quick update

[mckitterick]

Dear friends -

Yep, I'm still alive. The Intensive Institute in SF is running very well, with many interesting and insightful people involved. From all over the world, I might add, mostly from out of town this year. Six people staying in the dorm, so there's more cameraderie than some years, with nearly half the class having lunch together each day and dinner each evening, plus extracurricular stuff like movies and such. Fun but exhausting.

The Campbell Conference went fantastically. If you still don't know who won the Awards, here's part of what I'm writing for LOCUS: Third place for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short science fiction of 2006 went to “Lord Weary's Empire,” by Michael Swanwick; second place to “A Billion Eves,” by Robert Reed; and the winner was Robert Charles Wilson for his story, “The Cartesian Theater.” Wilson was present to accept his trophy and speak to the audience.

Third place for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel of 2006 was a tie between BLINDSIGHT, by Peter Watts, and FARTHING, by Jo Walton. Second place went to THE LAST WITCHFINDER, by James Morrow. Ben Bova, who took over editing ASTOUNDING/ANALOG magazine when Campbell died in 1971, won for TITAN, his latest in the Grand Tour series. Bova was also present to receive his honor.

Here are a bunch of photos of the event.

Just got home from the new Harry Potter movie with some of the Institute students. Let me tell you, corrupted beaurocracy is far scarier than monsters. A political message there, hmmmm?

Got my copies of Visual Journeys in the mail yesterday, and the book looks great! Haven't had time to read any of the stories yet, but flipped through and enjoyed the art very much.


Slept 12 hours last night, catching up after many days of not sleeping much, and beat an illness that was threatening to overwhelm me. I should do some more of that now.

Not reading any LJ during this crazy-busy time, really, so if something big has happened in your life, please let me know here! I would like to keep up with friends' lives.

Off to bed!
Chris

Comments

[astein142.livejournal.com]

Illness? Surely the Heinlein Centennial wasn't subjected to the dreaded con crud?

[tinablack.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, no con crud. Of the people I've talked to, no one has reported being sick. Aside from being smashed flat from the dropoff of adrenalin, I haven't had any problems.

I'm almost all here again mentally.

:)

[queza7.livejournal.com]

Well, the catboy and I are back in town! I might see if he's up to socializing on Saturday for game night - are you hosting, or someone else, or is it up in the air at this point?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

My shadowy masters are sending me my copy of Visual Journeys for the weekend.

With all due respect, freely acknowledging that people can have different opinions from me without necessarily being wrong and taking into account the fact that groups of people can produce concensus opinions that are not easily predicted,

Titan?

[renegade500.livejournal.com]

Nothing exciting happening in my life, although I know (sort of) officially now that I didn't get the job at KU (they have as yet to actually tell me that, but the online system shows the position is filled).

Hope you feel better soon.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

My shadowy masters are sending me my copy of Visual Journeys for the weekend.

And by this weekend, I mean sometime next week. There's delayed gratification in James Town.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I got it from Nate, our AboutSF Coordinator, with whom I also have a class this summer.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

I should make a post about Game Day: jensixstones is hosting through the summer while I'm doing my classes! I might try to get away from class long enough to play a game or three of something.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw that. I'm sorry - KU isn't like that across the board. Also sorry that you didn't get the Astro job.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Cool! I hope you enjoy it.

The way the Campbell Award works isn't by concensus but by voting. We read all of the nominees, recommending some and not others, discussing merits and de-merits, until we come up with a list of finalists upon which we cast our votes. Some years, the voting reflects a common favorite while in other years the result is due to a split in voting. That's the joy and pain of a juried award. At least it's not a popularity contest!

The Sturgeon Award works differently, partly because of the smaller group of jurors: They must reach concensus for all three places, and each of the jurors holds very different notions about what constitutes the best short SF of the year. They have to argue and convince one another or they'll end up with no winner. For the Campbell, no one has to convince the others, but we do our best to argue why our favorites are worthy of the Award.

So that's the process. TITAN won for a lot of reasons, and I suspect that Bova's being up for it so many times before was a part of his finally receiving the honor this year. It was fortuitous that this year, when we had a combined event with the Heinlein Centennial and we were celebrating the Golden Age, that Campbell's successor won the award named for him.

Best,
Chris

in other years the result is due to a split in voting.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

This is why Kitchener is called Kitchener. During the do-over referendum (The first one had somewhat too much military supervision of the German vote for the courts' liking), Berlin and Adanac split the vote and so we're named after the guy whose foresight about the duration of WWI made it possible for towns and villages to lose all of their young men with one well-placed artillery shell.