I thought I’d make some comment on the Hugo ballot, since it seems to be the thing to do at the moment. Overall, I thought the ballot was pretty good, though it missed a few obvious things.

NOVEL
# Accelerando, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit)
# A Feast for Crows, George R. R. Martin (Voyager; Bantam Spectra)
# Learning the World, Ken MacLeod (Orbit; Tor)
# Old Man’s War, John Scalzi (Tor)
# Spin, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve read the Martin, which breaks my cardinal rule about not reading anything that’s more then 400 pages long and has a series number on it. I also haven’t read the Scalzi, though I’ve heard pretty good things about it. I don’t get sent as much stuff as I used, and I guess Tor just didn’t get around to sending me one.

I have read the Stross, the Wilson and the Macleod, and I liked all three. I think the Stross is the book of the moment, the one that best reflects its time, but the Wilson is a better book. I’m a little stuck over how I’ll vote, but it’ll probably be Wilson, Stross, Macleod.

I’d add that I was stunned that Dan Simmons’ Olympos and Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys didn’t make the list, and disappointed that neither Kim Stanley Robinson’s Fifty Degrees Below or Justina Robson’s Living Next Door to the God of Love were recognised.

NOVELLA
# Burn, James Patrick Kelly (Tachyon)
# “Identity Theft”, Robert J. Sawyer (Down These Dark Spaceways, SFBC)
# “Inside Job”, Connie Willis (Asimov’s Jan 2005)
# “The Little Goddess”, Ian McDonald (Asimov’s Jun 2005)
# “Magic for Beginners”, Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners, Small Beer Press; F&SF Sep 2005)

This may be the best category on the ballot, with three of the stories listed likely to be recognised in future years as classics. I think the McDonald is the best SF story of the year, the Link the best fantasy, and the Kelly one of his best. I can’t pick between them, but will probably vote McDonald, Link, Kelly, Willis.

NOVELETTE
# “The Calorie Man”, Paolo Bacigalupi (F&SF Oct/Nov 2005)
# “I, Robot”, Cory Doctorow (The Infinite Matrix 15 Feb 2005)
# “The King of Where-I-Go”, Howard Waldrop (Sci Fiction 7 Dec 2005)
# “TelePresence”, Michael A. Burstein (Analog Jul/Aug 2005)
# “Two Hearts”, Peter S. Beagle (F&SF Oct/Nov 2005)

I was disappointed that neither Vonda McIntyre (“Little Voices”), Alastair Reynolds (“Zima Blue”), or Bruce Sterling (“The Blemmye’s Strategem”) made it on the ballot, but I’m really happy about the Waldrop story making the cut. I’ll almost certainly vote Waldrop, Doctorow, Beagle, Bacigalupi. I also think Matt Hughes probably deserved to make this list.

SHORT STORY
# “The Clockwork Atom Bomb”, Dominic Green (Interzone May/Jun 2005)
# “Down Memory Lane”, Mike Resnick (Asimov’s Apr/May 2005)
# “Seventy-Five Years”, Michael A. Burstein (Analog Jan/Feb 2005)
# “Singing My Sister Down”, Margo Lanagan (Black Juice, Allen & Unwin; Eos)
# “Tk’tk’tk”, David D. Levine (Asimov’s Mar 2005)

There are too many strong stories that could have made it for me not to find this comparatively weak ballot disappointing. That said, I’m delighted to “Singing My Sister Down” on the ballot. I’ll probably vote Lanagan, and then skip the rest.

RELATED BOOK
# Science Fiction Quotations, Gary Westfahl (Yale)
# The SEX Column and Other Misprints, David Langford (Cosmos)
# Soundings: Reviews 1992-1996, Gary K. Wolfe (Beccon)
# Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, Kate Wilhelm (Small Beer Press)
# Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970, Mike Ashley (Liverpool)

This is a purely personal decision. I don’t follow the category particularly, but I’ll be voting for Gary Wolfe, who really deserves the award.

PROFESSIONAL EDITOR
# Ellen Datlow
# David G. Hartwell
# Stanley Schmidt
# Gordon Van Gelder
# Sheila Williams

This one is very tricky. I’m enormously disappointed to see that Gardner Dozois didn’t make the list. He did some great work during the year as an anthology editor, and deserved to be there. That said, I thought Stan Schmidt just oversaw Analog’s best year in a long time, Gordon Van Gelder continues to do a bang up job, Ellen was terrific again, and David Hartwell deserves to win this damn category at least once. I’m not even going to pick this one. If Ellen, David, Stan or Gordon were to win, I’d be equally delighted, though for different reasons.

SEMIPROZINE
# Ansible, David Langford, ed.
# Emerald City, Cheryl Morgan, ed.
# Interzone, Andy Cox, ed.
# Locus, Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong & Liza Groen Trombi, eds.
# The New York Review of Science Fiction, Kathryn Cramer, David G. Hartwell & Kevin Maroney, eds.

I work for Locus. I love Locus. I won’t pretend to be objective. Go CHARLES, Kirsten and Liza. I hope you guys win the prize.

FAN WRITER
# Claire Brialey
# John Hertz
# Dave Langford
# Cheryl Morgan
# Steven H Silver

And on this, I’m going Vote 1 Cheryl. She’s going to overrun that Langford chap one time, so it might as well be now. And that’s it for my comments. I’m skipping the other categories, but wish everyone well.

I’m constantly surprised about when reviews for various books show up. Mark Watson over at BestSF.net has just reviewed Best Short Novels: 2005. All in all, it’s a positive review, and hopefully it’ll persuade a few more folk to go and sign up with The Book Club.

John Lorentz, the Hugo Awards administrator has posted this year’s Hugo nominations on rec.arts.sf.fandom. Congratulations to one and all, but especially Margo, Gary, Charles, Kirsten and Liza, Ellen, David, Gordon, Charlie, Cory, Ian, Jim, Kelly, Connie, Paolo, Howard, and Cheryl. I’ve a few ideas on who might win, and I know pretty much who I’m going to vote for, but overall I’m just happy it’s such a strong ballot.

I was websurfing and stumbled across news that Mike Harrison has a new novel, Nova Swing, set to be published by Gollancz in November of this year. Mike confirms on his noticeboard that the novel, a sequel to Light, has been completed and delivered, and that the due date is about right.  The online description reads:

It is some time after Ed Chianese’s trip into the Kefahuchi Tract. A major industry of the Halo is now tourism. The Tract has begun to expand and change, but, more problematically, parts of it have also begun to fall to earth, piecemeal, on the Beach planets. We are in a city, perhaps on New Venusport or Motel Splendido: next to the city is the event site, the zone, from out of which pour new, inexplicable artefacts, organisms and escapes of living algorithm – the wrong physics loose in the universe. They can cause plague and change. An entire department of the local police, Site Crime, exists to stop them being imported into the city by adventurers, entradistas, and the men known as ‘travel agents’, profiteers who can manage – or think they can manage -the bad physics, skewed geographies and psychic onslaughts of the event site. But now a new class of semi-biological artefact is finding its way out of the site, and this may be more than anyone can handle.

 I’ve got no doubt that this will be one of the novels* of the year. Can’t wait to see it.

* Edited as per G. Nix, Clovelly, NSW.

So, I just received an email from Marty Halpern over at Golden Gryphon letting me know that they have just started shipping Jeff Ford’s incredibly wonderful new collection, The Empire of Ice Cream. Marty’s one of the good guys so, to be honest, getting the head’s up from him would have been enough to make me want to pick up a copy of the book, but it just so happens I’ve read twelve of the fourteen stories in the book, and can personally attest to the wonder of The Empire of Ice Cream.

Put simply, Jeff Ford stands in the top five or six short fiction writers currently working in the field. This collection, which assembles stories from the past three or four years, contains no duds at all, and a goodly handful of stories that are sufficiently wonderful as to almost leave your humble correspondent speechless. If you love short fiction, you need this book. If you love great science fiction or fantasy period, you need this book. It’s still early in the year, but I’m completely confident when I say that there won’t be a more essential collection published all year.

Oh, and should you wonder if a third collection could possibly match this, I have a story of Jeff’s called “The Dismantled Invention of Fate” that will appear in my anthology The Starry Rift in mid-2007, and it is a complete peach of a story.

The contents of The Empire of Ice Cream are:

Introduction – Jonathan Carroll.

1. The Annals of Eelin-Ok
2. Jupiter’s Skull
3. A Night in the Tropics
4. The Empire of Ice Cream
5. The Beautiful Gelreesh
6. Boatman’s Holiday
7. Botch Town
8. A Man of Light
9. The Green Word
10. Giant Land
11. Coffins on the River
12. Summer Afternoon
13. The Weight of Words
14. The Trentino Kid