The great fantastist Jack Vance won the Hugo for the first time in 1963 for his novella “The Dragon Masters”, and backed up the following year winning again for his novelette “The Last Castle”. He was nominated again in 1975 for “Assault on a City”, but has not appeared on a Hugo ballot since. That’s thirty-four years, during which time he amassed a wonderful body of work, won or was nominated for many awards, and become one of the most influential and best-loved writers our genre has seen.

Vance, who lives in Oakland, California, is now ninety-three years old and writes very little. However, in 2009 he made an enormous exception to a writer’s life that has seen him consistently reluctant to comment on his work or on his life.  That exception was the wonderful short autobiography This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This Is “I”).  The book is revelatory without being confessional, and tells of a long and interesting life, without ever giving away too much about what drives Vance as a writer. I think it seriously deserves your consideration for the Hugo Award in the Best Related Work category.

Full disclosure. I met Jack Vance once, when I visited his home for coffee and conversation.  He was a charming host.  I have also co-edited four volumes of his work for Subterranean Press, who also published the autobiography.

Regardless of that, I think Vance deserves at least a Hugo nod for his important book, and can’t help feeling that a win would be appropriate after all these years.

My post supporting Starship Sofa for the Hugo Award in the category of Best Fanzine has been drawing a healthy number of comments, all of which have been both civil and welcome.  Some commenters have stated the view that a fanzine is a very specific thing and that podcasts really should not be considered in the fanzine category.

In truth, I don’t have a strong opinion on this and I certainly don’t want to advocate for the inclusion or exclusion of anything from any category.  Instead I’d simply direct people to the Hugo rules, which are contained in the WSFS Constitution and to this comment on recent changes to those rules by Hugo Administrator Vince Docherty in File 770.

My own feeling is that if the laws of the WSFS suggest that a podcast can be considered as a fanzine then I’m very happy to nominate StarShip Sofa.  I’m also very happy to leave decisions on such matters to the Hugo Administrator, and to suggest that if  people feel strongly that the rules are amiss that they should become involved in the WSFS process and work to change the rules.

I’m perhaps happiest that everyone seems to agree that StarShip Sofa is a worthy potential Hugo nominee, even if they can’t quite agree into what round hole its square peg should fit into.

For all that I love science fiction and science fiction magazines; my favourite magazine in the world is, by some considerable margin, The Word.  It’s the only magazine that I subscribe to that I don’t read for professional reasons and one of the few that I read cover-to-cover every issue.

Just the month before last the indefatigable scribes at The Word reviewed former Go-Betweens frontman Robert Forster’s book of essays, The Ten Rules of Rock and Roll and I was sufficiently interested that I picked up a copy at the greatest independent bookstore in Australia, Planet.  The book was smart and witty and perceptive, so I decided to keep an eye out for more from Forster. 

It turns out that he reviews for The Monthly, where Australian SF writer John Birmingham also appears fairly regularly.  Being a 21st Century kind of magazine, The Monthly makes all of its content available online for free a month or so after the print issue has been and gone. While I’ve now started buying The Monthly, I was delighted to get a chance to read Forster’s review/essay, “From Mop Tops To Moustaches“,  on the recently remastered Beatles catalogue.  An excellent essay and the sort of thing I’d love to see done really well in the science fiction field.

Reading Forster’s book led me directly to former Hunters & Collectors singer Mark Seymour’s book, Thirteen Tonne Theory (also obtained from Planet) which was one of the best books about life in the rock business that I’ve come across. It’s strongly recommended, even if you’ve never heard of the band.  Smart, funny, and he cut out all the dull bits. And, between these two books, I may just have had enough time off reading SF that I’m feeling like diving into some new work again, which would be terrific.

So I need to lose like a billion kilos, right, cos almost all of my activities are sedentary. I’m trying to fit in as much walking as I can to aid in the cause. Just did a six kilometre round trip walk to the local shopping centre in 28C sunshine. I am sweating like a porcine creature. Blech. Did I mention the blech? Blech.

One of my happiest discoveries last year was Tony C. Smith’s StarShip Sofa podcast. Each week the indefatigable Tony would sit down with some of science fiction’s luminaries and chat about what they were up to, the day-to-day issues confronting the science fiction field, and so on.

The podcast was bright and smart and funny.  I was delighted when Tony invited me to appear on it, and very disappointed when he decided to stop producing it before I could.  Now, I hear he also has a very fine audio podcast where he publishes audio versions of terrific stories, but the Sofa podcast was my favorite and I do miss it.

Now I hear that podcasts are eligible for the Hugo Award, which makes perfect sense to me, and it seems like StarShip Sofa is eligible for Best Fanzine. Produced by one man with a microphone, a Skype account, an awesome accent, and a love of SF, it should be eligible and I, for one, will be nominating Tony and the Sofa this year.

I’ll add, I don’t usually campaign for awards, but this is a little different.  A podcast up for a fanzine Hugo is a new thing, and I think we need to embrace such things, making sure the award remains relevant to what is happening in the field today.