The deadline for Hugo nominations looms ever closer: March 10, for those who have not been paying attention.

There are lots of categories I have not talked about yet. Nor will I, at least not this year. It’s a big field, and it is hard to keep up with all the good stuff being produced.

But I will make recommendations in one final category: fan writer.

In the past few years, I have been beating the drum for a number of websites and blogs and podcasts in the Best Fanzine category. The internet has replaced the traditional print fanzine as the heart of fanac, and I felt that it was past time that the best on-line fanzines got some recognition. Alas, that door has now closed, for the most part. Fans of a more traditional bent got together at the last two worldcons to change the rules, so these new forms of fan writing are no longer eligible. Podcasts can be nominated for a Hugo in a new “Best Fancast” category, but websites and blogs are just out of luck. The new rules make it certain that the Best Fanzine Hugo will continue to be contested by the same old style fanzines that have dominated it for the past few decades; new forms need not apply.

(It always astonishes me that a field that is purportedly all about the future, like science fiction, can be so absolutely hidebound and resistant to change where its own fannish traditions are concerned).

Anyway, that’s done, so I won’t be talking Best Fanzine anymore. Best Fan Writer is another issue, however. While websites and blogs and the like can no longer compete as fanzines, those who write for them are still eligible in the fan writer categories, and I would like to bring a few of them to your attention.

ADAM WHITEHEAD. Also known as “Wert.” Proprietor of THE WERTZONE, one of the very best of the fantasy review blogs. And that’s no small praise, as there are a number of good ones out there, among them PAT’S FANTASY HOTLIST, the BLOG OF THE FALLEN, DRIBBLE OF INK, STOMPING ON YETI, and THE SPECULATIVE SCOTSMAN. All worthy sites; you might want to take a look at those as well. But Wert’s coverage of the field and reviews are amongst the best. He almost made the ballot last year; this year, I hope he will. http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/

JOHN JOS. MILLER. Miller writes a regular column called Creature Features for the website CHEESE MAGNETS, where he is one of half a dozen rotating columnists. He most often concerns himself with old SF and fantasy and horror films, and his commentary is always amusing and often insightful. If you love genre film, even including bad movies, check it out. You can find his latest columns at http://www.cheese-magnet.com/ Would that all fan writing was as much fun.

ADAM ROBERTS. This one might be a bit controversial, as Roberts is actually a professional writer, a well-known British SF novelist… but as Fred Pohl won Best Fan Writer only a few years ago, there’s precedent for a pro winning for fan writing. Roberts did his on his blog PUNKADIDDLE http://punkadiddle.blogspot.com/ — which he closed down, seemingly for good, in June 2012. He is still eligible on the basis of the first half of the year, however. Roberts is a very snarky reviewer and commentator (which seems to be a British tradition), and shows no mercy to books and writers he dislikes (and I get the impression that he’s not all that impressed with own stuff, for what it’s worth)… but he’s always entertaining, and his series of columns on the top-selling books of all time was impressive and engrossing. Well worth a nomination, I think. (Though he probably holds the Hugos in disdain, as he does so much else).

So there you have it. My own choices for Best Fan Writer. All of whom have done great work on-line, none of whom has ever been given any Hugo recognition previously.

Whoever you choose to nominate, in any of these categories, please NOMINATE.

The nominating ballot can be found here: http://www.lonestarcon3.org/hugo-awards/

You have until March 10.

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Just six days left to make your Hugo nominations. Nominations close on March 10.

To continue with my own thoughts and recommendations… let’s talk about Best Professional Artist.

This is one of the toughest categories, I think. There are so many incredible artists working in our field at present, it is very difficult to winnow the list down to just five.

Let me start, once again, with the same shocked revelation I make every single damned year. Did you know that neither ALAN LEE nor JOHN HOWE has ever won a Hugo? In fact, I don’t believe either one has ever even been nominated. To my mind, that’s outrageous. These are two of the most important, influential, and talented fantasy artists ever to lift up a paintbrush, whose influence in the field has been enormous. It is long past time they got some recognition.

JOHN PICACIO won last year’s Hugo, after umpty-ump years of being a bridesmaid. It was great to see John standing up there clutching a Hugo at long last, and his victory was certainly well deserved. He just keeps getting better and better. I like to think that his amazing work on the 2012 Ice & Fire calendar helped finally put him over the top. This year John did his own calendar, as well as some stunning covers. Check out his website at http://picacio.blogspot.com/ for a review of his body of work for 2012. Some amazing stuff there. Picacio definitely deserves another nomination, in my opinion.

This year’s Ice & Fire calendar, the one for 2013, was illustrated by MARC SIMONETTI. Another astonishing artist, and one who had never been nominated for a Hugo. Time he was, I think. In addition to the calendar, Marc has also done several covers for the French editions of my novels from J’ai Lu, covers that were then reused in Brazil, and by various other publishers around the world. It was those covers that first drew him to my attention. Here’s one:

Then, of course, there’s MICHAEL KOMARCK. My admiration for his work is well known. Komarck did the very first Ice & Fire calendar back in 2009, the ill-fated Dabel Brothers calendar; he has also done some gorgeous Ice & Fire artwork for Fantasy Flight Games and Green Ronin, and of late has established himself as the definitive Wild Cards artist with his covers for Tor’s editions of the WC books, both new and old.

Komarck FINALLY got his first Hugo nomination last year, at Chicon. Of course, he went on to lose to Picacio in the final balloting. I plan on nominating him once again. You can see a lot more of his work at his own website: http://www.komarckart.com/

And that’s five nominees right there: Alan Lee, John Howe, John Picacio, Marc Simonetti, Michael Komarck. Only five places on the ballot. Alas, there are a lot more than five great artists working in SF and fantasy right now. Among them are MARC FISHMAN and TOM KIDD, two more terrific talents. I’ve had the privilege of working with both recently. Fishman illustrated the Subterranean Press limited edition of A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, Kidd their limited of DYING OF THE LIGHT. We need more places on the Hugo ballot, I think (no, not really, just trying to make a point). Anyway, take a look at their stuff as well. I believe Tom Kidd has been nominated in the past, though he has never won a Hugo. Fishman has never even made the ballot. They are both worthy of consideration.

This is a hard one, as I said. There’s no wrong answer here. The main thing, I think, is to consider ALL the great work being done in the field, instead of just rounding up the usual suspects. All too many times in the past, the ballot for Best Professional Artist has consisted of the same five names, as if no one else was worthy of the award. Nothing could be further than the truth.

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The first of March already… damn, where does the time go?

Only thirty-one days till the third season debut of GAME OF THRONES on HBO.

And only TEN days till Hugo nominations close! So let me make a few more recommendations for your consideration, boys and gals. Resuming with “the Big One,” the Hugo for Best Novel.

I cannot claim any great breath of knowledge of this year’s top contenders. While I read constantly and voraciously, my bookshelves contain all sorts of things, not just the current year’s SF and fantasy. Looking back, now that Hugo time is at hand, I find I read a lot of history and historical fiction last year, some non-fiction, a number of mysteries, and a bunch of older books, published in 2011 or 2010 or 1999 or 1953 or whenever. None of which are eligible for Hugos. I have also dipped into (but not always finished) a bunch of bound gallerys and ARCs of as-yet-unpublished novels that may be eligible for awards next year, but not this year.

Which is not to say that I did not read anything in the field this year. I did, and some of what I read I liked a lot.

Last year I recommended the first book of James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series, LEVIATHAN WAKES… and a lot of people agreed, since LEVIATHAN was nominated for a Hugo (to the evident annoyance of one prominent writer who was not) and actually finished third in the final voting, two places ahead of my own A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, which fact Ty does not hesitate to bring to my attention on a regular basis. ((“James S.A. Corey,” of course, is actually the pseudonym of my assistant Ty Franck writing in collaboration with my friend Daniel Abraham).

Well, in 2012 the second volume of the Expanse series, CALIBAN’S WAR, was published. And far from being a victim of sophomore slump, that bastard Jimmy Corey seems to have done it again. CALIBAN’S WAR is even better than LEVIATHAN WAKES. It’s old-fashioned space opera, the kind of SF that I cut my teeth on, a real page-turner set in a vividly imagined solar system, squarely in the tradition of Heinlein and Asimov and Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (lacking only Pinto Vortando), superlatively written. Books like this were what made me an SF fan to begin with. CALIBAN’S WAR was the best pure SF I read in 2012, and I will be nominating it for the Hugo.

I read more fantasy than SF last year. Understandably, as the publishers send me just about every epic fantasy they are putting out for blurbs. This is a golden age for fantasy, and there’s some great work being done. 2012 was no exception. I enjoyed Saladin Ahmed’s THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON, an old-fashioned sword-and-sorcery adventure with an Arabian Knights flavor, rather than the usual “medieval Europe” setting. There was a new Joe Abercrombie as well, and though I didn’t feel RED COUNTRY quite measured up to last year’s THE HEROES, Abercrombie is always worth reading. No new Rothfuss last year, though, and nothing by Scott Lynch… or that Martin guy, for that matter.

My favorite fantasy from 2012, all in all, was the second volume of Daniel Abraham’s Dragon’s Path series, this one entitled THE KING’S BLOOD. Like Jimmy Corey, Abraham just keeps getting better and better. It has been said, and truly, that Dragon’s Path is perhaps not so innovative as Daniel’s first fantasy series, the Long Price Quartet… but innovation is not the only value worth consideration while weighing a work of art. The world of Dragon’s Path is considerably larger, older, and more colorful than that of Long Price, the characters are just as well drawn, the prose as rich and evocative, the plotting full of devious and delightful twists and turns. Abraham belongs in the first rank of today’s fantastists, I think, right up there with Abercrombie, Lynch, Rothfuss, Robin Hobb, and the like. And THE KING’S BLOOD deserves a Hugo nomination.

Those are my favorite SF and fantasy novels from last year. What were yours?

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LoneStarCon 3, this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, has opened Hugo nominations for 2012.

The nominating ballot can be found here: http://www.lonestarcon3.org/hugo-awards/

You do need to be a member to nominate. A member (attending or supporting) of LoneStarCon, this year’s worldcon, or Chicon 8, the 2012 worldcon in Chicago, OR LonCon, the 2014 worldcon in London. Any one of the three will do. All works first published or broadcast in 2012 are eligible. Nominations close on March 10.

What works you choose to nominate is, of course, entirely up to you, but as in past years, I would like to use my bully pulpit here to bring some worthy choices to your attention. In some categories I have eligible works of my own, so I will not pretend to be a disinterested party in those cases. In other categories, my recommendations are just that — shout outs for books, stories, and writers I’ve enjoyed during the past year.

I am going to start with the grab-bag category of “Best Related Book” this time around. This category is always an odd one, taking in all the stuff that does not fit comfortably in the other categories. Non-fiction of various sorts, mostly; art books, collections of critical essays, biographies and autobiographies, and other, stranger stuff. Not normally a category in which I have a horse in the race… but this year two of the possible candidates are books to which I contributed introductions, and a third was about my work.

Brian Cogman’s INSIDE HBO’S GAME OF THRONES is a “making of” book, of the sort generated by every major feature film and television show these days… but I happen to think Brian went way beyond the usual puffery, and produced a really terrific volume. (And yes, there’s an intro by me). Brian has been part of the HBO series since the start (he was the first person hired by David and Dan when they got the green light), giving him much greater insight into all the behind-the-scenes stuff than most “making of” writers, who are more commonly journalists brought in on a work-made-for-hire basis. INSIDE HBO’S GAME OF THRONES is a gorgeous volume too, and the boxed limited edition set with all its extras is truly fantastic, a real treat for the collector.

There were a number of books about A GAME OF THRONES (the HBO series) and A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE (the books) published last year, some as actual print volumes, others as ebooks. The quality of the criticism and essays contained therein varied greatly, to be sure. I haven’t seen all of these, by any means, and haven’t read all of those I did see (some publishers send me copies, some don’t). Of the critical books I did chance upon, however, the one that impressed me most was James Lowder’s BEYOND THE WALL.

As the subject of these essays, I will be the first to admit that I have a skewed perspective here. Nonetheless, I think Lowder put together a strong, balanced, and diverse collection of essays, and the quality of writing here was distinctly higher than in some similar volumes. I think I would have enjoyed reading this one even if it WASN’T all about me myself and I. Read it for yourself, and decide.

A more unusual… but equally worthy contender… for a nomination this year is another Ice & Fire spinoff: A FEAST OF ICE AND FIRE, the incredible Westerosi cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sarianne Lehrer. Great recipes, and a great looking book, FEAST grew out of their blog, the Inn at the Crossroads. And yes, this is another one to which I contributed an introduction. Seemed only fair, since Chelsea and Sarianne and their minions plied me with lemon cakes all through my DANCE WITH DRAGONS tour. A good read, and some yummy eating… and so far as I know, there has never been a cookbook nominated for a Hugo Award before. Why not make this one the first?

So… when making your nominations for Best Related Book, do consider these three. And whether you nominate them or not, do NOMINATE. You have until March 10.

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LoneStarCon 3, this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, has opened Hugo nominations for 2012.

The nominating ballot can be found here:

http://www.lonestarcon3.org/hugo-awards/

You do need to be a member to nominate. A member (attending or supporting) of LoneStarCon, this year’s worldcon, or Chicon 8, the 2012 worldcon in Chicago, OR LonCon, the 2014 worldcon in London. Any one of the three will do.
All works first published or broadcast in 2012 are eligible.

The Hugo is the oldest award in our genre, the most prestigious, and the most important. It is a fan award. No juries. The readers choose the finalists, and the readers pick the winners. There will be five (sometimes six, in the event of a tie) nominees in each category.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again here: nominations are the most important part of the Hugo process. Hundreds of people cast Hugo ballots, but far fewer ever bother to nominate. You cannot win unless you are on the ballot, and sometimes the difference between being a finalist and an also-ran is a single nomination. Yes, even in the big categories, like Best Novel (last year one single vote was the difference between a novel that made the ballot and one that did not) and Best Dramatic Presentation. And in the less popular categories, hell, people have been known to make the Hugo ballot with twenty votes.

So NOMINATE. You have until March 10.

As to what you should nominate… well, that’s your choice, of course. Right now, all over Ye Olde InterWeb, people are making their recommendations and writers are reminding the world about their own eligible works. I’ll do the same, as I have in past years. But not in this post. Watch this space for my own favorites.

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Just a reminder…

Nominations for this year’s Hugo awards are due by MARCH 11.

To nominate, you must be a member of last year’s worldcon (Renovation), this year’s worldcon (Chicon 7), or next year’s worldcon (LoneStarCon). Not all three; membership is any one of those is sufficient for nominating.

The nominating ballot can be found at:

https://chicon.org/hugo/nominate.php

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Today is the LAST DAY to earn the right to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards by joining either Chicon 7 (this year’s worldcon) or LoneStarCon (next year’s). Assuming you are not already a member.

You do not actually need to submit your ballot till March, but you need to JOIN today.

So sign up now and nominate, or forfeit forever your right to grouse and whine about the lousy list of nominees!

Just sayin’

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