The nominees have been announced for the UK’s National Television Awards, and I am happy to report they include Ashes to Ashes, Deamons, Doctor Who, Primeval, and Torchwood entries among them. All five shows are up against each other in the Best Drama category. John Barrowman, Philip Glenister, Eve Myles, Hannah Spearritt, and David Tennant are vying for the Best Drama Performance spot. There are many more categories, I need to go through the list in detail. But I had to relay this bit as well; the creater of Blackadder will be writting a Doctor Who episode in which a historic figure battles a monster. Keeping my fingers crossed that the figure is Blackadder himself!
Congrats to 365 Days of Astronomy for taking home a Parsec Award, handed out for excellence in science fiction podcasts (see their award here). If it seems a bit strange that an astronomy podcast won this award, don’t panic (and keep your towel handy), because it was for the category Best “Infotainment” Cast, things that entertain as they educate. As part of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy project, 365 Days certainly does that. If you or your kids have an interest in astronomy, be sure to look into the Galileoscope, a low-cost replica of Galileo’s original telescope that you can build and use for your own. There were a lot of other winners, including PseudoPod for Best Speculative Fiction Magazine or Anthology Podcast, the ScapeCast for Best Speculative Fiction Fan Podcast, Stranger Things for Best Speculative Fiction Video Podcast, Cool Shite on the Tube for Best Speculative Fiction News Podcast, and The FuMP for Best Speculative Fiction Music Podcast. There are a lot of other categories, you can catch the latest roundup of them at Wander Radio, or download the full report here. And then there are the Masquerade Winners for 2009, another group you should be familiar with. And my favorite author post from DragonCon came here by way of Suvudu, with the correct attitude!
I read this a while ago and just kept forgetting to mention it here, but Paste magazine has an excellent article on the experimental animation of Tezuka Osamu, including a number of the videos themselves embedded in the story. Best known in North America as the creator of Astro Boy, Tezuka pretty much invented Japanese Anime in its modern form, as well as authoring an amazing number of Manga titles. The new Astro Boy Movie will be hitting theaters in October, while last February was Tezuka’s 80th birthday and the NHK’s 20th anniversary of their satellite service. In honor of that, the NHK is running specials from February until October about Tezuka Osamu’s contributions to Manga, Anime, and Japanese popular culture (you do have to scroll down a bit to get to the entry about it). In April of this year the 13th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize awards were handed out, the winners being those Manga and Artists deemed the best in Japan. Here is his 1962 experimental piece, “Male”…
For a take on the Hugos from a Biology perspective, you might enjoy these three from Peggy… Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear, Exhalation by Ted Chiang, and Erdmann Nexus by Nancy Kress. Three more stories I need to hunt down and read.
My favorite moment during last night’s awards presentation (which I had to watch online through Cheryl Morgans Live coverage, not being there) was when they announced Best Fan Writer goes to Cheryl Morgan and her response: #*%! I won a Hugo!!!… LOL. David Anthony Durham won the Campbell Award for best new writer. Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form was won by Wall-E, while Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form went to Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog. Winner for Best Novel was The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, and Neil was the presenter for Our brand new category, Best Graphic Story: won by Girl Genius, Kaja and Phil Foglio. Other winners included Ellen Datlow, David G Hartwell, Weird Tales, John Scalzi, Ted Chiang, Elizabeth Bear, Nancy Kress, and several others. I find this rather amazing, because for the first time ever every one of my picks from the nominations were actually the winners. Congratulations to everyone, and do you know where your towel is?
More awards have already been handed out at Worldcon, according to the 5th AnticipationSF Newsletter. The Aurora Awards have been handed out, and while I have read many of the nominated works, I don’t know a single one of the winners; which means I have a lot of excellent new science fiction to add to my To Be Read list. Also handed out were this years Sidewise Awards for Alternate History, and congratulations to Chris Roberson for his win with The Dragon’s 9 Sons, a very impressive book in a well built new universe; he also has a lack of speech statement about the award. Again, I am adding every book and story nominated that I haven’t already read to my list, and you might want to do the same. They also gave the results of the Ningen-Senkan Sensuikan (aka human battleship) contest, and I was very pleased to see Girl Genius listed under the Webcomics You Should Be Reading header, since it is my all-time favorite. And again, I will be checking out everything listed that I am not already familiar with, since that is one of the most important functions of Worldcon; making us all aware of what our peers think is worth some interest.