The Great Raven: World Fantasy Awards 2020

The award. Fair use.

Today was the end of the World Fantasy Convention 2020, though not for me, as I’m still making my way through recordings of panels I missed over the weekend. There have been some terrific panels, which I will share with you as soon as I get them sorted out in some kind of order. Today, I watched one on science in fantasy. One of the panellists was the fabulous Joe Haldeman, author of the classic The Forever War and other amazing books. I’ll post again tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here are the nominees and winners of the World Fantasy Awards. Unlike the Hugos, these are judged rather than voted for. The head of the con committee, Ginny Smith, introduced the con guests, each of whom made a speech, then the winners were announced by famous editors Ellen Datlow, who edits anthologies, and Gordon Van Gelder, who has also edited books, but is best known for the many years he spent editing Fantasy And SF, a magazine I haven’t tried yet, as it’s huge.

Most of the winners knew they had won and had prepared speeches, but one of them, Dr Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, hadn’t been told, for some reason, maybe they forgot. Anyway, her reaction was a delighted, “What, I won?” and somehow she managed to make a decent speech anyway. Her book was an academic tome about the role of race in a number of fantasy classics(see below). I tried to buy it when I went into the city today, but one shop said they didn’t stock it at all, and the other had it on their web site, but said it was print on demand, which is what they do these days when a book is basically out of print, but people still want it. I can only assume that, like many academic style books, they only printed a small number of copies. I said I was happy to order it, but the gent said he really wanted to contact the publisher and would get in touch with me when he heard. So I left my number. You can, it seems, get it direct from the (US) publisher, but if I can get it from a bookshop I would rather do that.

You can check out any of the titles below(some were on the Hugo short list and I have them)via the links. The winners are in bold.

I was thrilled to see at least one Aussie winner, Kathleen Jennings, for art. She has an unfair amount of talent, dammit - she can illustrate and write! But it’s nice to see our land down under represented!

World Fantasy Awards 2020

2020 Lifetime Achievement Awards

Rowena Morrill
Karen Joy Fowler

Novel

Queen of the Conquered, by Kacen Callender (Orbit)
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook Books/Orbit UK)
The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)
The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa (trans.Stephen Snyder) (Pantheon/Harvill Secker)

Novella

“The Butcher’s Table”, by Nathan Ballingrud (Wounds: Six Stories From the Border of Hell)
Desdemona and the Deep, by C.S.E. Cooney (Tor.com)
In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com)
The Deep, by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes (Saga Press/Hodder & Stoughton UK)
Silver in the Wood, by Emily Tesh (Tor.com)

Short Fiction

“For He Can Creep”, by Siobhan Carroll (Tor.com, July 10, 2019)
“Read After Burning”, by Maria Dahvana Headley, (A People’s Future of the United States)
“The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye”, by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, July-Aug. 2019)
“Blood is Another Word For Hunger”, by Rivers Solomon (Tor.com, July 24, 2019)
“Postlude to the Afternoon of a Faun”, by Jerome Stueart (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Mar./Apr. 2019)
“Everyone Knows That They‘re Dead. Do You?”, by Genevieve Valentine (The Outcast Hours)