Last call for BFS 2007 nominations

Filed by: Darren on May 7, 2007 at 9:46
Filed In: Books, Publishing

The British Fantasy Society If you're a British Fantasy Society member, you have until the end of the day to send in your nominations for this year's British Fantasy Awards for work published or produced during 2006. The voting will then open sometime in the next couple of months and the winners will be announced at this year's Fantasycon in September.

There are two new categories this year: 'Best non-fiction' (I'll go out on a limb and predict that Cinema Macabre is a good prospect for that one) and the rather nebulous-sounding 'Best Newcomer' (for a specific title first published in 2006? A specific project or venture first launched in 2006? A writer first published, anywhere, in 2006?); for which recommendations are sought, but which will be decided by a panel of judges.

Slightly annoyingly, the BFS still haven't addressed the issue of the 'Best Small Press' category, which I've been muttering about for years. In recent years the shortlist has included a number of small presses (as you'd most likely understand the term to apply: independent amateur and / or semi-pro publishers, in other words) as well as small press publications (one year both PS Publishing and its magazine publication Postscripts were both short-listed, which most probably split the vote) and even websites; our own UKSFBN-precursor site, The Alien Online, was short-listed a couple of times in recent years. Which was very gratifying, of course, but also extremely wrong, as none of us (myself, Sandy Auden and our fellow contributors) would ever have considered ourselves to be a 'small press' per se.

Hence my minor agitation towards re-naming the category something like 'Best Independent Press or Publication', which I think could conceivably cover a multitude of sins and also be a lot more comprehensible to the BFS voters. I suggested it when I was on the committee a few years back, then brought it up at a couple of AGMs, but was told I had to send some sort of official letter of request to the committee. Never quite got round to doing that (so I suppose I can't have been that bothered, really...) but partly also because I didn't want it to sound like sour grapes on my part.

The committee has, however, finally combined the 'Best Anthology' and 'Best Collection' awards (presumably to free up enough in the kitty for the new, 'Best non-fiction' statuette) so fair play to them. Hey, I wonder if websites could be nominated for that new 'Best non-fiction' category? Hmmm. It doesn't specifically say so on the voting info page. Too late, anyhow. I sent in my recommendations a week ago.

And now, all you BFS members should do the same.

Filed on: May 7, 2007
Filed under: Books, Publishing
Tagged with: British-Fantasy-Awards |

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3 Responses to 'Last call for BFS 2007 nominations'

Christopher Teague on May 9th, 2007 2:04 pm

I was following the "Best Newcomer Award" discussion on the boards, and at the time it coincided with the death of David Gemmell. The notion was to create the "David Gemmell Award" for Best Newcomer... this has obviously fallen by the wayside.

No offence to the memory of Sydney Bounds, but he's hardly a well-known figure...

As for the amalgam of Best Collection/Anthology, the two are similar yet different: a collection is one author, whereas an anthology is multiple. There will be much splitting of votes this year...
Ariel on May 9th, 2007 2:13 pm

As for the amalgam of Best Collection/Anthology, the two are similar yet different: a collection is one author, whereas an anthology is multiple.

You're quite right mate. But then again, you're a small press publisher, so it's an meaningful distinction to make, from your point of view.

But from the point of view of the majority of book-buyers and readers, both formats are both just a big book o' short stories at the end of the day. And given that big books o' short stories don't sell anywhere near as well as novels, is there really any need for two separate awards?

It would be better to attempt to recognise 'Best Fantasy Novel' and 'Best Horror Novel', or have a category for YA / Children's writing, to recognise the endeavours being made to attract younger readers to the genre, surely?

And personally, I'd like to see other areas of writing-related endeavour awarded - best sf/fantasy/horror blog, for instance - something that recognised that publishing has changed radically and dramatically over the last few years and that the BFS actually has its finger somewhere near the pulse... ;)
Christopher Teague on May 10th, 2007 8:31 am

And personally, I'd like to see other areas of writing-related endeavour awarded - best sf/fantasy/horror blog, for instance

Which would come under the Non-Fiction category, thinking about it. Looking at the awards over the years, there was originally a Best Film.

I suppose it's all down to cost... we could sub-divide til the cows come home, or the cells degrade.