The nominees for the Philip K Dick Award have been announced.   A huge shout out to my friend and co-editor, Lou Anders, whose excellent anthology Fast Forward 2 is up for the award.  It is, I believe, only the second fiction anthology to be nominated in the history of the award.

I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, talk about Fleetwood Mac, the theory that it takes you ten thousand hours of practice to become accomplished at any complex task, and on the nature of creativity.  It was fascinating.

At the end of his talk Gladwell is asked what lessons we should take from the idea of ten thousand hours and he says that “the things we do should be approached with a degree of seriousness and dignity”.   It made me think about editing, which I’ve been doing since 1990.  I guess I’ve spent 10,000 hours at it by now, though I may only be approaching that.  I don’t claim any particular proficiency for myself – I only started seriously considering editing a career for me last year – but the idea that it should be approached with seriousness and dignity resonated.   I think it’s a worthwhile task, I enjoy it, and I like the challenge of becoming professional at it.

SFWA have released the official Nebula Preliminary Ballot, which at first glance is the same list I blogged about previously.  It seems to transpose the nominees for Novella and Novelette, which I’m sure is an error that will be fixed.  The list contains some exceptional work, but it overlooks an awful lot of stuff, or so it seems to me.

The most surprising thing about the Ballot, on reflection, is that members could find two very worthy young adult novels to nominate in the Best Novel category (and they’re both excellent), but couldn’t find any worthwhile works to nominate for the Norton Award.  It’s quite disappointing, especially when you consider the number of excellent YA genre works being published at the moment.

The following stories were published in the two original anthologies I edited that were published during 2008, The Starry Rift and Eclipse Two.  They include stories that would be eligible for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and other awards.

Best Novella (17,500 – 40,000 wds)

• The Surfer, Kelly Link

Best Novelette (7,500 – 17,500 wds)

• Turing’s Apples, Stephen Baxter
• The Rabbi’s Hobby, Peter Beagle (fantasy)
• Lost Continent, Greg Egan
• Ex Cathedra, Tony Daniel
• Sundiver Day, Kathleen Ann Goonan
• The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm, Daryl Gregory
• Incomers, Paul McAuley
• The Dust Assassin, Ian McDonald
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, David Moles
• Skin Deep, Richard Parks (fantasy)
• Fury, Alastair Reynolds
• The Star Surgeon’s Apprentice, Alastair Reynolds
• Hero, Karl Schroeder
• Post-Ironic Stress Syndrome, Tricia Sullivan
• Pinochio, Walter Jon Williams

Best Short Story ( < 7,500 wds)

• Repair Kit, Stephen Baxter
• Exhalation, Ted Chiang
• Michael Lauritis is: Drowning, Paul Cornell
• Truth Window, Terry Dowling
• Cheats, Gwyneth Jones
• Elevator, Nancy Kress
• An Honest Day’s Work, Margo Lanagan
• Night of the Firstlings, Margo Lanagan (fantasy)
• Infestation, Garth Nix
• The Dismantled Invention of Fate, Jeffrey Ford
• The Seventh Expression of the Robot General, Jeffrey Ford
• Orange, Neil Gaiman
• Invisible Empire of Ascending Light, Ken Scholes
• Ass-Hat Magic Spider, Scott Westerfeld

The Hugo Awards Committee of Aussiecon 4: The 68th World Science Fiction Convention has opened nominations for the 2009 Hugo Awards. I would strongly encourage everyone who is eligible to nominate for the Awards.  This has nothing to do with my own eligibility. The awards are more meaningful, more representative if everyone who can get involved does.  I’ll certainly be nominating, and hope you will too.

Now, a number of people have posted about their own eligibility for the Hugos.  This year I was incredibly and genuinely honored to be nominated for Best Editor – Short Form. It was the highlight of my professional year.

I am eligible in the same category this year.  I’m very proud of the work I’ve had published in 2009, and am sincerely grateful to all of the authors who made me look good during the year.  This is my 2009 in books:

I’ll post a list of the contents of both Eclipse Three and The New Space Opera 2,  both of which feature original stories by some wonderful writers who I think deserve your consideration in the Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story categories, shortly.

I also co-edited twelve issues of Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field.  As Reviews Editor, I edited the reviews section of the magazine.

Well, that’s about all the pimpage I can do.  As I said above, nominating me isn’t the important thing. Nominating is, though.  Please do so if you can.