It is time for the SFX 2011 Blog Awards, where the world class Sci-Fi magazine staff have narrowed each category down to four or so nominations. They have six categories, but they have still left us some impossible decisions. Under Best Podcast, as an example, they have both Escape Pod and Doctor Who Podshock, both of which are insanely good, so how do you decide? The Fan Community choice is even harder; Gateworld or Whedonesque gets compounded with Gallifrey Base or The Trek BBS, and I want to vote for all of them! But you only get one vote per category, and trust me when I say the others are just as difficult to choose between.
The SFWA has announced this years Nebula Award Nominees, and a bunch of them are online now for your reading pleasure. The Awards themselves will be handed out at the Nebula Weekend event taking place from the 19th to the 22nd of May at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC.
One of the other awards given out at the event is The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and for me this one is an almost impossible choice. There is one TV episode on the list, Doctor Who’s Vincent and the Doctor, two live action movies, Inception and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and three animated feature length films, Despicable Me where the Minions owned the movie, How to Train Your Dragon from the Dreamworks team, and Toy Story 3 from Pixar. I don’t have a prayer of choosing the best one; I love them all!
I have half a dozen awards I consider worth the effort to be involved with, and one of them is the Nebula Awards. The members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. nominate and vote on the various entries into that competition and select the winners. Along with the Hugo Awards it is one of the best places to learn about new authors and the best new stories. The video equivalent for these two would be the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes; one chosen by the pros, one chosen by the fans. Each award system has something of value to contribute, so you want to pay attention to both.
The nominations just opened for this years Nebula’s, so if you are a member of the SFWA now is the time to push your candidates to the front of the stage. When I say just, I mean it opened yesterday, the 15th of November 2010, and will run until February 15th of 2011. It really doesn’t matter if anything nominated wins or not from a Fan perspective. If it was good enough or important enough to be nominated, it is worth your time to read it at least once, even if your conclusion is you do not feel it is worth recommending to anyone. From these beginnings cult classics are born.
The Hugo Award nominees for this year have been announced, and you can find the full list at Tor Dot Com. You can also find links there to read a number of the stories online, including Charles Stross’s Overtime, another tale of the Laundry that so far has only been published online.
If you haven’t put your votes in yet, you only have a bit over a day to put in for your favorites for the Locus Awards. If you are not familiar, Locus Magazine is the closest thing the science fiction publishing community has to a professional trade magazine. Voting closes April 1st. Just opened up is the initial set of nominations for the MTV Movie Awards, with their usual off the wall selection of categories. This is you chance to put in for some of the movies that got slighted at the other awards, like District 9, Star Trek 11, or even Avatar. Go out and make your voice heard! For those of you who are members of the SFWA, you have until midnight tonight PST to vote for the Nebulas this year.
There is a new Sci-Fi Party Line over at Fancy Fembot’s site for your listening pleasure, containing both spoilers and the undead. While I am only interested in Science Fiction/Fantasy/Anime movies, a lot of the best ones come from other countries. Which means I have to agree when the Euro-Indi-Festival Teams complain that the Academy Awards process unfairly limits foreign competition. The result being that most Americans have no clue that some award-caliber movies the rest of the world has seen and enjoyed even exist. As an American, I feel that I deserve better, and should be allowed to view and vote for (and against) these films. What is your opinion?