…has not been a fun day. Stupid work problems combine with frustrating family ones. Jessica (age 7) was supposed to have an EEG today. She was kept up till 11pm last night, then kicked out of bed at 5am so that she would be sleepy enough to give a sleeping EEG to. She didn’t comply. We’ll have to do it again, and that means Marianne loses out on sleep too. Not sof good.

No. of Eclipse submissions received since breakfast: 12.
No of Eclipse submissions received to date: 267

The administrators for the 2008 Australian National Science Fiction Achievement ‘Ditmar’ Awards have released the final ballot for this year’s awards, and I’m delighted to say that I’ve been fortunate enough to be nominated in several categories. The New Space Opera has been nominated for Best Collected Work and the introduction has been nominated for the Atheling.  I’ve also received two nominations for Best Professional Achievement, one for my editing, and one that I share with Garth Nix, Deb Biancotti, and Trevor Stafford for the work we did at World Fantasy last year.   I’m not sure, though. The one I might be happiest about is that Garth’s story from Eclipse One, which made the short fiction ballot.  Many thanks to everyone who nominated.  I hope to see you all at Swancon on awards night!

Well, I missed the window forWorldcon and the Hugos, but the nominations are now open for the World Fantasy Awards. The form went out with the latest PR, and nominations close on June 30. Nominate!

A week or so ago I got a nice email from John De Nardo over at SF Signal inviting to take part in the latest of his ‘Mind Meld’ series of feature. The question was “What Purpose Does Short Fiction Serve?“, and John also invited cool people like Gardner Dozois, Ellen Datlow, Mike Resnick, John Klima, Lou Anders, Jean Rabe, Jack Dann, Andrew Hedgecock, Jane Yolen,and  Rich Horton. The end result is very cool and quite interesting. It’s well worth checking out.

So, whatever else you can say for or against the new Prime Minister of Australia, he’s an appallingly uncharismatic speaker. Seeing him on the news today, at the new Aboriginal welcome to Parliament, was painful.  Also, I need to really think about this. Is there something screwy about the Aboriginal welcome?  Aboriginal peoples are welcoming the elected representatives of the Australian people to the place where those representatives will govern – a Commonwealth government established by the British Parliament which is based on the invasion of the country. I don’t know. It’s…odd.