The Other Campbell Award
Posted on May 23, 2006 Posted by John Scalzi 5 Comments
The finalist list for the John W. Campbell award is up, and congrats for my fellow 2006 Hugoites Charlie Stross, Ken MacLeod and Robert Charles Wilson for having their books make the final cut. The winner will be announced in July.
This Campbell award is not the Campbell award I’m up for; the former is a jury-awarded prize for the best SF novel of the year, while the latter is a fan-voted award for the best new SF writer. Oddly enough, I think both awards were started in the same year (1973; the winners for each were Beyond Apollo and Jerry Pournelle). Why two awards with the same name honoring the same field were begun in the same year is a good question (well, not really: John W. Campbell died not long before), but it certainly makes for fun cocktail conversation at SF shindigs.
The one that Stoss and Wilson are up for is called the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, which is what distinguishes it from the new writers award that is part of the Hugos ceremony.
If/when you go to the Heinlein Centennial, the JWCMA will be part of the program, since the Compbell Conference is going to co-locate with the Centennial.
Scorpio:
“If/when you go to the Heinlein Centennial, the JWCMA will be part of the program, since the Compbell Conference is going to co-locate with the Centennial.”
Since the Heinlein Centennial folks have announced my participation, I think it’s best if I show up.
I see that the result for 1994 was:
1st No award
2nd Beggars in Spain, Nancy Kress
3rd Moving Mars, Greg Bear
Any idea how you can have a second place but not a first?
Yeah, “No Award” go more votes. Although to my understanding in 1994, the voting process was messed up in some way.
1994’s winner got a big can of alphabet soup.