Sean Williams advises that the BBC has compiled a list of 100 things we didn’t know this time last year, which includes the above piece of information and the critical fact that crows, apparently, like the taste of windscreen-wiper blades.

The SFWA has released the Preliminary Nebula Ballot. You can see it here. It’s my understanding that the final Nebula ballot features five nominees in a category, so one nominee a piece needs to be dropped from the novel, novelette, and short story categories. The script category should be the final list, and four novellas need to be dropped.

The Nebula list is a mystery to me, as I suspect it is to most folk, featuring work that appeared between February 2003 and November 2004. I know there are rules, but they seem to be very dumb rules.

That said, as with any awards ballot attracts criticism, so I thought I’d restrict myself to compliments only. Of the works that made the final ballot (and that I’ve read), I thought Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Sean Stewart’s Perfect Circle, and Gene Wolfe’s The Knight were excellent. In the novella category, I really liked William Barton’s “Off on a Starship”, Bradley Denton’s “Sergeant Chip”, Gregory Feeley’s “Arabian Wine”, Vernor Vinge’s “The Cookie Monster”, Walter Jon Williams’ “The Green Leopard Plague”, and Connie Willis’s “Just Like the Ones We Used to Know”. In the novelette category, I thought Christopher Rowe’s “The Voluntary State” was pretty much the story of the year, but also really liked Andy Duncan’s “Zora and the Zombie” and Ellen Klages’s “Basement Magic”. I was perhaps least impressed with the short story category, which seemed to miss a lot of excellent stories from 2003/04. Still, I really liked Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “Embracing-The-New”.

I was watching the evening news today – which these days seems like an incredible mistake, but I do it. They were, of course, talking about the appalling disaster in South East Asia. There were the predictable pictures of walls of water, of devastated streets and distraught people. What I didn’t expect, and what sickened me, was video footage of tourists attending their aquarobics sessions and continuing with their holidays as though the devastation mere metres away didn’t exist. I don’t understand. There may be some explanation – pictures don’t lie, they just don’t tell the whole story – but I can’t imagine it. Have we really reached that point in Western civilization? If so, things are bleak indeed.

Somehow, and part of me still doesn’t quite know how, it turns out we’re having a party. We don’t usually have parties, and I don’t know if we’re any good at it, but we’re doing it. Why? Year’s end. Charles is visiting. We have some books to sell. All good reasons. When? Sunday. Where? Here. Who’s coming? Well, we are, and we invited some people. You could probably come too, if you love SF, know us, live in the area, and are free. Drop us an email first, though. It should be good. Marianne is doing most of the organising, so it’ll be better than if it I did it, certainly.

I live on a quiet little suburban street about twenty minutes from downtown. There are maybe sixteen houses along the street and, apart from the nine kids next door, we’re probably the noisiest household on it. I love the place next door because of that. Jessica and Sophie – Jess particularly – can be very noisy.

As we approach year’s end, I realise that I’ve got nothing done and will get nothing done for the next six days (when Charles heads home). I’ll be intermittently available by email, and apologise for any delays in responding if you get in touch.

With New Year’s in sight, I’m thinking on resolutions. Not cheap, easy over-a-glass-of-champagne resolutions, but things-aren’t-working-out-and-I-need-to-change-how-I’m-living resolutions. These past five years I’ve aged, gained weight and become exponentially more stressed. This is not a survival plan. I need to lose weight, cope with stress better, and re-balance my life. Serious decisions to be made.