Just back from Readercon, and I’ll have a full review later, but for now, the awards.
Readercon is now the home of three separate awards: the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA)’s Rhysling Awards, and the newly created Shirley Jackson Awards.
The Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award is given to “a science fiction or fantasy writer whose work displays unusual originality,ebodies the spirit of Cordwainer Smith’s fiction, and deserves renewed attention or ‘Rediscovery’.” The judges this year were Martin Harry Greenberg, Barry Malzberg, Mike Resnick, and Robert J. Sawyer. This year’s honoree, announced directly before the Friday night “Meet the Pros(e) Party,” is Stanley G. Weinbaum, whose first story, “A Martian Odyssey”, Malzberg called “one of the most influential sf stories.” Weinbaum was born 4 April 1902 and died of lung cancer on 14 Decemberr 1935. That first story was published in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories. His brief career was marked by several impressive stories (with more following his untimely death). He is also credited with the story of the 1957 film She Devil.
Saturday afternoon, the SFPA announced the winners of the 2008 Rhysling awards for science fiction poetry, as well as the recipient of the 2008 grand master award. The winner in the long poem category is “The Seven Devils of Central California” by Catherynne M. Valente. Second place went to “In Deepspace Shadows” by Kendall Evans, and third place to “The Engineer” by Bryan Dietrich. In the short poem category, “Eating Light” by F.J. Bergmann is the winner. Second place goes to “Ice Palace” by Margaret Atwood, and third place to “The Oracle on River Street” by Rachel Swirsky. The SFPA also named Ray Bradbury its Grand Master. (For more on the nominees, see our earlier article.)
Finally, Sunday afternoon, the newly constituted Shirley Jackson Awards—honoring the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic—were handed out. We detailed the nominees in this article. The winners, voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics (which included F. Brett Cox, John Langan, Sarah Langan, and Paul G. Tremblay), with input from a Board of Advisors (including Bill Congreve, Ellen Datlow, Jack M. Haringa, S.T. Joshi, Mike O’Driscoll, Stewart O’Nan, and Ann VanderMeer), are:
Novel: Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand
Novella: “Vacancy” by Lucius Shepard
Novelette: “The Janus Tree” by Glen Hirshberg
Short Story: “The Monsters of Heaven” by Nathan Ballingrud
Collection: The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron
Anthology: Inferno by Ellen Datlow