Our dog in her natural habitat:

Photo by Krissy, who took it whilst I was away.

Hey, kids, look! It’s Hugh, the Hugo-Impaled Headcrab! And he has something he wants to say to us all! Let’s lean in close (but not too close) and listen to what he has to say:

“Hello, geeks of Earth! Did you know that this is science fiction awards nomination season? Well it is! Hugo nominations are due within the next month, and for those of you humans who are also members of SFWA, Nebula nominations are due by the end of the week! There’s no time to lose! So don’t just stand there like a headcrab impaled on a Hugo! Get nominating!”

What wise and telling words, Hugh. Yes, indeed, it’s time to make those nominations, and in doing so let the world know what you think is the best science fiction of the year.

But wait: You say you know what you’re going to nominate in some categories but not in others? You say that you wouldn’t mind hearing suggestions about what to read so as to consider it for nominations? You also say that you wouldn’t mind sharing your own suggestions for Hugo and Nebula-worthy work in the past year?

Excellent. Because as it happens, I’m creating this very thread to be a repository for science fiction award nomination suggestions. Geeks of the world, fill this thread with the novels, stories, movies and other stuff you think is worth nominating for the year. There are only two rules:

1. Make sure that what you’re suggesting is actually eligible for nomination (for the Hugos, that means it was released in the 2009 calendar year; for the Nebulas, released from July 1, 2008 through December 31, 2009), and fits in the current categories for the Hugos and the Nebulas, and their associated awards (the Campbell Award for Best New Writer; the Andre Norton and Bradbury Awards);

2. Don’t suggest anything by me, because I’ve already done my own award pimpage post, and this is for everything else.

Also, if you are someone eligible for an award, don’t be shy: Feel free to recommend your own work. You’ll note I did an award pimpage post of my own, so clearly I’m not opposed to people tooting their own horn. And, you know. 40,000 folks visit here daily. Some of them nominate for awards. Tell ‘em about your stuff.

So: What do you suggest for the science fiction awards this year? Tell us all in the comments.

The last two days in LA were really nice and clear and gorgeous, but I am told that more rain is arriving today, so I escaped that… to come back to my house basically being encased in snow, with more snow falling today (and indeed, you can see that falling snow in the picture). To be sure, we’re not getting the same volume of snow the east coast is currently getting, which are historic amounts. But we’re getting our share. School was canceled today, as it was yesterday, and may yet be tomorrow, confirming February once again as “That Month the Kid Don’t Get No Edumacation.” She’s downstairs at the moment watching Phineas & Ferb. That’s educational, right? It does feature a mad scientist.

Anyway. Hi, I’m home.

Another day of travel for me, back to Ohio, where I am told it will be snowing when arrive, which means my car in the airport parking lot will be a shapeless mass under a huge pile of snow. You can imagine how excited I am by the thought.

In any event, as I’m busy hurling myself across the sky, I thought I would throw open Whatever for an Open Pimp Thread, in which you — yes! you! — recommend something for other people to be excited about. Could be a Web site, could be a new book, could be some other sort of awesome project. It could be something you’re doing, or maybe something a friend of yours is up to, or maybe it’s done my people you don’t even know, but is still so cool you’d like to share. So share!

How to do that: in the comment thread, tell us about the cool thing, and then leave a link. Easy. Note that if you do more than a couple of links in a comment, you might get the message punted into the moderation queue. I’ll be checking that queue from time to time today to release those messages, so don’t panic if it doesn’t immediately post.  But, as I’m traveling, I won’t be able to do it as often as I normally do. So I recommend one link per comment, and making more than one comment if you have more than one thing to suggest.

To start you all off, I’ll make a suggestion of my own: Illustrator Vincent Chong (who did the excellent cover to The God Engines and the Subterranean Press editions of the OMW series) has just started a new blog to show off the work he’s done on various projects. I love Vinnie’s stuff, and I think after you look at it you will as well. If you’re already a fan of his work, he’s also go an upcoming book collecting up some of his best stuff over the years, which you can pre-order. Check them both out.

Now: What do you want to share with the rest of the class?

The rain stopped Saturday just after I and my friend Natasha arrived at the Getty Museum to wander about. It was the first time there for the both of us, and I think both of us had the same reaction: What a lovely museum, and what a lovely place for a museum, too. I snapped the shot of the horizon at some point; it was nice to finally be able to see the Pacific, which I had not seen since I had been here thanks to cloud cover. And the hills were green thanks to all the rain, a thing (the green, that is), which almost never happens in my experience. In all, a cloudy but gorgeous day. It’s nice to be in LA.

Via Andrew Sullivan, I learn that Kids These Days are less likely to start blogging, and that the form is increasingly the purview of the ancients, they being defined as people over the age of 30.

This doesn’t surprise me terribly. For the vast majority of what people (not just teens, but teens also) used blogs for — quick updates on line to friends and family — Facebook and Twitter offer an easier, friendlier and therefore better solution than starting up a blog. If you’re starting out in social media, for most folks it makes sense to go there. Later, if you want the ability for customization and a format beyond 140-character tweets and status updates, you can always start a blog. But I suspect most people don’t need to get to that point, and certainly not most younger users of social media.

Also, you know. Blogs have been social media’s Last Year’s Model for a spell now; heck, they were Last Year’s Model when Friendster hit. And it’s certainly true that when I note that I’ve been blogging since 1998, certain younger folks get that look in their eye that says No! No one was even alive then! That’s when I hit them with the concept of “newsgroups.” Good times, good times.

And all available for $9.99 or less! Indeed, one as low as $5.19. Who’da thunk it.

Some folks noticed that Amazon has a fairly large delay on delivery for The God Engines, and wondered if that was somehow related to what was going on with Macmillan. No, quite the opposite: The darn thing sold so quickly that additional printings had to be made and those are now working their way towards Amazon and toward other retailers. They should be delivered presently. In the meantime remember that Subterranean Press has copies to sell, being the publisher and all.

I was alerted via Twitter and e-mail that my Tor books were back on Amazon, but as I was out of pocket at the time (I was hanging about with my friends Mykal Burns and Wil Wheaton), I only just now got back to my browser to confirm with my own eyes. My eyes say: Yup, looks like they’re back. The physical books at least; the Kindle version still seem to have gone missing. Sorry Kindle folks. I am told reliably that it’s possible to buy them elsewhere and have them ported into your Kindle, so that might be the ticket for you, although I’m sure it’s probably a pain in the ass to do so.

I’d note that the reappearance of the physical books on Amazon happened this Friday just about the say time they disappeared the previous Friday; I’d be guessing that’s not a coincidence. But in any event I’m glad the author-hurting portion of the Amazon/Macmillan negotiations appears to be largely done with. Wish it had happened sooner.

When is a zombie not quite exactly a zombie? For James Knapp, and his new novel State of Decay, it’s when you you take the idea of the undead and give it a whole new socio-political spin — a spin that incorporates free will, social castes, an unending war, and other such fun things. I could tell you more about that, but this is a Big Idea post, and you’re not here for me. You’re here for the author to explain it all for you. And here he is!

JAMES KNAPP:

I didn’t write a zombie story. In fact, although the word ‘zombie’ appears in almost every piece of marketing I’ve seen for State of Decay, it only appears once in the book itself. I can understand why it gets billed like this – my ‘revivors’ are the dead reanimated, and I purposely play with some of the classic zombie mythos – but I still wouldn’t call it a zombie story per se. I’ve seen it called urban fantasy, science fiction, horror, and a thriller (no one’s accused me of romance yet)…all this is fair, and if you like those things (as I do) then I believe you’ll like State of Decay, but to me the story has always really been about two basic ideas:

1. Is consciousness the same thing as a ’soul’, and if not then where might those two things intersect?

2. As citizens of a society, what do we owe it and in turn, what does it owe us?

…and to a somewhat lesser degree:

3. How many PSI can a human bite deliver?

If the first two questions sound high-handed, rest assured third one does get answered, and in the way that you’re probably thinking. At its heart, I would call this a thriller; weapons (and bodies) are smuggled, murders are investigated, conspiracies are unraveled and the risen dead lurk in the shadows of city streets. Still, if you were to strip away all of the shell casings, cybernetic implants and arterial blood spatter (though for the life of me I don’t know why you would ever do that), then the first two concepts are what would be left behind. Don’t get me wrong; I like talking about arterial blood spatter as much as the next person, maybe more so, but here I’d rather talk about some of the underlying concepts that, to me, drive everything else.

I liked the idea of a vast meritocracy where a citizen’s worth depended on their level of service to their society, but part of what interested me were the inevitable abuses of such a system. For my story I decided on tiers of citizenship that, on paper, would work like this: Top tier was earned through military service, bottom tier was for those who refused to serve, and a middle tier was afforded for those who were willing to sign their bodies over to serve as reanimated soldiers after death. In theory, you could start at a lower tier and, by serving the community, work your way up rather than serve.

That’s on paper – in reality (my story is reality, right?), top tier lost much of its meaning to those who weren’t rich, bottom tier became synonymous with poverty, and most people picked the middle ground. This was actually by the design of those in charge, because second tiers still have to pay their taxes while earning a decent wage, and then they eventually die off to help provide a virtually limitless supply of foot soldiers. As for working your way up, the next tier was really just a carrot on a string; you would never feasibly be able to reach it.

If reanimation was to be an easy option, that raised the question ‘who would willingly sign up for such a thing?’ Especially when there are murmurings that a donor’s body might go on to commit all kinds of horrible atrocities? I felt that if the government was careful enough to keep the revivors, the war, and the aforementioned horrible atrocities far enough out of the public eye then that answer would be ‘most people’. It’s always easier and more tempting to pay later than to pay now – that’s why the Devil’s pact-printing machine is always low on toner.

In State of Decay you might decide, just before you slide into that guard rail, that maybe second tier was a mistake after all but it’s still your signature on the dotted line. The Devil always comes to collect in the end. In your invulnerable youth you might not care what happens to your body after you’re dead, but you might end up with a long time to think about it; If a person could be brought back from death with the same memories and abilities, how would that differ from being alive? If you’re conscious, in the same body, with impulses moving once more through your same (albeit no longer warm) brain, are you the same person? Or does something else, something less definable, get lost in the translation? Would choosing second tier be avoiding service, or just delaying it?

Of course, if a person who signed up for reanimation had second thoughts they always had the option of pedaling faster toward the top tier; that carrot on a stick they’d never reach. Not in time.

I could corner you at a party and talk about this until you eventually prayed for the sweet release of death, but my word ration runs dry. I considered utilizing the last hundred words or so for a treatise on arterial blood spray, but instead I think I will leave you with this: At the beginning of this piece I said there were two main themes, but I lied a bit; there is a third theme that I can’t discuss without (I feel) giving too much away. While I know the inevitable spoilers will come, I’d like to keep it on the down low as long as possible. Just know it involves the question of free will and becomes one of the major ideas behind the second book in the series. All three of these concepts (four if you count the biting thing) are the threads that tie the trilogy together.

This is the first step in main character Nico Wachalowski’s journey; here he will begin to learn some truths that he’d never even considered before. To do that, he will have to deal with a string of murders, a disturbed psychic’s obsession, an ex-lover’s questions, and domestic terrorism.

Oh, and zombies. Sort of.

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State of Decay: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|IndieBound|Powell’s

Read an excerpt of the novel. Follow James Knapp on Twitter.