long live the uncomfortable truth (a christmas post)

Every month, one of the board-members of the SA Writers' Centre writes a piece for publication in our monthly newsletter. It was recently my turn, and the text (for those of a non-South Australian bent) is below the cut.

Reading over it again brings home to me the not unrelated facts that (1) Christmas cheer is just not my thing, and (2) I'm getting grouchy (or at least more political) in my dotage.

( Board's Eye View, December 2007 )

(With thanks to Tim Powers for allowing me the quote from his Writers of the Future/Clarion notes.)

Polemics aside, all the very best of the season to you and yours. I hope 2008 brings an improvement on whatever lifted you up or got you down this year. This my first Christmas ever with a family in a home we call our own, and the first in a very long while with a Prime Minister I can respect, so I'm feeling pretty optimistic. Here's to good times for us all!

RIP the Nebulas?

It's been a tough year for the SFWA. On top of everything, it's now short of recommendations for the Nebula Awards--which may have gone a little bit wobbly on their wheels in recent years but are still among the field's most respected awards.

If you're a member, you would've received the call to vote via email this morning. If you're a member like me, you probably haven't read nearly enough to consider yourself able to vote, and that makes you feel vaguely guilty. Well, I'm considering shucking off that guilt and voting anyway. If enough of us do the same, all our misinformed opinions will mash together to form some kind of uber-gestalt, and the correct result will pop out of its black box like magic.

Below is a list of the works I've enjoyed this year (not counting the works already on the existing list (here)). I'm not 100% sure any more how the rules of the Nebulas work, but I'm going to vote anyway. You can vote for them as well (here), if you're short on inspiration, or you can suggest titles I might not have thought of. Note that I'm not trying to kick-start a bloc-vote. I'm just trying to get things moving. Only one member in five is recommending works for the ballot at the moment. The field has long been too big for any one person to keep in touch with, so we need put our faith in our collective unconscious and vote regardless. This is democracy in action.

Ragamuffin by Tobias S Buckell (novel)
Plague Year by Jeff Carlson (novel)
Darkspace by Marianne de Pierres (novel)
"WikiWorld" by Paul di Filippo (novelette)
Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon (novel)
Mainspring by Jay Lake (novel)
Magic's Child by Justine Larbalestier (Andre Norton)
The Darkness Within by Jason Nahrung (novel)
Lady Friday by Garth Nix (Andre Norton)
Set the Seas on Fire by Chris Roberson (novel)
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (novel)
"Kiosk" by Bruce Sterling (novella)
Extras by Scott Westerfeld (Andre Norton)
"Julian: A Christmas Story" by Robert Charles Wilson (novella)
Battlestar Galatica: "Razor" (script)
Doctor Who: "Blink" (script)

I really wish I'd had time to read or watch more. There are bound to have been excellent and worthy works out there that I just haven't seen. Still, better a list than none at all. (And while I'm in the mood to plug, I would be remiss not to mention that my own Saturn Returns and Cenotaxis are eligible too, for the novel and novella categories respectively. Just a reminder, which you should feel free to ignore at will. :-)

As of this moment, there are insufficient recommendations to make a full ballot. So get cracking! Spread the word if you're not a member yourself. The deadline is the end of this year. That doesn't give us long to keep this fine tradition alive. What, after all, are we going to argue and bitch about if the Nebulas die?