another night with too little sleep. was woken at 2.15 this morning by one of the offshoots, and just could not get back to sleep. second night running on five or less hours of sleep. grin.

this is an odd time of the year. despite appearances, like many folk i’m not always overflowing with confidence, and we’ve hit one of those annual blank spots where i’m waiting on feedback from others before continuing with projects. hopefully over the next two weeks i’ll get confirmation about the year’s best annuals, and come to terms with the annual taxes (urg), and maybe get a chance to get some household stuff sorted. who knows? it’s just an odd time of the year.

oh, one thing i meant to mention. i’m once again reconsidering this whole blog thing. it’s good, it’s fun, it’s self-indulgent, and i’m not sure if it’s a good idea. ayelet waldeman has just started a column on blogging over at salon.com where she asks just that question, so i thought i’d throw it over to you, dear reader? is this a good thing, do you want more, would you like to see other things discussed. feel free to comment, or not.

also noted: joining the party, alex irvine has now got a blog.

Charles is a good person. He’s just a good person who likes to gloat. I call him once a week, pretty much every week, so we can catch up, I can tell him how the family’s doing, he can tell me which pieces have either dropped off or just stopped working, and so on. Somewhere in there we touch on things science fictional, and yesterday he took a moment for the gloating thing. He’s in the midst of reading Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners. But I’m happy for him. No. Really.

Via Locus Online, Lou Anders has a blog and James Patrick Kelly is getting set for the digital Hugos.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has posted the table of contents for his new anthology, The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens, over on his website. As far as I know, it’s the first book of its kind specifically aimed at a teen audience, so I’ve been very eager to see what he and co-editor Jane Yolen have selected for their book.

Looking at the list, I have several immediate reactions. First, I think it looks like a good, strong selection of stories. The Bradley Denton and Kelly Link stories alone, make the book more than worth the price of admission. I also loved Delia Sherman’s “CATNYP” and Theodora Goss’s “The Wings of Meister Wilhelm”, and it’s an interesting idea to include a century-old piece in the book too. Second, I’ve held the belief for a while now that we needed a year’s best that blends science fiction and fantasy in a single volume. I think Jane and Patrick have done a very creditable job, especially given the length of their book. It’s very tightly edited.

Probably the only caveat I have about the book is a personal one. I read pretty much everything published in the adult market, so I’ve already read every story in the book. I had been hoping that Jane and Patrick might have been able to highlight stuff published in sources I haven’t seen, stuff from young adult collections, anthologies, magazines and so on. I know they exist, but I’ve only see a handfull of them. That said, it’s a very personal caveat. The intended audience, I suspect, won’t have seen many of these stories, and they should love them. Definitely something to buy for a teen near you, or for someone who perhaps doesn’t read enough short fiction. Oh, and the cover (by Donata, I think) is terrific.

It occurred to me that I haven’t seen the Ditmar noms in any single, easy-accessible, html kind of format, so herewith…

Short Story

• Deborah Biancotti: Number 3 Raw Place, Agog! Smashing Stories
• Rjurik Davidson: The Interminable Suffering of Mysterious Mr Wu, Aurealis #33
• Margo Lanagan: Singing My Sister Down, Black Juice
• Ben Peek: R, Agog! Smashing Stories

Novella or Novelette

• Simon Brown: Water Babies, Agog! Smashing Stories
• Stephen Dedman: The Whole of the Law, ASIM 13
• Paul Haines: The Last Days of Kali Yuga, NFG Magazine, Volume 2 Issue 4, August 2004
• Richard Harland: Catabolic Magic, Aurealis #32
• Cat Sparks: Home by the Sea, Orb #6, July

Novel

• Richard Harland: The Black Crusade
• Maxine McArthur: Less than Human
• Sean Williams: The Crooked Letter

Collected Works

• Agog! Smashing Stories: ed. Cat Sparks
• Black Juice: Margo Lanagan.
• Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine: ed. Lyn Triffitt, Edwina Harvey, Andrew Finch, Zara Baxter, Robbie Matthews & Tehani Croft
• Orb 6: ed. Sarah Endacott
• Encounters: ed. Donna Hanson and Maxine McArthur, CSFG Publishing

Pro Artwork

• Les Petersen: cover of ASIM 12
• Kerri Valkova: cover of The Black Crusade, Chimaera Publications
• Cat Sparks: cover of Agog! Smashing Stories
• Les Petersen: cover of Encounters
• Les Petersen: cover and internal ASIM 16

Fan Art

• Sarah Xu

William Atheling Jnr Award for Criticism or Review

• Robert Hood: review of Weight of Water at Hood Reviews, asking “is this film a ghost story?”
• Jason Nahrung: Why are publishers afraid of horror, BAM, Courier Mail, 20 March 2004
• Ben Peek: review of Haruki Murakami’s work in the Urban Sprawl Project

Pro Achievement

• The Clarion South Team: negotiating with the US Clarion people, then promoting and establishing Clarion South which gives emerging writer the chance to work with the best in the business.
• Cat Sparks: editing and writing including winning third place in the writers of the future award
• Margo Lanagan: for Black Juice
• Maloney, Geoff: Tales of the Crypto-System, his short story publications
• Sean Williams for The Crooked Letter and efforts in teaching
• Jonathan Strahan for work over the year in internationally published reviews and in editing anthologies

Fan achievement

• Super Happy Robot Hour
• Conflux convention committee
• Continuum 2 convention committee

Fan writer

• Edwina Harvey
• Gillespie, Bruce
• Fan webite/zine
• Antipodean SF: ed Ion Newcomb
• SF Bullsheet: ed Edwina Harvey & Ted Scribner
• Gynaezine: ed Emma Hawkes and Gina Goddard

New Talent

• Barnes, Chris
• Barrow, Stuart
• Dugan, Grace
• Haines, Paul
• Robson, Barbara
• Smith, Brian

The Australian science fiction community generously presents two different major sets of science fiction awards each year: the Aurealis Awards and the Ditmar Awards. The Aurealis Awards were presented earlier this year, and the final nominations for the Ditmars have just been announced. I was genuinely surprised, and very grateful, to be nominated. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to be in Tasmania when the awards are presented, but I wish everyone nominated the best of luck, and would like to thank everyone who nominated me.