Trek movie.

Ebook releases help overall book sales

Respected literary agent Nat Sobel has an email up this morning arguing that publishers should wait to release ebooks until at least 6 months after a hardback's release. "Notingwith alarm that movie exhibitors had recently pulled a film after learning that an early release of the DVD had been scheduled, Sobel drew the analogy with booksellers whose hardcover sales are cannibalized by early release of e-book editions."

Sobel is correct that ebooks are the mass-market paperbacks of today. For example, my mother used to buy tons of paperbacks. Nows she simply downloads titles to her Kindle.

However, Sobel is wrong to draw a connection between publishing and the movie industry. I mean, that's like saying book sales are hurt when a movie based on the book is released. The reverse is actually true. And what about the example Sobel gives to support his view:

His reasoning is by no means theoretical. He recently demonstrated its correctness by asking Tor Books to hold back the e-edition of a series by the late bestselling fantasy author Robert Jordan. "Now," he writes, "four weeks after its release in hardcover, The Gathering Storm has sold 24% more copies than the previous volume, even though the work was completed by another writer."

I suspect the reason why The Gathering Storm has sold so many more copies is due not to the lack of an ebook release, but to a very important marketing detail: Jordan died. This brought massive attention to the series and the other author completing the books. A similar effect is seen with Michael Jackson being one of the top-selling musicians of the last year. Did Michael Jackson's CDs start selling like crazy because there were no iTunes versions of his songs (which is obviously not true, but would have to be the case if Sobel's example was valid)? No. His music began selling like crazy across all platforms because he died, which has a massive marketing effect on one's fans. Just ask Elvis or Tupac Shakur.

I suspect ebook sales help overall book sales because more people are willing to make an impulse purchase of an ebook (like my mother does, for example). If someone wants a hardback, they'll buy it. But at nearly $30 for most hardbacks these days, they are not going to be purchased by impulse buyers. Ebooks will be. So don't imagine that waiting 6 months to release the ebook helps sales. In fact, since a book's marketing will be well passed by that point, meaning impulse buyers will miss out or be angry they can't purchase the title, I suspect the opposite is true.

Call for Million Writers Award preliminary judges

The 2010 storySouth Million Writers Award for best online short story will kick off in late January, so I'm putting out the call for preliminary judge applicants. These judges help screen the nominations and select the list of notable stories of the year. As always, I hope to select a group of judges from across the literary genres.

To apply, e-mail me your writing, reading and/or editing experience at lapthai (circle a sign) yahoo (dot) com--be sure to tell me why you'd make a good preliminary judge.

And to tie in with this, Robert Laughlin emailed me an interesting fact about the Million Writers Award. For the last three years, the list of Notable Stories has cited those stories chosen by more than one preliminary judge. According to Robert, 37 stories have been so cited, with no author having written more than one of these stories. However, the following online magazines have published multiple stories chosen by more than one preliminary judge:

Why frat boys love Kerouac's On the Road

Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road hasn't aged well, and now resembles the old hippie uncle you run into at family reunions. He still spouts revolutionary slogans and wears his few remaining hairs in a long ponytail. But instead of feeling cutting edge, his dress and manner come across as a sad attempt to reclaim a misplaced youth. The truth is aging hipsters--and the aging books once aimed at the hip--are rarely ever that.

This doesn't mean On the Road wasn't influential. Without it there would be no American road trip genre in either literature or film (think Easy Rider and Thelma and Louise). But the book's racism and inane plot--go forth and rebel through drinks and drugs and prostitutes, and by going south to Mexico to do such things--makes reading the book painful. Add in how the prose which so shocked 1950's sensibilities is now laughable to read, and you have a book which fails to measure up to most of its fellow literary classics.

I understand my view is likely the minority among readers and critics. Still, I decided to blog about this after receiving an email the other day from a friend.

My friend, a writer who teaches at a respected university, was at a small party and casually mentioned his love of On the Road. As if on cue, a drunken frat boy chimed and said, "That's my favorite novel." Several of his drunk friends nodded. "Last time we went to Cancun, it was like we lived the book."

My friend said it felt like his world collapsed. As if he'd been suddenly confronted with absolute proof that someone had desecrated the shrine of his literary god. He babbled how he was pretty sure On the Road wasn't set in Cancun, at which point the frat boys wandered off in search of more drunken Kerouac-esque adventures.

I'm sure if Jack Kerouac was still alive, he'd need some serious drinks and drugs and sex to deal with the readers who are now so in love with his book.

Interview with Larry Eisenberg

In case you missed it, my interview with author Larry Eisenberg is up at SF Signal. In response to the interview, a number of people have asked where they can read Larry's stories. Unfortunately, his only collection is The Best Laid Schemes, published way back in 1971. Since Larry wrote a large number of stories after that date, that means to read most of his work you have to track down the original magazines he was published in.

My hope is that a publisher will notice this need for a new collection and approach Larry about one. If anyone wants to get in touch with him, drop me a line.

Where to shove your self-published crap

So I'm talking to a friend about publishing, and a friend of a friend's friend (FFF) slides in--you know the scene, where an intimate conversation is interrupted by the scurrying intrusion dance of a damn conversation hacker--and my friend, whom I'm trying to convince to submit his amazing fiction manuscript to an agent, hears these words from the FFF's dung hole: "Why bother submitting. Publish it yourself."

And so my friend is exposed to the worst possible advice. FFF pulls his self published novel out of his backpack and flashes it like gold. Nevermind the tacky cover which FFF likely asked his kindergarten niece to whip together in Photoshop.  Nevermind the typo I discover on page 1 while flipping through the book as FFF regales my friend about the reasonable costs of self publishing. Nevermind that FFF brags of having sold hundreds of copies of his novel.

"Hundreds?" I ask. I glance at the copyright page. The book was self published in 2007. Hundreds across two years is nothing. Hundreds means your friends and family bought all the copies.

"It's so easy to do," FFF says.

At this point I fight to restrain the great heaping pile of stinking truth I want to throw at this FFF. Idiot! You paid to have no readers. You paid to showcase a poorly written and edited novel. You paid to humiliate yourself merely so you can go up to friends of friends and say you're a published author.

But I restrain all that. My friend glances at the FFF book and hands it back, wishing FFF the best of luck with his novel. FFF wanders off to find others to dazzle with his authorial shine.

Right then, I decide if my friend even hints that he's considering self publishing for his manuscript, I will strike him down. I will beat him bloody until some sense--or fear of self publishing--enters his head. But I shouldn't have worried. People who can actually write amazing stories and novels know the self publishing score. Yes, it's good for some things, but don't pretend self publishing takes the place of landing your book with a good publisher.

"So," my friend asks. "Know any good agents?"

Circulation of Online Genre Magazines

A month ago, I posted Online Genre Magazines: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. At the time, I stated "Based on my experience with online magazines, a top publication like Strange Horizons likely has between 1,000 to 2,000 unique visitors per day. Most other top markets will have 400 to 1000 visitors a day, and obscure markets will have 10 to 100 visitors a day at most."

However, the one weak point with my estimate was I didn't have current access to the website statistics of many online magazines. In response to my call to examine web stats, I received a large number of emails from editors, and a good number of these gave me access to their statistics. While a few were fine with being named, most wanted to stay anonymous. In honor of this I am not naming either the editors or the magazines who provided me with this information.

It appears that my original estimates appear to be correct, aside from being somewhat optimistic. Here are my revised estimates:

  • Top publications like Strange Horizons likely have between 800 and 1,500 unique visitors per day.
  • Most other top markets will have 300 to 800 visitors a day.
  • The majority of obscure markets will have 10 to 80 visitors a day at most, although a few climb into the lower hundreds per day.

Please note that, as I previously mentioned, places like Tor.com receive far more traffic than this since they focus on being more than a simple online magazine. Basically, the creation of an online community tied in with a genre magazine or publishing company brings many more visitors to a site. But most of these visitors are still not reading the online fiction.

One surprising finding was that the submission guidelines were the most popular pages at almost every magazine whose stats I examined. This means that for the less popular online magazines, the number of visitors who actually read their fiction may be less than the number who visit the site merely to learn how to submit stories.

Finally, not every unique visitor to an online magazine is truly unique. While I was working on this analysis, one print editor contacted me and said many people make the mistake of considering every visitor to an online genre magazine to be a unique visitor who only shows up once a month.

This is absolutely correct. Many visitors to online magazines return multiple times per month, just as a reader of a print magazine like Analog returns to one issue a number of times. So while Strange Horizons may technically have an estimated 30,000 plus visitors per month, many of these visitors return time and again to the site. This means it is unlikely even the biggest online genre magazines have surpassed print genre magazines in readership.

The other surprising finding is that major podcasts like StarShipSofa and Escape Pod have truly astounding levels of listenership, with tens of thousands of downloads per month. This doesn't prove people are listening to an entire show when they download a podcast. But since the act of downloading is a more dedicated act than surfing to a website--and since it would be rare for someone to download the same podcast more than once--I'm inclined to believe many genre podcasts should actually rank among the biggest online genre magazines out there.

I'll leave the comments below open for a bit, so please let me know if you think my analysis is on the mark or not. And if any of the editors I've consulted wish to state their view on all this for the record, feel free to do so.

How to waste your life

A few thoughts on how to waste your life:

  • Forget that family and friends come first. Don't neglect yourself, or sacrifice everything about yourself trying to always please others. But likewise don't forget that we matter very little without those around us.
     
  • Create a routine like "wake up, go to work, come home," and never vary a thing. Yes, we all have to work. Yes, we all have routines like cleaning the house and taking the kids to school. But find some way of doing something new every day. You won't remember the routine when you 80. You will remember the new things you did.
     
  • Read the newspaper every day and scream about politics. Listen to talk radio or cable news and scream about politics. Read political blogs and write snarky ALL CAP comments screaming about politics. It is human nature to want to keep up on the latest news, just as we all love to share in neighborhood or work gossip. It's part of what makes us human. But if you are spending hours each day doing any of this, you're wasting your life. Try cutting your news intake back to once a week. 99.9% of what we call news is unimportant. I promise if something important happens, you'll hear about it.
     
  • Lose your temper over minor things in life. Yes, life is full of irritations, many of which are highlighted day after day in the news. We all have things we'd like to change about the world. But change doesn't happen by screaming and jumping around in response to the world's outrages. Change happens on an individual level in one-on-one interactions with people. Live the life you'd like to see in the world, and the world is one step closer to being your ideal.
     
  • Watch TV or play video games instead of taking the kids, your family, or your friends to the park, camping, walking, or some place where you can sit and talk. Amazing how I don't remember many details about all the video games and TV I did as a kid, but I remember the trips and fun stuff our family did. And don't mistake spending money with doing stuff. Life's best memories are free.
     
  • Obsess on anything. There is a difference to being dedicated to something, like fiction writing, and obsessing on it. I've never heard anyone say "Gee, I'm glad I obsessed on ____."
     
  • Believe you can be more productive through lack of sleep, neglecting your family for work, excessive cell phone use, spending all day on Twitter, or any other of today's modern addictions. Things which most people believe make them more productive actually have the opposite effect. For example, if you are talking with someone, don't stop the conversation to answer your cell phone. As Tolstoy pointed out in The Three Questions, the most important person is the one you're with and the most important time is now. Nothing can make you more productive than that.
     
  • Don't understand why you do what you do. Self awareness is the key to understanding life. If you don't understand your everyday reactions--why did that person make you angry; why did you yell at the kids--then you can't understand life's bigger mysteries.
     
  • Mistake material goods for self-fullfillment. This should be obvious, but isn't.
     
  • Don't be a part of something larger than yourself. It goes without saying that we're all better people when we take part in something greater than our own selfish day-to-day needs.
     
  • Don't set a goal and work your way toward it. If you want to write a novel, write a little bit each day. Even if your goal changes halfway there, you will accomplish more having a destination in mind than never knowing what your goals in life are.

Now, I'm sure someone will point out that there are many cliches in this list, and that much of what I've written is self-obvious. That far better people than myself have said all of this before. This is all true. But for people like me, who struggle over not losing our temper over some irritating item in the news, these are the points of life which we must remind ourselves of over and over.

This mystical, self-awareness post is now over. Please return to your regularly scheduled lives.

Interzone and Black Static stories eligible for the Nebula Awards!

As someone who regularly publishes in Interzone, and loves the other authors and stories they publish, it has been an irritation that Interzone stories weren't eligible for the Nebula Awards. I could understand this exclusion if the Nebula Awards focused solely on print publications from the United States. However, their rules state "Works first published in English on the Internet or in electronic formduring the calendar year shall be treated as though published in the United States." That has meant a story published in a minor British online magazine was eligible, while a story published in one of the top print SF magazines in the world wasn't.

However, the good news is that stories published in Interzone (and its sister publication Black Static, which I'm less familiar with) are now eligible. Since both are reprinted in an electronic edition through Fictionwise, their stories can now be nominated for the Nebulas. Aliette de Bodard checked and the SFWA Awards Rules Committee said yes, stories published in the Interzone and Black Static Fictionwise edition are eligible. This is great news!

It appears all 2009 issues of Interzone are eligible except for the current Nov./Dec. issue, which has yet to be uploaded to Fictionwise. This also means my novella "Sublimation Angels" (available at that link as a PDF download) is now eligible since the Sept./Oct. 2009 issue of Interzone is already available on Fictionwise.

I plan to soon add a few more selections to my 2009 Nebula nominations. And you can bet Interzone stories will figure in the mix!

Why is World Fantasy Convention 2010 avoiding the 21st Century?

There was an interesting Twitter conversation today between Jay Lake, Michael Curry, Elizabeth Bear, and others. Seems World Fantasy Convention 2010 not only hasn't gotten around to setting up an online payment system for registrations, they possibly don't intend to ever have one. According to this tweet, one MKKare spoke with a convention staffer and was told it's only those "decadent coastal elites who want online reg."

Okay, this is BS. I'm really excited WFC is coming next year to my current home of Columbus, Ohio. But I also agree with Jay Lake that "Given the essentially wired nature of our community, not supporting online reg is deeply counterproductive." Last week I mailed my check for the WFC 2010 membership, but it was irritating that I had to physically mail the registration. I'd assumed the issue was WFC 2010 needing more time to get their website up to speed. But if they don't intend to accept online registrations, that is a major issue which will definitely hurt turnout.

My suggestion: Fix this ASAP, and embrace the 21st century.

My nominations for the 2009 Nebula Awards

At 4:30 am this morning the SFWA sent out the voting instructions for the Nebula Awards. Basically, until February 15th SFWA members can nominated eligible stories online through the SFWA website. Here's a direct link to the ballot, but you'll have to log in to see it. You can also see the running tally here.

Because the nominating rules were recently changed, there is a bit of a holdover in that stories "which received at least five (5) recommendations under the previous Nebula Awards rules and were published after July 1, 2008, but didn't make the 2008 Preliminary Ballot get to have those nominations added to their total for this year." This means "The Political Prisoner" by Charles Coleman Finlay now has 6 nominations for best novella (see note below) and "I Remember the Future" by Michael A Burstein has 5 for best short story.

For anyone interested in what other stories and books might be up for the Nebula awards, check out the Nebula Suggested Reading. Many thanks to the unknown people who suggested my short story "When Thorns Are The Tips Of Trees" (available at that link as a PDF download; originally published in Interzone, but eligible for the Nebula by being reprinted in Apex Magazine, May 2009).

Since I have several months to make my nominations, I will likely add to the following list. But until then, here are my nominations. And yes, I think everyone should vote for these stories and novels.

Short story

Novelette

Novella

  • "The Political Prisoner" by Charles Coleman Finlay, F&SF Aug. 2008. Please note that I nominated this novella last year; under the rules, I can't nominate it again since last year's nomination still counts. But I still urge others to consider it. Update: It turns out this novella was on last year's final ballot, so isn't eligible for this year's. SFWA is correcting this error.

Novel

  • The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. See my review here.
  • Green by Jay Lake.
  • The Walls of the Universe by Paul Melko.

As you can see, I made no nominations for the Bradbury or Norton awards. I'll try to fix this in the coming months.