Locus has announced the finalists for this year’s Locus Awards, which will be presented in June in Seattle. Without revealing too many prejudices, I think it’s as good a batch of award finalists as you’re going to see all year. I’m really happy, for example, to see Stan Robinson’s Fifty Degrees Below on an awards ballot. I’ve got definite prejudices in every category, and will be interested to see the final results. And, no, I don’t know. I can find out , but I don’t know.

I’ve been inundated with comment spam, all from gmail addresses. The simplest solution is to block any comments from gmail email addresses. Sorry for any inconvenience. If you have a gmail address and would like to comment, just email me at the address on the contact info page and I’ll make sure your post gets up.

So, I’m playing around with ideas for promotion and such, and wondering about podcasts. As a test, I produced Sophie’s first podcast (download 700k). Warning: Contains mentions of princesses and marriage.

So, just saw that my friend and colleague Gary Wolfe has won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Non-Fiction for his book Soundings. I think this is a marvellous thing, and couldn’t be happier for him. Now, it’s up to all Hugo voters to make sure that it’s not the only award he takes home this year. Not that I’m biassed, of course.

I wasn’t sure how the morning would go, but I got some good news from Mike Walsh at Old Earth Books, which should bear fruit at LAConIV or at World Fantasy in Austin. Should be cool. More on this when I can tell you. In the meantime, a quick bit of linkage”

1. Farah Mendlesohn reviews Jim Morrow’s The Last Witchfinder and finds it good;
2. Paul Witcover reviews Jeff Ford’s extraordinary The Empire of Icecream and runs out of superlatives;
3. Mark Watson at BestSF.net wrong foots us all and finds and reviews Ken Macleod’s The Highway Men, a new SF novella published by the Sandstone Press in the UK; and
4. You probably still haven’t ordered Howard Who?.