Charles Stross has made his new novel Accelerando available to download for free at www.accelerdando.org. Go download it, check it out, and see what all of the fuss is about. This is the latest, hottest, smartest thing in SF. You’ll still need a print copy, trust me, but this’ll give you a taste.

As we move towards the end of the financial year short term chaos looms, but order is on the horizon. Gordon is kindly, happily building new IT systems for Chez Coode Street. Anne is on her way to visit. Ipods beckon, as do Melbourne and Continuum. A visit to the accountant today, some painful check writing and things should once again be on a reasonable level, at least until October.

With that in mind, let me point you towards John Clute’s review of Brad Denton’s scathingly brilliant Laughin’ Boy which, as Clute points out “rubs our ears in the junk noise and anguish of America” and is “one of the funniest novels of the past decade”. The comedy was so dark that one of Locus‘s reviewers was unable to read it, but I loved it. Magnificent stuff, and one of the novels of the year.

The 2005 Australian National Science Fiction Achievement ‘Ditmar’ Awards were presented at Thylacon, the 44th Australian National Science Fiction Convention, on Saturday 11 June 2005, in a ceremony at the Wrest Point Hotel, Hobart, Tasmania. Tbe winners were:

Best Novel

The Crooked Letter, Sean Williams (HarperCollins Australia)

Best Collected Work

Black Juice, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin Australia)

Best Novella/Novelette

“The Last Days of Kali Yuga”, Paul Haines (NFG Magazine, August 2004)

Best Short Story

“Singing My Sister Down”, Margo Lanagan (Black Juice)

Best Professional Artwork

Kerri Valkova for the cover to The Black Crusade (Chimaera Publications)

Best Professional Achievement

Clarion South committee

Fan Achievement

Conflux convention committee

Fan Artist

Sarah Xu

Fanzine

The Bullsheet, ed Edwina Harvey & Ted Scribner

Fan Writer

Bruce Gillespie

Best New Talent

Paul Haines

The organisers also presented two further awards, not Ditmars, at the ceremony.

William Atheling Jnr Award for Criticism or Review (tie)

Robert Hood, for his review of Weight of Water at HoodReviews; and

Jason Nahrung for “Why are publishers afraid of horror” (BAM, Courier Mail, 20 March 2004)

The Peter McNamara Achievement Award

Jonathan Strahan

The very, very nice folks at Fantastic Queensland who are running next year’s Natcon, Conjure, have decided to take a probably uninsurable risk with membership sales by inviting me to be their editor guest of honor. I am, of course thrilled and delighted with this, but can’t help but hope that you all won’t hold it against them, and will still buy memberships for yourselves, your friends, your family, and in fact anyone you know who might be in Brisbane at the time, or be willing to go to Brisbane just to pitch in and help. I promise to stay out of the way as much as possible, and am confident that Cory, Sean and Kim should make the trip worthwhile. See you there!

I am enormously pleased and more than a little humbled to announce that I have been awarded the Peter McNamara Award. I say awarded, because this doesn’t feel like the kind of thing you win, which tends to sound very competitive. Rather, some fine people like Van Ikin and the folks who run the award decide you are somehow worthy. I am happily mystified as to why, but would like to thank them, and Mac’s family. It’s really rather lovely.