Ditmars Open Now!

The Ditmar Awards, Australia's answer to the Hugos, have opened for voting. You do have to be a member of the Natcon to vote, but you don't have to go there - a supporting membership should be enough.

Here's the link to the web site:

 http://conflux.org.au/2013/03/27/ditmar-awards-voting-now-open/

And here is the list itself:

Best Novel
————————————————————————
* Sea Hearts, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)
* Bitter Greens, Kate Forsyth (Random House Australia)
* Suited (The Veiled Worlds 2), Jo Anderton (Angry Robot)
* Salvage, Jason Nahrung (Twelfth Planet Press)
* Perfections, Kirstyn McDermott (Xoum)
* The Corpse-Rat King, Lee Battersby (Angry Robot)

Best Novella or Novelette
————————————————————————
* “Flight 404”, Simon Petrie, in Flight 404/The Hunt for Red Leicester
(Peggy Bright Books)
* “Significant Dust”, Margo Lanagan, in Cracklescape (Twelfth Planet
Press)
* “Sky”, Kaaron Warren, in Through Splintered Walls (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Short Story
————————————————————————
* “Sanaa’s Army”, Joanne Anderton, in Bloodstones (Ticonderoga
Publications)
* “The Wisdom of Ants”, Thoraiya Dyer, in Clarkesworld 75
* “The Bone Chime Song”, Joanne Anderton, in Light Touch Paper Stand
Clear (Peggy Bright Books)
* “Oracle’s Tower”, Faith Mudge, in To Spin a Darker Stair (FableCroft
Publishing)

Best Collected Work
————————————————————————
* Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth
Planet Press)
* Epilogue, edited by Tehani Wessely (FableCroft Publishing)
* Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren, edited by Alisa Krasnostein
(Twelfth Planet Press)
* Light Touch Paper Stand Clear, edited by Edwina Harvey and Simon
Petrie (Peggy Bright Books)
* Midnight and Moonshine by Lisa L. Hannett and Angela Slatter, edited
by Russell B. Farr (Ticonderoga Publications)
* The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011, edited by Liz
Grzyb and Talie Helene (Ticonderoga Publications)

Best Artwork
————————————————————————
* Cover art, Nick Stathopoulos, for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight
Magazine 56 (ASIM Collective)
* Cover art, Kathleen Jennings, for Midnight and Moonshine (Ticonderoga
Publications)
* Illustrations, Adam Browne, for Pyrotechnicon (Coeur de Lion
Publishing)
* Cover art and illustrations, Kathleen Jennings, for To Spin a Darker
Stair (FableCroft Publishing)
* Cover art, Les Petersen, for Light Touch Paper Stand Clear (Peggy
Bright Books)

Best Fan Writer
————————————————————————
* Alex Pierce, for body of work including reviews in Australian
Speculative Fiction in Focus
* Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work including reviews in Not If You
Were The Last Short Story On Earth
* Grant Watson, for body of work including the “Who50” series in The
Angriest
* Sean Wright, for body of work including reviews in Adventures of a
Bookonaut

Best Fan Artist
————————————————————————
* Kathleen Jennings, for body of work including “The Dalek Game” and
“The Tamsyn Webb Sketchbook”

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium
————————————————————————
* The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond
* Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Alex
Pierce
* Antipodean SF, Ion Newcombe
* The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe
* Snapshot 2012, Alisa Krasnostein, Kathryn Linge, David McDonald, Helen Merrick, Ian Mond, Jason Nahrung et. al.
* Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus, Alisa Krasnostein, Tehani
Wessely, et. al.
* Galactic Chat, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Sean Wright

Best New Talent
————————————————————————
* David McDonald
* Faith Mudge
* Steve Cameron
* Stacey Larner

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review
————————————————————————
* Alisa Krasnostein, Kathryn Linge, David McDonald, and Tehani Wessely, for review of Mira Grant’s Newsflesh, in ASIF
* Tansy Rayner Roberts, for “Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy.
Let’s Unpack That.”, in tor.com
* David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Tehani Wessely, for the “New Who in Conversation” series
* Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene, for “The Year in Review”, in The Year’s
Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011
* Rjurik Davidson, for “An Illusion in the Game for Survival”, a review
of Reamde by Neal Stephenson, in The Age

I see that the wonderful Sea Hearts and Bitter Greens are both on the Best Novel list - they were both in the Aurealis Awards. And Light Touch Paper Stand Clear has a short listing in the best collection, which is a thrill for me, as I was honoured by having a story in it. And one of the stories, by Joanne Anderton, is also on the short list.

Well, it was a fabulous collection and I am so proud of Edwina and Simon for the work they did on it and the great choices they made in the stories! I also must congratulate Simon Petrie whose novella Flight 404 is on the list. I proofread that. Maybe the free downloads Peggy Bright Books did of this helped. If you want to read it now, it's not expensive and is able to be bought on the Peggy Bright Books web site.

I must also congratulate my book blog and teacher colleague Sean Wright, the Blogonaut, for having his web site up there. Here is a link to Sean's web site, with his most recent post:

http://bookonaut.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/ditmars-2013-best-novel-comments.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Bookonaut+(Adventures+of+a+Bookonaut)

Even if you can't vote, it's worth checking out.

Congratulations to everyone on the list!