How Romantic
Posted on December 29, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
Hey, this is nice: I’m nominated for a Romantic Times 2007 Reviewers’ Choice Award in the science fiction category, for The Last Colony. The nominees are chosen for their general excellence, not necessarily their romantic content, which is good, because I’m not notably good with romance. The other nominees in the category:
- Spindrift, by Allen Steele
- The Sons of Heaven, by Kage Baker
- Recovery Man, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
- Ha’Penny, by Jo Walton
An excellent field of nominees. Some of you may recall I was up for one of these last year in the same category for The Android’s Dream; Jo Walton’s Farthing carried the day for that one. Will she repeat in the category? Tune in in April, when the winners are revealed at the RT Booklover’s convention in Pittsburgh to find out!
The RT Reviewer’s Choice Awards also have a rather significant slate of fantasy nominees in various categories, so here are fantasy writers of my acquaintance who have also gotten nods this year: Marjorie Liu, MaryJanice Davidson and Sharon Shinn (both of whom share an agent with me), Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, David Anthony Durham, China Mieville, Elizabeth Bear (twice!), Sarah Monette, Carrie Vaughn and Jim Butcher. Nicely done, all.
Hat tip to fellow nominee Jo Walton, from whom I found this news.
Congrats on the nomination! Some fine company to keep. :)
The RT awards and the RITA awards are actually separate. The latter are given at the RWA National convention every summer. http://rwanational.org/cs/contests_and_awards/rita_awards
Thanks for the correction! I’ll note it.
Shall we be hearing insider news of the Romance Writing trade from you? There are an order of magnitude more Romance Authors working than Science Fiction authors, going by RWA/SFWA ratio.
The interface between the two is important, as is the interface between Mystery and Science Fiction, as bridged by such giants as Isaac Asimov and Jack Vance.
I was quite impressed by the locked room mystery story “Not Even the Past” by Robert R. Chase in the March 2008 Analog (which I got by snailmail a couple of days ago).
Anyway, richly deserved congratulations
Congratulations! Quick comment though — if by “not being good at writing romance” you mean the pulp stuff that qualifies for a Fabio cover, well, no loss there. But having read Old Man’s War, I enjoyed your portrayal of John’s relationship with Kathy and how he dealt with the memory of her. His accounts to Jane of his life with Kathy were great reading. That struck me as having a realistic element of ‘romance’/love — not the silly don’t-make-me-read-this stuff that passes for it these days.
Looking forward to reading Ghost Brigades and Last Colony soon. Been saving them for some transoceanic trips… and it hasn’t been easy to wait!
if by “not being good at writing romance” you mean the pulp stuff that qualifies for a Fabio cover
Well, have you ever tried? (And if you have/plan to, could you show us?)
Calling romance “the pulp stuff that qualifies for a Fabio cover” is exactly as descriptive as calling science fiction “the stuff with the girls in brass bras on the cover.”
No, the brass bras are the fantasy section.
Science Fiction is the section with the green girls in holographic bikinis carrying exotic weaponry.
Quite right, too.
From Farthing to Ha’penny does up the ante.
Best of well deserved luck for all.
–ml
Romance can very loosely be called the genre where the girl gets the guy in the end. Or vice-versa. Or, very rarely, with same-sex pairings.
I could see how Android’s Dream could qualify as a romance of sorts.
A very, very strange romance.
But a better example is Lois McMaster Bujold— her stuff is science fiction and fantasy, but a few of them could easily be sold as romance, particularly A Civil Campaign, one of the Vorkosigan saga. In fact, that one’s dedicated to some of the masters of the romance field.
(And a thousand Bujold fans recoil in horror, thinking, “I read what?“)
Congrats! I have to admit that I think you do just fine with the romantic content of the Old Man’s War stories. I found the relationship between John and Jane very poignant and is one of the reasons I consider this series both a ‘must-read’ and a ‘must-reread’. My vote is with you and I hope you win it!