This is going to be an experiment in live reporting. I’m sitting in the banquet hall at the World Fantasy Convention (at 3PM EST, the banquet has just ended, and they’re about to start handing out the World Fantasy Awards (why they’re having an awards banquet on Sunday afternoon is beyond me). We listed all the nominees in this article. I’ll be adding the winners to this article as they’re announced, and refreshing the page each time, so if you’re reading along at home, hit refresh every now and again to keep up with me. Let’s see if it works…
Convention chairman Joe Berlant just introduced Master of Ceremonies Guy Gavriel Kay, whose opening remarks are as cultured and amusing as he always is.
Kay read the list of some of those in the field who’ve died in the past year, and referred the audience to the full list printed in the program book. But he spoke at some length about the recent death of Robert Jordan (see our obituary). His talk ranged from Stephen King’s recent comments about the death of short fiction to Jordan’s place in the field (having never been nominated for any awards to writing massively best-selling books) and discussed the dichotomy between popular fiction, acknowledged, award-winning fiction, and that Jordan’s presence in the field, though perhaps unrecognized, was very important.
Now he’s creating the first World Fantasy Fairy Tale, having asked the audience to take a water glass and a spoon each. He’s telling a story, uses the nominees’ names, requesting the audience to “ding” their glasses when each name appears, to much laugher and occasional improper dinging. Some of the names require stretching the language a bit, such as the sofa Kushners, and a handful of Picacio nuts. I had not thought the Windling could sweep Datlow. It’s getting worse, and I can’t do it justice. If you’re unlucky, perhaps he’ll publish it somewhere (or we’ll ask him to run it on SFScope). Having typed that, Kay said “and then the wolf spoke&#8230” and nominee Gary K. Wolfe (Locus book reviewer) came forward to read his review of Kay’s story right now.
Following the review, Kay thanked the audience for our attention. Then he introduced Jo Fletcher and Roger Turner from the Award’s administration.
Turner introduced Fletcher (who is standing next to him), David Hartwell, John Douglas, and Peter Pautz, who is not present.
Fletcher thanked the judges, remarking on the difficulty of the job. The judges are: Gavin Grant, Ed Greenwood, Jeremy Lassen, Jeff Mariotte, and Carsten Polzin.
Turner had all of this year’s nominees stand for a round of applause, followed by all past nominees.
First award: Special Award: Non-Professional: winner is Gary K. Wolfe (for reviews and criticism in Locus and elsewhere). Wolfe thanked the staff of Locus, for which he’s been reviewing for nearly twenty years.
Special Award: Professional: winner is Ellen Asher (for her work at the Science Fiction Book Club). Asher thanked Andy Wheeler, who worked with her for so long, and Jay Franco who handled the comic and media books, as well as the support staff who aren’t present: Joyce Wiley, Toby Schwartz and Nick Seco (please excuse misspellings or mishearings). “Thank you all very much. I am deeply honored.”
Artist: Shaun Tan. He started by saying “I’m really glad I came from Melbourne [Australia] now… I’d like to dedicate this award to the Australian contingent, and in particular Jonathan Stroud.”
Collection: Map of Dreams by M. Rickert (Golden Gryphon). She is rather teary, and thanks Gordon Van Gelder for finding her in his slush pile, Golden Gryphon and Gary Turner and Marty Halperin (who helped edit the collection). “I used to live in Saratoga Springs and dreamed of being a writer. It’s such a wonderful circle to be back here and celebrated.”
Anthology: :Salon Fantastique edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (Thunder’s Mouth). Datlow thanks judges, authors, John Oakes who bought it for the now-defunt Thunder’s Mouth, and their agent Merrilee Heifetz. Windling, in absentia (Datlow read her remarks), thanked the same, as well as her other book agent (missed the name) and Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner “for all they’ve done for the fantasy genre.”
Short Fiction: “Journey Into the Kingdom” by M. Rickert (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 2006). “I aspire to measure up to the community that I’m a part of. Thank you so much.”
Novella: “Botch Town” by Jeffrey Ford (The Empire of Ice Cream, Golden Gryphon). “I’d written part of the story and got stuck so I was going to junk it. Three people told me to keep going, Kelly Link, my editor Jennifer Brel, and my wife, Lynn. So women give good advice. Lynn’s been telling me that for thirty years; today I see the beauty of it.”
Novel: Soldier of Sidon by Gene Wolfe (Tor). “If I had expected to win this, I would have had something to say. After the second book, I had gentle hints not to do a third one, and demands from the readers to do a third. And it’s starting again. Last night at our 51st anniversary dinner, [missed the name] was demanding that I do a fourth one. Thank you [missing name.]”
The Life Achievement award winners, Betty Ballantine and Diana Wynne Jones, were announced previously. Turner first introduced Betty Ballantine, remarking on his early discovery of fantasy through the Ballantine Books’s edition of The Lord of the Rings and the long history of Ballantine Books and its impact on the genre.
Ballantine: “I guess life has apexes and this is sure as hell one of them… I need to thank you people for a life of working with some of the most intelligent readers in the world… You [readers] are people who use your minds, and I have had more fun and tsouris and [missed words] because of you… I’ve spoken this weekend with a few teachers who are very worried that the kids are not learning to read, so I have a mission for you (because you’re all much younger than I am): teach some child to read, and then make sure that that child teaches another to read, because then all of the writers will have readers… so, my friends, I thank you, and I salute you, because the future is in your hands. Live long, and prosper.”
Fletcher introduced Diana Wynne Jones’ award, saying “Many years ago I picked up a quirky little fantasy by a fantasy author I’d never heard of before. Since then, I’ve read all of her work, and had the good fortune to get to know her. I’ve then also had the good fortune to publish her. And the tragedy is that Diana Wynne Jones has only recently become the best-seller she should have been for a long time. She is unable to be with us today because she’s not in the best of health, but she sent her emissary [editor] Sharyn November to read her small, but perfectly formed missive.”
November noted that it isn’t “small,” but is instead four and a half pages, “but I figured she’s Diana Wynne Jones, and she can say whatever the hell she wants to.” Jones’ speech is wonderful, but entirely too long to quote or transcribe her. I’ll see what I can do to get a copy published here in the next day or three. Apologies for that.
And so there we have it: a live posting of the World Fantasy Awards as they happened. Hope you enjoyed it more than I did (this is a rather uncomfortable chair on which to sit and type on a laptop held on my lap).
Following Jones’s speech, as read by November, Fletcher and Turner returned, and Turner remarked “Gee, we’re almost done,” and then turned to podium back to Guy Gavriel Kay, who led a round of applause for Fletcher and Turner. Kay then reminded us that Calgary will host next year’s World Fantasy Con, followed by San Jose in 2009, and Columbus, Ohio, in 2010.
End of report. It’s 4:15PM EST. Thanks for reading.