Camestros Felapton

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More Dragon Award Projections

On July 25 or thereabouts, I’ll publish a list of works I’ve seen people put forward as Dragon Award nominees. The main sources are here: https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2017/07/02/trawling-for-dragon-links/

I’ve picked up a few others since but these are mainly a single author on Facebook or other social media waving vaugely at the awards and their books. In some cases the author didn’t mention the categories they suggest being nominated for – which could make a big difference depending on how the people running things handle votes splite across categories.

Meanwhile, the Dragon Awards really do owe Declan Finn some comission or at least a MVP award. While scrappy interest in the Dragons has been high, I think only Finn has posted multiple discussions of possible nominees that include a variety of suggestions (i.e. not just a single slate).

His latest list is here http://www.declanfinn.com/2017/07/the-flight-of-dragon-awards.html

I’ll add that to the pot.

camestrosfelapton

17 responses to “More Dragon Award Projections”

  1. You’ve made me think – what the heck to waste my single nomination on vs the hoards of multiple email addresses 🙂

    Most of the categories have me scratching my head wondering what I’ve even read that would qualify:
    YA – Summer in Orcus by Red Wombat (serialised late 2016, book release jan 2017ish I think) is literally the only YA I’ve read in the period. Good job it’s also really good.
    MilSF – The Last Good Man by Linda Nagata (2017) or Guns of Empire by Django Wexler (Aug 2016) would actually be a tricky choice.
    Alt-Hist – Empire Games by Charles Stross (Jan 2017) (More like divergent-history, but shrug)
    Apocalyptic – The Obelisk Gate (Aug 16) counts but by rights I should put it as Best Fantasy. Maybe I can claim The Stars are Legion (2017) is apocalyptic, although I’m not sure any of the characters are even humans from earth. It does have a collapsing civilisation though. Or, wait for it……The Collapsing Empire by Scalzi 🙂
    Horror – The Delirium Brief by Stross, just released and is probably the only horror-adjacent thing I’ve read this year.

    Best SF will clearly have to be Tenfox Gambit 🙂
    Fantasy – City of Blades was too early in 2016, and I’ve not read #3 yet 😦 Maybe I’ll promote Obelisk Gate to this spot.

    Down in the game-y categories the new Mansions of Madness board game 2nd edition is excellent so I’ll probably go with that. I’m sure I can think of some TV series as so on.

    The main problem is whether many of those authors would even thank me for nomming them for this?

    If I was going to offer any serious suggestions to the organisers (and I’m not) I’d say that the combination of odd eligibility window *and* odd categories is one complication too many – do one or the other, not both. Also allow Best Fantasy and SF to duplicate entries in the categories.

    Liked by 2 people

  2. I clicked through to Declan Finn’s blog, and this caught my eye:
    http://www.declanfinn.com/2017/07/pulprev-astounding-frontiers-trumptopia.html.

    “Speaking of short stories and anthologies, remember the Trumptopia short story collection? It was an idea where they would be a collection of short stories about how amazingly awesome Trump is — genres of SF, fantasy, etc. The same company had already done a “Trumpocalypse” collection, so the call for open submissions pitched this as the opposite end of the spectrum.

    …. And then the cover had Trump looking in a cabinet, at his collection of heads in jars.

    Yay.

    There was a very, very quick writer revolt. And by quick it started on … Wednesday. By the time I had heard about it on Thursday night, it was well under way. There was a conversation about changing the cover, and it looked like there would be a second cover. I thought the whole thing would blow over by Monday.

    By Saturday, it was already

    Cancelled by the publisher (he must have loved that cover)
    Got another publisher and a new title
    Had a new cover already drafted by … wait for it … Dawn Witzke.

    Well, that escalated quickly.”

    Like

  3. I did nominate for the Dragons, as well (once I realized I did, actually, have nominees for Alt History and MilSF, oddly enough.)
    Best SF – Seven Surrenders, Ada Palmer
    (Too Like the Lightning published too early)
    Best Fantasy – Silence Fallen, Patricia Briggs
    Best MilSF – Raven Stratagem, Yoon Ha Lee (Ninefox was published too early)
    Best Alt History – The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville
    Best Post-Apoc – The Obelisk Gate, NK Jemisin

    Liked by 1 person

  4. I clicked through to Finn’s blog, and found this… interesting:
    https://www.declanfinn.com/2017/07/pulprev-astounding-frontiers-trumptopia.html
    —-
    ‘Speaking of short stories and anthologies, remember the Trumptopia short story collection? It was an idea where they would be a collection of short stories about how amazingly awesome Trump is — genres of SF, fantasy, etc. The same company had already done a “Trumpocalypse” collection, so the call for open submissions pitched this as the opposite end of the spectrum.

    …. And then the cover had Trump looking in a cabinet, at his collection of heads in jars.

    Yay.

    There was a very, very quick writer revolt. And by quick it started on … Wednesday. By the time I had heard about it on Thursday night, it was well under way. There was a conversation about changing the cover, and it looked like there would be a second cover. I thought the whole thing would blow over by Monday.

    By Saturday, it was already

    Cancelled by the publisher (he must have loved that cover)
    Got another publisher and a new title
    Had a new cover already drafted by … wait for it … Dawn Witzke.

    Well, that escalated quickly.’

    Like

  5. Agents of Dreamland is very good, but it is also disturbing. If you’d like to make a triptych of novellas in dialogue with Lovecraft, it holds up with this year’s Hugo nominees. It’s less intensely personal than The Red Tree or The Drowning Girl (which are masterpieces of compelling point of view), probably because it has multiple narrators, sketched quickly but vividly. Secret government investigations, the New Horizons Pluto flyby, cults, analogue television signals, mycology… It all comes together to create the dark-mirror version of ‘sensawunda’ that the best horror evokes.

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      • I DNFed The Drowning Girl. That was such a disappointment — based on things people had said, I expected to love it. I haven’t been able to muster the enthusiasm to try Agents of Dreamland yet. I’m waiting to see if anyone says “If you liked Drowning, you’ll love Dreamland!” in which case I won’t be picking it up.

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      • No, Drowning & Dreamland are very different reading experiences; Drowning is all about being immersed in Imp’s unique perceptions of an event (or possibly two events) and the aftermath. Dreamland is is tying together disparate viewpoints & puzzle pieces to get a glimpse of a larger (vast & terrible) picture. Err, my opinion, of course.

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