Sean Williams

This one’s for those in Brisbane, either permanently or just for the weekend of the Aurealis Awards.

I’ll be at the most excellent Pulp Fiction with Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld from 11.30-12.30 on Saturday, enjoying a very relaxed signing/hang-out session.  Come along and say hi!  This might the last time I'm out of the cave until March.

I'm working on a bunch of sekrit things at the moment, so apologies for not posting much. There will be news one day! For now, here's a quick video I put together to say thanks to Paul Cornell for letting me play in his fantasy cricket tournament, in which I came last, of course. It's shot in my study, featuring various toys and things I have lying about the place. Sharp-eyed viewers will recognise my Peter Mac being put to good use, among other things.



Thanks also to Garth for his hilarious quote!

Here's the press release:

In celebration of the 2009 Ditmar Awards, Ticonderoga Publications is offering fans of Sean Williams a special deal. For every order of Aurealis Award-winning Magic Dirt, we'll send you a free, signed copy of Ditmar-nominated Earth Ascendant. Offer available until the announcement of the awards at Conjecture in Adelaide.

To take advantage of this excellent deal, simply order Magic Dirt now at indiebooksonline.com

"This is a book no self-respecting lover of Australian speculative fiction can afford to be without." — Aurealis

"This is an enthralling collection." — ASiF

I reckon that's a pretty good deal.  Pass it on to anyone who might be interested.

Kim Wilkins wrote a very important paper last year* on the treatment of fantasy literature in mainstream media, which I'll be nominating for the Atheling this year. I urge you to do the same. If you haven't read it, click here for a PDF. Here's the summary:


Fantasy, naturally, comes out rather poorly. If nothing else, read on to see how we fare, column inches-wise, in terms of book reviews in major papers.  It's shameful, but not surprising.

* Kim Wilkins, "Popular genres and the Australian literary community: the case of fantasy fiction", Journal of Australian Studies 32.2 (2008): 265-278.

The Hugo nomination window is open, and because a couple of people have asked me privately, let me just say this:

Cenotaxis, my standalone novella published by Monkeybrain Books, is eligible for nomination in that category.

That is all.

Been white-noised by busy-ness.

Will return to normal soon.

Hoping to see lots of smiling faces at the Aurealis Awards bash this weekend.

Are you going?

Thanks, everyone, for the best wishes (the haiku remedies particularly helped). I'm back on-deck now and pondering which news to blog first: Swancon, the launches of Magic Dirt and The Changeling, finishing The Grand Conjunction, the Ditmar Awards, my Dickless status, the wonderful rain in Adelaide...?

I guess I'll start with the first one and work my way through. Swancon was a blast. Thanks to everyone involved for putting on another wonderful show. There have been reports posted on-line and I don't see the need in repeating what's been said many times over, but the guests were wonderful, the masquerade was a hoot, and the weekend in general went by in a happy, drunken blur. "Tick...tick...tick...tick...BOOM!"

A very big thank you to everyone who attended the launches, and even engaged in audience participation when pressed to. Magic Dirt is out and proud, and available from Ticonderoga in two splendid editions. Buy it now, if only for the cover! The Changeling is just as beautiful, imho, and a very different read. The feedback has been wonderful. I hope every kid in Australia reads and is freaked out by it.

Saturn Returns might have missed out on the Philip K Dick Award (despite Jay Lake's most excellent spruiking of it on the night), but it was still a splendid spread to be part of. Receiving the Ditmar Award at Swancon was icing on the cake, really, and I'm enormously grateful to everyone who voted for it. Kudos to everyone else nominated, and congratulations to the other winners on the night. This is such a talented and good-natured community. There will never be enough awards to go around.

My damaged status had everything to do with sleepless nights and exposure to the real world, and bore no relation at all to the cold and wet Adelaide to which I returned home. Perfect weather, really, to dive into the final edits of The Grand Conjunction, the last book in the Astropolis series. It's been a long and winding road, writing this book; I'm both relieved and sad it's done. So often I don't know what books are about until I've finished them, and in this case it appears I've spawned another romance: one in which the collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda plays a role, but a romance all the same. I'm a sucker for it, I guess.

My next projects are The Scarecrow (the last of this round of kids' books) and completely reorganising my study (you know, because there's never a good time so it might as well be now). Lined up after that are a thriller, another YA novel, PhD stuff, and appearances here and there. I'll report on the latter as they grow nearer.

For now, I'm off to have some soup.

Thanks for being such a wonderful bunch of people. I am sending you all happy vibes.

Here's a quick conversation between Jessica Wade, Ginjer Buchanan and me that covers all sorts of fun topics: the Philip K Dick nomination, where Astropolis is going, the weather in Darwin, chundering, and our favourite PKD novels. Enjoy!

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?

Our handsome new Prime Minister has just created two awards for literature, one for fiction and one for non-fiction. They will be the third most lucrative in the world (after the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award (£100,000) and the Man Booker (£50,000)), coming in tax-free at AU$100,000 each.

Sounds good? Maybe, maybe not.

Here's an oped I wrote for ABC Online. All comments welcome, but I encourage you to post your opinions on the ABC where they'll be more visible.

(With thanks to Gary Kemble for guiding this little rant into existence, to Cristen Tilley for the title, to Jeremy Fisher of the ASA, Barbara Wiesner of the SA Writers' Centre, and Sue Hill and Fiona Lange of The Big Book Club for double-checking my facts, and to Garth Nix, Chris Lawson, Stephen Dedman and Deb Biancotti for letting me steal their best ideas.)