World Fantasy Awards

The nominees for the World Fantasy Awards have been listed on a variety of SF sites over the weekend. In the novels section the authors shortlisted include a couple we've been banging on about this year on the FPI blogs and catalogues, Susanna Clarke and China Miéville, which is great to see (we told you they were good!). I haven't read Stewart's book, but it has had good word of mouth, while Wolfe and Donaldson are pillars of the quality fantasy genre (hand-carved marble pillars at that).

The novels shortlist is:

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Stephen R. Donaldson, The Runes Of the Earth
China Miéville, Iron Council
Sean Stewart, Perfect Circle
Gene Wolfe, The Wizard Knight

And on a personal note I am over the moon and several other cosmic bodies to see a good friend of the FPI blogs, Ariel, on the special awards nominations for non-professional contributions. I'm delighted to see this category which highlights the huge amount of work unpaid fans do - reviews, news, features, author interviews - which helps stitch the fabric of the SF&F community together world-wide. I'm especially delighted to see my mate Ariel and The Alien Online which I've been happily contributing to for several years being nominated. A World Fantasy Award would look very nice alongside TAO's Wooden Rocket award. The full details can be found here.