I filled out my Hugo and Campbell nomination form tonight, which reminded me that it’s time to ask you all for your thoughts as to whom you would nominate for a Hugo and/or Campbell this year. But before I open the thread to your recommendations, allow me to share some thoughts and recommendations of my own:

1. If you’re a Hugo nominator this year, and you are at a loss in terms of people to nominate in the Best Professional Artist category, allow me to suggest the three fine gentlemen with whom I have worked this year: John Harris, who did the cover to The Ghost Brigades; Shelley Eshkar, who did the cover for The Android’s Dream; and Bob Eggleton, who did the cover and inside illustrations for Subterranean magazine issue #4. Now, to be sure, there are many fine artists eligible year, but these are the ones who did stuff for me and I feel obliged to remind you to consider them.

2. Likewise, if you’re stuck for someone to nominate in the category of Best Editor, Long Form, may I commend to you Patrick Nielsen Hayden, editor of both The Ghost Brigades and The Android’s Dream? Aside from editing these two fine novels, I will remind people that he also edited two of last year’s Hugo nominees (Old Man’s War and Learning the World) and acquired for Tor the eventual Hugo winner, Spin. Which is to say, he has a record of fine editorship, which is continued on this year; aside from my two books he’s also edited Widdershins by Charles de Lint, Farthing by Jo Walton and The Armies of Memory by John Barnes, among others. Not a bad year, I’d say.

3. Also, if you’re stuck on what stories you should nominate in the Best Short Story category, please remember that there are many truly excellent short stories in the John Scalzi-edited edition of Subterranean magazine, a free pdf version of which you may download right here. There’s damn fine work here from folks like Allen Steele, Elizabeth Bear, Jo Walton, Nick Sagan and about a dozen others. I’m not eligible to be nominated in the Best Editor category (I don’t edit enough), but if one of the stories that I picked for the magazine managed to get on the ballot, well, I’d feel shiny.

4. Let me also again note that “Who Put the Bomp”? by Nick Mamatas and Eliani Torres, which appeared right here on Whatever, is eligible for nomination as well. If it were to hit the ballot, I believe it would be the first time that a story that was published on a personal Web site had managed that. And I think that would be cool.

5. As the editor of Subterranean issue #4, it would be remiss of me not to note that Rachel Swirsky, Ann Leckie, Dean Cochrane and David Klecha all had their first pro publications in its pages — and are therefore eligible to be nominated for The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer this year. Read their stories; I think you’ll see they make a good argument. Let me also mention that two members of my Campbell class from last year, Sarah Monette and Brandon Sanderson, are eligible this year as well, and well worth your consideration.

6. Let me take this opportunity to encourage folks who are eligible to nominate for this year’s Hugos to indeed nominate, because this year a very large percentage of nominators are likely to be Japanese, and nominating works, editors, artists and fans who are themselves Japanese. Now, I happen to think this is both a natural and laudable consequence of having the Worldcon in Japan — there ought to be Japanese works, editors, artists and fans nominated this year. But I think it’d be nice if the Western hemisphere gets a shoutout in the various categories as well. So if you can nominate — nominate!

7. Inasmuch as I’ve just given a number of suggestions for Hugo nominations above, and I have prodded all y’all to nominate for the Hugo, as promised I declare this the 2007 Hugo and Campbell Nomination Thread, in which I exhort you, the faithful Whatever readers, to offer up the books, stories, fans, artists and editors you feel folks should consider while nominating for the Hugo and the Campbell. Here are the categories; feel free to pimp in as many categories as you like. But there are two rules:

a) Don’t pimp yourself or your own work (although you can pimp artists and editors who have worked on your books);

b) Don’t pimp the host’s work. He’s already done that; no need to do it again. Let’s hear about others.

Got it? Excellent.

Now: Who/what do you want nominators to remember when they’re filling out their Hugo nomination ballots?

…I now have a Facebook profile. Because it amuses me to have one, that’s why.

I’ll be at Boskone again this year, because there’s nothing finer than Boston in February, or apparently so I’ve been led to believe, and also, the NESFA folks are fine people who have been very kind to me, so I like to return the favor and let them know I appreciate the support. While at Boskone, I will be doing various things, some of which are legal, and some of which are even planned. Here are my currently scheduled panels and appearances:

Friday

Not a damn thing. You’ll probably find me wandering the halls or at the bar.

Saturday

10:00am: New and Old Horizons: Great Worlds in SF and Fantasy
Panel Description: There is none. I guess we’ll make it up as we go along.
Other Panelists: Stephen C. Fisher, Karl Schroeder
Thoughts: I suspect we’ll be geeking out here, talking about the worlds we like in sf/f, discussing world building in a general sense, and perhaps talking a little bit about how we’ve built up our own universes. I’ve not been on a panel with Mr. Fisher, but Karl is tons of fun on a panel, and also of course smart as hell, and he’s just built a really fabulous world in his Virga series. So this should be interesting. I am the moderator of this panel.

1:00pm: Autographing
Other Autographers: Paul Park, Melissa Scott
Thoughts: Uh, I’m autographing. Bring books.

3:00pm: Blogging and Live Journals in SF
Panel Description: Blogging is having an impact not only on the world at large but on the SF community in particular. Blogs tell us more about the people in the field, the way the field works, and who is who — and a pace and with a distribution that few if any fanzines could ever match. Blogs influence the directions of our community, can impact awards by making works or their creators better known, and perhaps even influence the works being created. (Or, perhaps the impact is overstated, as the impact of blogs in general may be.) Can writers use blogs to market themselves? Are blogs a way to engage the community (and maybe even potential voters)? The panel looks at blogs within our community and their impact.
Other Panelists: John Joseph Adams, Kathryn Cramer, James D. MacDonald, Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Thoughts: We’re going to have to work a bit to make this not be exactly like every other “blogging and SF” panel in the last three years, but with this lineup I think we can manage. Also, I’ll be moderating this panel too, so I’ll have some leeway in terms of directing the conversation.

4:00pm: Consciousness, AI, and Downloaded Personalities: Separating the possible from the unlikely
Panel Description: Presumably we might already be capable of counting the brain’s 100 billion neurons. How long till we’re also up to modeling? Storing? Streaming your mind like a 99-cent iTune? Creating it from scratch? What’s the latest science on this? What are some practical difficulties? Would this prove there’s no soul? How big is the leap from Clarke’s HAL 9000 to Banks’s Culture Minds?
Other Panelists: Jeffrey A. Carver, Matthew Jarpe, Marvin Minsky, Karl Schroeder
Thoughts: Cool, Marvin Minsky. I am moderating yet again.

Sunday

10:00am: The Best New Writers: Recent Campbell Award Winners Talk
Panel Description: Fresh winners of our field’s Newbie Nobel give a tip of their tiaras to other notable up-and-comers. What are their best new stories? What topics or trends obsess them? What magazines, small presses, websites, or other venues should we be watching to catch the greatest of the latest? And is it easy being green?
Other Panelists: Elizabeth Bear, Wen Spencer
Thoughts: Newbie Nobel? I prefer “Precocious Pulitzer,” myself.

1:00pm: Beyond the iPod: Neat New Gadgets Last Year and This
Panel Description: From Blu-ray to Xbox 360 to iPhone, Wii to musical pillows to petcams, the nerdy bling has been piling up lately. What’s actually in it for early adopters? What trends look meaningful? What’s coming up soon? Bring your shiniest new toy to show off. Extra geekoboo for the first self-parking Lexus!
Other Panelists: Tobias Buckell, Mark L. Olson, Edie Stern
Thoughts: No doubt I will have many exciting Windows Vista tales to tell by that time.

2:00pm: Literary Beer
Thoughts: For those who don’t know what this is, this is me hanging out in the bar, talking to people who sign up to chat with me. I think next year I’m going to request that they not schedule my lit beer/kaffeeklatch at the same time as people are trying to get the hell out of the convention because they have flights to catch, because it’s likely that this will end up with me and Toby Buckell (who is having his own literary beer at the same time) sitting by ourselves and muttering bitterly. At least I know where he’ll be so we can catch a cab to the airport together. On the other hand, if you ever wanted to have quality time with me by yourself, this will probably be an excellent time to have it.

When I am not on a panel, I am likely to be found wandering about, so if you see me don’t be hesitant to come up and say hello. I’m not exactly the shy and retiring type.

I’ll also note that I will have at least one item in the Mike Ford Auction & Extravaganza. There be may be more than one if I can motivate my lazy ass; no, I won’t be more specific than that, except to say that if I mange to rouse myself from laziness and do this other thing for the auction, it damn well better get a pretty high bid. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

So, who is going to Boskone this year?

And now, here is Krissy, showing off her cleaning handiwork. Despite the unfathomable mess of my office, Krissy was able to clean in just slightly over an hour, which is not so much an indication that my office was not actually all that dirty as it is an indication that she is just that good at chaos management. Reason #17,592 why I have the most awesome wife EVAR.

Don’t care about the Bears, don’t care about the Colts, and, more to the point, don’t really care much about football. Any really interesting ads will show up on YouTube. Therefore: No Super Bowl watching plans. Will probably get some reading done.

You?

Krissy entered my office with a sweatband made of plastic trashbags and spoke wisdom: “In order to clean a mess, one must first remove the source of the mess,” she said. This was her excuse for kicking me out of the room.

Then she closed the door.

Then she started playing ABBA.

I don’t suspect my office stands a chance.

I have been exiled to the bedroom, from which I am not allowed to emerge until Krissy is done cleaning. I believe that I mess with her cleaning chi. Fortunately I have been given beverages and a laptop. I may survive. which is more than I can say for the mess in my office.