It occurred to me that I haven’t seen the Ditmar noms in any single, easy-accessible, html kind of format, so herewith…

Short Story

• Deborah Biancotti: Number 3 Raw Place, Agog! Smashing Stories
• Rjurik Davidson: The Interminable Suffering of Mysterious Mr Wu, Aurealis #33
• Margo Lanagan: Singing My Sister Down, Black Juice
• Ben Peek: R, Agog! Smashing Stories

Novella or Novelette

• Simon Brown: Water Babies, Agog! Smashing Stories
• Stephen Dedman: The Whole of the Law, ASIM 13
• Paul Haines: The Last Days of Kali Yuga, NFG Magazine, Volume 2 Issue 4, August 2004
• Richard Harland: Catabolic Magic, Aurealis #32
• Cat Sparks: Home by the Sea, Orb #6, July

Novel

• Richard Harland: The Black Crusade
• Maxine McArthur: Less than Human
• Sean Williams: The Crooked Letter

Collected Works

• Agog! Smashing Stories: ed. Cat Sparks
• Black Juice: Margo Lanagan.
• Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine: ed. Lyn Triffitt, Edwina Harvey, Andrew Finch, Zara Baxter, Robbie Matthews & Tehani Croft
• Orb 6: ed. Sarah Endacott
• Encounters: ed. Donna Hanson and Maxine McArthur, CSFG Publishing

Pro Artwork

• Les Petersen: cover of ASIM 12
• Kerri Valkova: cover of The Black Crusade, Chimaera Publications
• Cat Sparks: cover of Agog! Smashing Stories
• Les Petersen: cover of Encounters
• Les Petersen: cover and internal ASIM 16

Fan Art

• Sarah Xu

William Atheling Jnr Award for Criticism or Review

• Robert Hood: review of Weight of Water at Hood Reviews, asking “is this film a ghost story?”
• Jason Nahrung: Why are publishers afraid of horror, BAM, Courier Mail, 20 March 2004
• Ben Peek: review of Haruki Murakami’s work in the Urban Sprawl Project

Pro Achievement

• The Clarion South Team: negotiating with the US Clarion people, then promoting and establishing Clarion South which gives emerging writer the chance to work with the best in the business.
• Cat Sparks: editing and writing including winning third place in the writers of the future award
• Margo Lanagan: for Black Juice
• Maloney, Geoff: Tales of the Crypto-System, his short story publications
• Sean Williams for The Crooked Letter and efforts in teaching
• Jonathan Strahan for work over the year in internationally published reviews and in editing anthologies

Fan achievement

• Super Happy Robot Hour
• Conflux convention committee
• Continuum 2 convention committee

Fan writer

• Edwina Harvey
• Gillespie, Bruce
• Fan webite/zine
• Antipodean SF: ed Ion Newcomb
• SF Bullsheet: ed Edwina Harvey & Ted Scribner
• Gynaezine: ed Emma Hawkes and Gina Goddard

New Talent

• Barnes, Chris
• Barrow, Stuart
• Dugan, Grace
• Haines, Paul
• Robson, Barbara
• Smith, Brian

The Australian science fiction community generously presents two different major sets of science fiction awards each year: the Aurealis Awards and the Ditmar Awards. The Aurealis Awards were presented earlier this year, and the final nominations for the Ditmars have just been announced. I was genuinely surprised, and very grateful, to be nominated. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to be in Tasmania when the awards are presented, but I wish everyone nominated the best of luck, and would like to thank everyone who nominated me.

Editing year’s best annuals isn’t a competitive thing. You don’t watch what your colleagues are doing with a win-lose mindset, and you’re always aware that it all comes down to a difference in taste. We’ve just recently seen the tables of contents for Gardner Dozois’ and Ellen Datlow & Gavin Grant & Kelly Link’s books listed on the net, and David and Kathryn listed their SF book the other day. This morning I see that Kathryn has posted the table of contents for the Year’s Best Fantasy on her blog, and I think it looks like a terrific book. I often disagree about their SF volume, but as I looked down their table of contents for this book I found myself nodding my head, and thinking ‘good book’. You guys should definitely check it out. I would have done it slightly differently, were the world just up to me, but only slightly.

I was talking to a friend on the weekend who is about to read the zero-th draft of Neil Gaiman’s new novel Anansi Boys, and I have to admit to suffering a small pang of envy. I think Neil is getting better and better as a prose writer. His short fiction has been becoming more and more impressive over the past couple years, and American Gods was a terrific book. Given that there isn’t an actual first draft yet, I’m guessing it’ll be some months before I get to read the book, but I’m really looking forward to it.

And that covers the main fiction categories. I’ve got much less fixed views on most of the remaining categories, so here are a few quick notes.

Best Related Book
I’d probably restrict myself to nominating Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James’ excellent The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction and Damien Broderick’s terrific (and highly entertaining) x, y, z, t: Dimensions of Science Fiction.

Best Dramatic Presentations
I really don’t care… I guess I’d just give it all to The Incredibles and go home.

Best Professional Editor
Cheryl makes some good points at Emerald City about book editors not getting a fair go. Certainly people like Ginjer Buchanan, Juliet Ulman, David Hartwell, Diana Gill, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden all deserve attention. Still, it all comes back to the magazines. Just on the year we’ve had I’d nominate Ellen Datlow first, followed by Gordon and Gardner. My fourth and fifth slots would go to Juliet Ulman and David Hartwell. Could have been others, but they’re a strong group.

Best Professional Artist
Again, I don’t have a strong feeling here because I don’t have a clear idea of who did what during 2004. I’d probably opt for Les Edwards and John Picacio, for their small press work.

Best SemiProzine
The boss, the big guy, Charles is the only nomination I have. It’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the category fills out.

Best Fanzine
I read very little in the way of fanzines, so I’ll stick with Cheryl and Emerald City.

Best Fan Writer
Probably Cheryl, Langford and Matt Cheney, all of whom do good stuff.

Best Web Site
And Mark and Locus: Online for this one. I do think it’s the best SF site out there, and it would get my vote. I suspect, though, that if people stopped splitting there votes between SciFi.com, SciFiction, and SciFi Weekly – which are all the one site really – they would run away with it.