What the hell is a fanzine, you ask? It’s an amateur magazine, produced by and for fans, and once upon a time fanzines were the center of science fiction fandom. In those days they were produced on mimeographs, xerox machines, or (shudder) ditto, obtainable for “sticky quarters” or “the usual,” which usually meant you sent your own fanzine in trade or wrote a LOC. (That’s “letter of comment,” folks). The “Best Fanzine” award is one of the oldest and most traditional of the Hugos.

The category is still around, of course, and some traditional fanzines still survive, but they are no longer quite as central to the subculture as they once were, and the Best Fanzine category doesn’t seem to draw many nominations these days. It seems to me, though, that there is a new center springing up right before our eyes here on the internet. Webzines, blogs, and online journals and review sites are proliferating right and left, and there are probably as many of them around as there were mimeo and ditto’d zines in their heydey.

These are the fanzines of the 21st century, and I think it is time we recognized the best of them in the Best Fanzine category of the Hugos. It doesn’t have to be done on a mimeo to be a fanzine, boys and girls.

Last year I suggested that I HOPE I DIDN’T JUST GIVE AWAY THE ENDING and PAT’S FANTASY HOTLIST were both worthy of Hugo consideration. Stego didn’t publish enough new material in 2007 to warrant a nomination this time around… but Pat St. Denis certainly did. PAT’S FANTASY HOTLIST is a must-read site, I think, a constant stream of reviews, commentary, interviews, contests, giveaways, and discussion, updated at least weekly and often daily. True, true, this guy Pat is a Dallas Cowboys fan, but his site is good enough that I’ll even give him a pass on that.

If you haven’t seen the Hotlist, check it out at http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/ Scroll back through the Archives, and you’ll be reading for days.

Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist will be first on my list of Best Fanzine nominations this year.

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The John W. Campbell Award is presented annually along with the Hugos. It’s a “new writer” award, given to the best new writer to enter the field during the previous two years. As such, it is often (though not always) the first recognition a newcomer to our genre ever receives. It’s a great boost to a budding career, and something that winners and nominees both will long treasure. (You never forget your first time).

All that was certainly true for me. I published my first story in 1971, which meant that I was eligible for the very first Campbell Award when it was presented at Torcon 2 in 1973. I lost (to Jerry Pournelle), but the nomination was a huge thrill for me, and helped encourage me in those dark days that all young writers battle through.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that the Campbell Award is important, and I urge everyone reading this to be sure and nominate their own favorite new writers. The Campbell is governed by the same rules as the Hugos, so you can nominate online at the Denvention website whose URL I gave below.

What’s that you say? You read new writers, but you don’t keep track of when they first published, so you’re not sure who is eligible for the award and who’s not?

Fortunately, there’s an easy fix. Just go to http://www.writertopia.com/awards/campbell and you’ll find a whole website devoted to keeping track of new writers and Campbell eligibles. Check it out, and I’m sure you’ll find some writers you’ve enjoyed… and others that you may not have heard of yet who you need to check out.

Then read, nominate, vote.

We have an especially strong crop of new young fantasists coming up of late, including Joe Abercrombie, David Anthony Durham, and Scott Lynch (who was a Campbell Award finalist last year, losing to Naomi Novik, but is eligible again this year). The Campbell does not usually draw nearly the number of nominations the major Hugos do, and sometimes only one or two votes decide who gets on the ballot and who doesn’t… so if you don’t nominate and your personal favorite misses the cut, you’ll have only yourself to blame.

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Just a reminder — less than a week remains to get in your Hugo nominations for this year.

You need to be a supporting or attending member of either the forthcoming worldcon, Denvention 3, or the past one, Nippon 2007, to nominate. If you’re not a member, however, it is easy enough to join, and supporting memberships — for those who can’t make the con — are cheap enough.

Nominations can be made online at Denvention’s website at

http://www.denvention.org/hugos/index.php

Nominations must be in by SATURDAY, MARCH 1 to be counted.

These days there are dozens of different awards being given for SF, fantasy, and horror, and all of them are nice enough, to be sure, but the Hugo is the oldest and far and away the most important. This is the one given by the READERS, not by some hand-picked jury, and the more people who participate in the process, the better. Not enough people vote for the Hugos, sadly, and far fewer bother to nominate… which is a shame.

So don’t miss your chance to take part. Go ye forth, nominate, vote.

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OK, there’s the Dark Sword poll below.

I’ve never done a poll on Live Journal before, so let’s hope I haven’t screwed it up.

The top four finishers will be part of Dark Sword’s second wave of figures, sculpted by the incomparable Tom Meier.

Please… if you have no interest in miniatures, do not vote. This is not a “who is your favorite character?” poll. This is a “which miniature do you want?” poll.

I’m looking forward to seeing how it comes out.

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Subterranean Press is now shipping its deluxe limited editions of both FEVRE DREAM and HUNTER’S RUN, for those who love fine books. These are gorgeous editions, and extensively illustrated. Justin Sweet did the art of FEVRE DREAM, Bob Eggleton on HUNTER’S RUN. Yum yum.

We will be running a more extensive story about this on my website news page, but I wanted to drop a quick mention here in case any of you want to hop over to Subterranean and snag a copy before they’re all gone. Bill Schafer tells me that only 75 copies remain unsold of the FEVRE DREAM print run, so if you want one, don’t hesitate too long.

(I love illustrated books. All books should be illustrated).

The Subpress site is at http://www.subterraneanpress.com/

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Just wanted to let everyone know that we will be closing the miniatures balloting on Tuesday. That will be one full week, enough time for everyone to vote.

Barring a flood of new votes in the last few days, it looks as though the winners will be Tyrion (overwhelmingly), Robb, Brienne, and the Red Viper. Prince Oberyn leads the current fifth-place candidate, Asha Greyjoy, by over a hundred votes, and the margin is widening.

I’ve never done one of these before, and I must say, I am finding the results fascinating. So are my friends at Dark Sword. Interestingly enough, on Dark Sword’s other main lines — the ranges based on the artwork of Larry Elmore and Keith Parkinson — the hot babes in chainmail bikinis regularly outsell all other miniatures. No woman in Westeros would be caught dead in a chainmail bikini, of course (well, actually, if a real woman warrior ever wore one of these things, she WOULD be found dead, and very quickly), but we still made sure to include several hot babes in our own list of choices.

Well, Asha Greyjoy is doing well enough, and will finish just out of the money, looks like… but Shae and Arianne Martell are both bringing up the rear, running behind even Prince Joffrey at this juncture. Instead my readers want a dwarf, a bisexual Dornishman, and the homeliest woman in the Seven Kingdoms. Okay.

So what does that mean? Are my readers less horny than Elmore and Parkinson fans? Do they have something against scantily clad women? Is it my large female readership weighing in against sexist stereotypes in fantasy? Is it more just a reflection on the specific characters (Asha’s strong showing would suggest that)?

Interesting to speculate, anyway…

The characters who don’t make the cut this time will have another shot somewhere down the line, have no fear. So long as you guys keep buying these, Dark Sword will keep making more, and we hope to get to everyone eventually.

My thanks to all of you who voted. The turnout has been astonishing.

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