The 2012 Award Pimpage Post
Posted on January 3, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 14 Comments
It’s early January, which means that it’s time for people to start thinking about what they might want to nominate for various literary awards. You might be one of those people! And if you are: Hello, sexy. Let me make you aware of the writings I have writinated with my writinosity over the last the year, for you to considerate upon. Here what I have for you to consider for the 2012 nomination season:
Best Novel:
Fuzzy Nation, Tor Books, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, editor, May 2011 (Amazon|excerpt)
Best Short Story:
“The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City: Prologue,” Tor.com, April 1, 2011
“The Other Large Thing,” Whatever, August 5, 2011
Notes on the above:
* On the subject of Fuzzy Nation, allow me to recommend Kekai Kotaki for whatever Best Professional Artist nominations you might make. He did a fine, fine job on the cover.
* As a matter of trivia, were Fuzzy Nation to get a Best Novel Hugo nomination, it would become the first Hugo-nominated book to be a “reboot” of a Hugo-nominated book, in this case, H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy, which was nominated for a Hugo in 1963. I’m not gonna lie: I think that would be cool.
* I’m also not gonna lie when I note to you that I think that even though it was written as an April Fool’s prank, “Shadow War of the Night Dragons” deserves some serious consideration for short story. One, in itself it’s a pretty amusing piece, which is never bad. Two, as a piece tailor-made to do a specific thing (i.e., pose as writing that could be legitimately seen as a “prologue” to a non-existent larger work while still being a largely self-contained short story), there’s a lot of interesting structural stuff going on. Three, it’s farce, which I assure you is not as easy as it looks. Four, it has a 153-word first sentence that uses various constructions of the word “black” eleven times, and I’m pretty sure that’s a first in all of science fiction and fantasy, and damn, am I ever proud of it.
So, for serious: “Shadow War of the Night Dragons”: Not a bad piece of story craft. Give it some thought, please.
And that’s my award pimping for the year.
Other authors: Last year I opened up a thread for all y’all to pimp your own stuff, and it seemed to go over well, so I’ll do it again this year too. Probably tomorrow or Thursday.
Tomorrow is Wednesday, John.
D’oh. Fixed.
John, when you do this year’s open-pimpage thread, would you mind if I do a cross-linked post on The Friday Challenge? Your thread last year was limited to SF/F Authors/Editors/Artists… but since we’ve also dabbled with Mystery, Horror and straight literature at Stupefying Stories, it seems like a good idea to give non-SFWA oriented writers a venue to pimp their wares, as well.
Four, it has a 153-word first sentence that uses various constructions of the word “black” eleven times, and I’m pretty sure that’s a first in all of science fiction and fantasy, and damn, am I ever proud of it.
I don’t have a copy to check, but Andrew J. Offutt’s Conan parody The Black Sorceror of the Black Castle” might give you some competition there (although he took the thesaurus-as-comedy-gold route with words like “fuliginous” and “atrabilious”).
Kekai freakin’ rules. He’s one of the best concept painters on the planet, and that’s saying a lot. If you wanna show him some love (and have lots of free time), you might wanna play you some Guild Wars! http://www.arena.net/
If you want to actually keep going with your life without getting sucked into a super-awesome MMO, this book here (I believe) has a bunch of Kekai’s stuff in it: http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-art-of-guild-wars-2/
His home page is here http://www.kekaiart.com and he’s got an art blog where you can say nice things to him here http://kekai.blogspot.com/
Oh and uh, yeah, vote for John’s writing stuff too. It’s pretty great. :)
FYI, the link to the top image (whatever it is) appears to be broken, though the image for Shadow War shows up fine.
Hugh57:
It appears to be showing up fine now.
As a member of this year’s Worldcon, and as someone who wields the Power Of Nomination (which is different than the power of OmNomNomination, which is the power to eat as many tacos as I want), I prefer to be greeted as “Mister Macho Sexy,” instead, please.
…and now I wish I’d put that title down on my badge instead of “Adam.”
The Night Dragons, which I saw linked probably from an April 1 roundup somewhere, made me laugh so hard I became a regular reader of Whatever. And, of additional interest to our proprietor, subsequently went on a bit of a Scalzi purchasing binge.
The Night Dragons is even more awesome: there are TWELVE variations of the word black in the first sentence. #OCDismyfriend
John @4:55p: Yes, yes it is. :-)
I love The Night Dragons, but what really tickles me is the cover art. Artist, please???
So does this recognition for The Night Dragons encourage the actual development of the series? Maybe? Perhaps? *insert crossed fingers* I’m totally signed up for a first edition!
Christy: Yeah! I am really looking forward to reading the whole series if Tor ever lets (makes?) him actually write them!