The good folk at this year’s Australian National Science Fiction Convention have been in touch to let me know that nominations are now open for the 2005 Ditmar Awards. All the relevant information can be found on their website. Nominations can be made by email and close on 1 March 2005.

I’ve had a quick look around on the net and I haven’t found a good list of Australian stuff published during 2004, but I do know there was a lot of it. Novels, collections, and anthologies by Australians were published in Australia, the US, the UK, and Europe. Stories published by Australians were published in just about every venue you could imagine, from high profile magazines, website and anthologies overseas, to small chapbooks locally. Search them out, and nominate! The quality of the ballot, and the result, is determined by the quality of participation. If you read, nominate and vote the awards will be better.

And with that in mind, I direct your attention to the “Best Professional Achievement” and “William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review” categories, which seem to roughly correspond to the editing work I’ve done on The Locus Awards (HarperCollins), Science Fiction: Best of 2003 (Simon & Schuster/ibooks), and Best Short Novels: 2004 (SF Book Club/Doubleday Direct), and the reviewing etc work I’ve done Locus. I hesitate to say if they’re worthy of nomination, but your consideration is appreciated.