There are two awards that carry the name of my late friend, Peter McNamara. The first, the Peter McNamara Convenor’s Award for Excellence is presented annually by the administrators of the Aurealis Awards. The second, The Peter McNamara Achievement Award, is presented annually by a private group headed by Robert Stephenson.
Each year members of the Australian science fiction community are asked to nominate those individuals who have made an oustanding contribution to Australian science fiction. A judge is then appointed, who makes the final decision as to who will receive the award.
This year, as the previous recipient, I was asked to present the award as part of the 2006 Ditmar Awards ceremony, held at Conjure over the long weekend. As you can see from the photo at right, the award was presented to my friend Peter Nicholls, who richly deserved it. You can see some of the many reasons why here. The award was accepted on Peter’s behalf by Jenny Blackford.
The award recipients to date are:
2006: Peter Nicholls
2005: Jonathan Strahan
2004: Jack Dann
2003: Stephanie Smith
2002: Paul Collins
I’m curious. Podcasts are no longer new, but they are still cool and seem to be getting more popular. Is it something that the readers of Coode Street might warm too? Let me know in the comments field. BTW, for my money the best podcaster in SF right now is Cory Doctorow. Check out his Hugo nominated story “I Robot” on his website. And, if you like that, the “Anda’s Game” podcast is dynamite.
I’m in the process of resuming normal posting, but in the meantime: iTunes! What gives?!? The music store is like totally wrong. I had to give them a few million times more information than I would give to a bricks and mortar store, and that was to retrieve a (very welcome) gift voucher. Apple needs to rethink (quickly) what its doing or the only choices will end up being either to download music for free from bittorrent (at higher quality and available earlier) or buy it from the bricks and mortar guys. At the moment, I currently download freebies as previews and buy the disk if I want it (deleting the downloaded files on the way). I want to buy music. I’m happy to pay creators, middlemen and the whole crowd. Hell, I’ve been doing it since I was eight years old. Why would I stop now? But buying low quality DRMd files from a bunch of dumbass California hippies who want account information and such? Not ever again.
Well, I’m back from Conjure. Many thanks to all who helped run the convention, all of the volunteers and organisers, and everyone who turned up for the panels. I had a wonderful time, and am very grateful indeed for the opportunity to attend. Special thanks too, to the ABC, who paid a lot of attention to the event, took it seriously, and were a very welcome presence. There were a lot of highlights: the juvenilia panel, the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest disco, Bruce’s GoH speech, Cory’s talks on DRM. The best things, as always thought, were seeing old friends and meeting new ones. The science fiction family only convenes from time to time, so I hope to see you all at the next stop.
There are two awards that carry the name of my late friend, Peter McNamara. The first, the Peter McNamara Convenor’s Award for Excellence is presented annually by the administrators of the Aurealis Awards. The second, The Peter McNamara Achievement Award, is presented annually by a private group headed by Robert Stephenson.