Locus Awards result: #2 plus Hall of Fame plus THE IDES OF OCTEMBER

[ckovacs]

A belated post to mention that The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny Volumes 1-6 finished #2 in the Locus Awards for Best Collection of 2009.

I'm delighted with the result; NESFA Press is a small press and its titles have much smaller print runs and circulation than titles from the big presses. Plus it was my first-ever editing job so I can retire from that on a high note!

I attended the Locus banquet on June 26th in Seattle and it was a lot of fun. Co-editor Ann Crimmins was also in attendance. We later attended the Hall of Fame induction ceremony where Roger Zelazny was installed; Walter Jon Williams gave the induction speech, Neil Gaiman gave a speech via recorded home video, and Trent Zelazny was there to accept on behalf of the family.

And for those wondering, we're in the final proofing stages (I think!) of The Ides of Octember: A Pictorial Bibliography of Roger Zelazny. The 700 images plus the index have taken a lot of time. Publication should be by the end of the summer.

Chris

 

[Ian Whates]

Many congrats with the #2, Chris (though I reckon it should have been #1), and on the six volumes themselves, which are a magnificent achievement.

As editor and proprietor of an even smaller press than NESFA, I can appreciate how much such recognition means (though winning the occasional BSFA Award and being aknowledged by the likes of Gardner Dozois in 'Years Best' anthologies is as much as I've yet managed).

 

[ckovacs]

I just learned that the collection actually received the most first place votes. But because of the weighted balloting system that Locus uses, since there wasn't a majority on the first round of counting, the subsequent rounds of counting (in which the lowest places are eliminated and votes redistributed) led to it falling to second place. Oh, well. In a normal voting system it would have won.

Chris

 

[Snowdog]

I'm glad the books have had the recognition they deserved and hope sales have been good as well.

 

[ckovacs]

I'm glad the books have had the recognition they deserved and hope sales have been good as well.

On the subject of recognition, well, an odd point to make. I'm Canadian and as such, I'm supposed to be eligible for the Auroras, the Canadian SF Achievement awards. NESFA Press is a fan-run not-for-profit organization (New England Science Fiction Association), and contributors are not paid for their work on a project like this. So I qualified for the fan achievement category.

The Auroras, like the Hugos, work in two stages. Nominations are made from which the top five become the finalists that people then vote on.

For my work as editor of the books, and author of the biography, I received nominations in the Best Work in English (Other) category but not enough to make the final ballot. (You can see the nomination stats here: http://prix-aurora-awards.ca/English/AuroraHistory/nominationStats/EnglishOther.pdf I got about 27 nominations in total for various things. Plus the organizers tell me that there were more than that but when someone indicated my name but not a particular work, the nomination was deleted.)

But also for my work as a fan, as editor of the books, author of the biography and story notes, and the excerpt published in the semiprozine The New York Review of Science Fiction, I received about the same number of nominations for Fan Accomplishment (Other), enough to put me in roughly third or fourth place and on the ballot.

But you know what? The people who run the Auroras deleted all of my nominations in the fan category. (You can see the nomination stats here http://prix-aurora-awards.ca/English/AuroraHistory/nominationStats/FanOther.pdf My name is absent even though most people who voted for me put my name in this category as well.)

I asked them why my name had been deleted. Despite NESFA being a well-known fan and not-for-profit organization, the Canadians running the Auroras say they had no idea. They replied "Since the books were sold professionally such as at conventions and through Amazon and other places it was deemed they were professional." [Note: anyone can sell on Amazon or at conventions by paying fees and it doesn't make one a "professional."] And even though each nominator had to specify their email address and home address so that their nomination could be queried and their eligibility as a nominator could be verified (since only Canadian citizens and residents can nominate), no one bothered to check with the nominators, the nominee (me), or NESFA Press, or NYRSF, or anyone else as to whether I was eligible as a fan or not. And so all nominations for me in the fan category were arbitrarily deleted. The nomination stats were only recently published, well after the final ballot had been created, voted upon, and the awards handed out.

I shake my head over it, but in the end it doesn't matter. I didn't do the project to win any awards and I'm simply delighted that the books have been well received and appreciated. The project was designed to honor Roger Zelazny and to bring his short work back into print in a definitive way. That goal has been accomplished. But it's annoying for my own compatriots to make a dumb mistake like this. Some of the folks at NESFA are also annoyed about this, that another fan organization would claim that NESFA is a professional organization. It's also a truism that people are generally better recognized and appreciated for their accomplishments away from home then they ever are on their home turf. And that's probably true here as well. At least the Locus voters spoke clearly.

Chris