Hey, Anticipation attendees:

Just to let you know, when I do my fiction reading on Saturday at 10am with Peter Watts and Jon Courtenay Grimwood, I’m bringing an ARC of The God Engines with me to give away. To someone. At the reading. If you want to have a chance to be the one who gets it, then you should show up. To the reading. On Saturday at 10am. With me, Peter Watts and Jon Courtenay Grimwood.

Also, when I do my Best Related Book reading on Friday at 12:30pm, with Farah Mendlesohn and Paul Kincaid, I’m bringing a copy of my chapbook Waiting for Athena with me to give away. To someone. At the reading! And etc. Same deal as above: Must be present to have a chance to win. If you’re not there YOU WILL ABSOLUTELY LOSE. In more ways than one. And that would be sad.

So to recap: Two readings, two giveaways. Simple! See you there.

Here on the eve of Anticipation, SFSignal is asking folks a few questions about the Hugo Best Novel category in general and this year’s slate in particular, so if you’re interested in seeing what some folks have to say about it, here you go. I don’t find the conclusions particularly controversial, up to and including which book is the panel’s favorite to win (hint: it’s not mine, but that’s fine, as I don’t expect mine to win either. But, you know, I’d take it).

What’s more interesting to me are the books that people list as “should be on the list but aren’t” among which are at least a couple I was personally surprised were not on the slate this year. I won’t suggest that any of the books on the short list don’t deserve to be there (because they all do, in my opinion, because as I’ve noted before I think it’s a generally strong year for the category), but I will say that if the Gods of the Hugo came down and told me that I had to decline this year’s nomination and put something else in its place, I’d probably let Matter (Iain Banks) and The Gone-Away World (Nick Harkaway) mud wrestle for it, and I have a whole list of other books to offer up if they were to splatter themselves to a tie. But that’s the nice and terrible thing about having a good year for SF/F novels, and so few nomination slots.