The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards Foundation announced the winner of this year’s Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Novel at Gaylaxicon in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this month. This year’s winner is Vellum: The Book of All Hours by Hal Duncan (published by Del Rey Books). The Foundation said of the winner: “This complex and highly original novel combined traditional fantasy elements with myth, theology, linguistics, and advanced technology. It incorporates deep and thoughtful emotional content, explorations of sexuality and strikingly complex relationships.”
This report was delayed due to some confusion over the other categories. Only the novel award was announced this month. The awards for “Short Fiction” and “Other Work” will be announced in December 2007.
The Awards were created in 1999 by The Gaylactic Network, “the premiere organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) fans of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, to honor works in SF/F/H that deal positively with gay characters, themes and issues.” The Awards Foundation also works on education and raising awareness of GLBT content in SF/F/H.
The other novels on the judges’ short list this year were:
Carnival by Elizabeth Bear (Bantam Spectra)
The Growing by Susanne Beck & Okasha Skat’si (P.D. Publishing)
Dragon’s Teeth by James Hetley (Ace)
Smoke and Ashes by Tanya Huff (DAW)
The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner (Bantam Spectra)
The Virtu by Sarah Monette (Ace)
Spin Control by Chris Moriarty (Bantam Spectra)
Snow by Wheeler Scott (Torquere Press)
According to the judges, “these recommended works show remarkable variety in content, tone, publishing house size, author experience, and genre.”
Next year’s awards will be presented at Gaylaxicon 2008 in Washington, DC, 10-13 October 2008. For more information about the Awards, or to nominate for next year’s awards, see www.spectrumawards.org.