2008 World Fantasy Nominations

Hey folks, if you were at last year's World Fantasy convention, or have a membership for this year's World Fantasy convention, you can fill out a nomination ballot for the World Fantasy Awards. The ballot must be post-marked by June 30, 2008, or you can send your choices in via e-mail.

"But wait!" you cry. "The World Fantasy Awards are a juried award!"

Ah yes, but the top two vote getters via this nomination process automatically get on the ballot. And not that being on the ballot makes you more likely to be picked by the judges from among the final candidates, it does make you more likely to win an award over the people who are not on the ballot. Since the world did not explode when I posted my Hugo nominations, here are my World Fantasy Award nominations.

LIFE ACHIEVEMENT
Howard Waldrop
Terry Brooks
Anne McCaffery
Terry Pratchett
Michael Whelan

This one was tough for me. A lot of the people that I felt were deserving of the award have passed away, and only living people can be nominated for the World Fantasy Award. So I asked my non-genre friends about fantasy/speculative authors/people they knew. I got a lot of great ideas, but I only have five spots. I gave serious consideration to Joe R. Lansdale, Tom Canty, and Tim Burton, but in the end I went with the list above.
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NOVEL
Chirstopher Barzak - One for Sorrow (Bantam)
Hal Duncan - Ink (Del Rey)
Ekaterina Sedia - Secret History of Moscow (Prime)
Catheryenne M. Valente - Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice (Bantam)
Mark Teppo - The Oneiromantic Mosaic of Harry Potemkin (Farrago's Wainscott)

I know a lot of people will see this list of novels and wonder what the heck is wrong with me. I can only pull from the work I've read. The Barzak was my favorite book I read last year. The Duncan, Sedia, and Valente are all extremely well-written and enjoyable books. And the Teppo was a lot of fun and very challenging. I don't know that it will get enough nominations to make the ballot or that the awards jury will place it on the ballot, but perhaps I'll get a few more people to go look at it and enjoy it.
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NOVELLA
Elizabeth Hand - Illyria (PS Publishing)
Jay Lake - Crossing the Seven (Logorrhea/Bantam)

I didn't read a lot of novellas from last year (by World Fantasy definition, anything more than 10,000 words but less than 40,000 words). I read both of these, and lucky for me they are both great pieces.
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SHORT FICTION
Daniel Abraham - "The Cambist and Lord Iron" (Logorrhea/Bantam)
Theodora Goss - "Singing of Mount Abora" (Logorrhea/Bantam)
Jeff VanderMeer - "Appoggiatura" (Logorrhea/Bantam)
Rachel Swirsky - "Post-Human Creation Myth" (Electric Velocipede #13)
Brendan Connell - "Dr. Black and the Village of Stones" (Electric Velocipede #12)

I think it's fairly transparent what I'm doing here. I read a lot of short fiction last year, but I'm not ashamed to nominate from the things that I've edited. That being said, picking and choosing from among what I edited was tough enough.
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ANTHOLOGY
Logorrhea - John Klima, editor (Bantam)
Inferno - Ellen Datlow, editor (Tor)
Wizards - Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, editors (Berkley)
Best American Fantasy - Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer, and Matthew Cheney, editors (Prime)

I know some people won't nominate themselves. Again, I don't have a problem with it. And if people are put off by the fact that I nominate myself, there's not much I can do about that. I know that most (all?) of the year's best reprint anthologies have taken stories from the anthology and Locus recommended it, so I have to feel that it was one of the best anthologies from last year. It was my favorite.
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COLLECTION
Imago Sequence - Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)
Things Will Never Be The Same - Howard Waldrop (Old Earth Books)
Hart & Boot & Other Stories - Tim Pratt (Night Shade Books)
Portable Childhoods - Ellen Klages (Tachyon)
Past Magic - Ian R. MacLeod (PS Publishing)

I thought the Baird collection was fantastic. And I think Ellen Klages is very under-rated (or at least there are not enough conversations about her writing) and I would be well-pleased to see her on the ballot.
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ARTIST
Jon Foster
John Picacio
Stephan Martiniere
Daniel Dos Stantos
Tom Kidd

Making up for my Hugo faux pas, I nominated artists who I felt provided some exceptional artwork for last year. Again, you can see a nice gallery of last year's covers here. I don't think the gallery is complete, but it gives a well-rounded example of what was done last year. Martiniere is perhaps a little too science fictiony for this award, but I really like his work.
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SPECIAL AWARD PROFESSIONAL
Juliet Ulman for editing
Ann VanderMeer for editing Weird Tales
James Frenkel for editing
Alan Beatts and Jude Feldman for Borderlands bookstore
Jason Williams & Jeremy Lassen for Night Shade Books

I added links to people so that you can see what they worked on last year. The Night Shade link is a search I did in Amazon's advanced search. I searched for Night Shade Books as publisher with the limit of 'during 2007' to try and get the work they published last year. Jason and Jeremy can check its accuracy.
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SPECIAL AWARD NON-PROFESSIONAL
John Klima for Electric Velocipede
Matt Kressel for Sybil's Garage/Sense Five Press
Neil Clarke, Nick Mamatas, and Sean Wallace for Clarkesworld Magazine
Deborah Layne for Wheatland Press
Darin Bradley and Aaron Leis for Farrago's Wainscott

And again, I nominate myself. I wasn't sure if Deb Layne should be in this category or in Professional. I decided to put her in this category since that's where she's been nominated before. Hopefully that's not wrong. Otherwise I've got three newish short fiction markets that I think deserve some more attention. Granted, should we all get on the ballot I will root against them, but until that happens, I'll lend my support.