As I’ve said before, I feel that the BSFA long-lists are a bit too long. But I’ve delved into several of the categories and would like to recommend a few of the nominees for the consideration of voters. The second round deadline is closing in – it is at midnight UK time next Thursday night, so you need to get moving (and this is a process where every single vote counts).
Best Art
None of the nominated art is bad, but I loved the audacity of Nick Wells’ tesselated covers for the twelve-book Fractal series of novels by Allen Stroud. It’s a lovely image anyway, but to split it across different books is very bold. Gets my vote, but I will nominate another three as well.
I liked the confidence of Stephen Embleton’s cover for The Nga’phandileh Whisperer, by Eugen Bacon. A lot of the nominated art has memorable human figures, but this one has something special for me.
Another humanoid figure, this time clearly a struggling robot, in Tithi Luadthong’s cover for Cage of Stars, by Frasier Armitage. I liked the use of colour and scale here.
Finally, what appears to be a standalone art piece, The Dust Library by Sylvain Sarrailh. I like the detail of the architecture, and the small human figures in the foreground. It carries also this narrative:
“He told me he had all the books in the world. I took him for a strange poet, but I followed him for four days and three nights in the desert, curious to know the outcome of his fable. He hadn’t lied.”
Best Short Non-Fiction
Of the 28 nominees for Best Short Non-Fiction, I was able to read 26. One of the remaining two is a paywalled academic journal article, and the other was a Zoom panel discussion. The others are all available via the BSFA ballot list. A couple of them are only marginally about science fiction – the piece on the Dublin / New York Portal, for instance, tries to argue that it should be considered as an sfnal work, but unfortunately gets tangled up in its own jargon to really understand.
There are seven that I particularly want to draw your attention to, and I know which four are getting my vote. I liked, but will probably not vote for:
- When People Giggle at Your Name, Or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident, by Grigory Lukin – as I said at the time, this was a pretty poor show by those responsible for the Hugo ceremony, and this piece illuminates the problem very eloquently, but I don’t generally think that this year’s awards should perpetuate last year’s controversies.
- The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI, by Cory Doctorow – again a great piece of writing which I have recommended to curious policy-makers inside the EU bubble, but I’m not nominating it for the BSFA Award on the technical grounds that it is about technological fact rather than fiction.
- Paul March Russell’s review of When There Are Wolves Again, by E.J. Swift – Again I think this is a fine piece of writing, and my reason for not voting for it (in this round anyway) is simply that I haven’t yet read the book that is the subject of the review, so I don’t feel that I am yet in a position to make a call about the nominated piece.
I will be voting for two pieces about Tolkien and two others. The two Tolkien pieces are:
- “Should Galadriel have taken the Ring?”, by Nick Hubble – a short piece in which the writer points out the roots of Galadriel as Faery Queen, and the disruption that this archetypal figure brings to the Middle Earth legendarium. “I’ve finally concluded that Galadriel actually ‘passes the test’ by not allowing herself to get caught up in the false binary choice between refusing or accepting the ring. She doesn’t have to choose between being the ‘White Lady’ or the ‘Dark Queen’ because she is already both of those and all points between.”
- “What Lies and Threats? History and Nationalist Myth-Making in The Lord of the Rings“, by Abby Roberts – looks at the uncomfortable nexus between Tolkien’s national myth-making project and political nationalist extremism. In general Tolkien is not a guilty party, but he does look at myth even within The Lord of the Rings. “Ultimately, in the last two decades of his life, Tolkien became increasingly critical of the mythopoeic elements in his work, which Fimi argues contributed to his failure to complete The Silmarillion. Tolkien’s self-reflection mirrors the general soul-searching that occurred among postwar myth scholars, as they reckoned with their discipline’s role in the Holocaust and World War II.”
The other two pieces that I am voting for are quite different.
- “A Path Through the Landscape: My Own Route Through Science Fiction”, by Roseanna Pendlebury – in reaction to Paul Kicaid’s Colourfields, lists ten sf books that Roseanna Pendlebury found important in her own literary journey, but also four that everyone else likes and she didn’t. “I was a relatively uncritical reader as a child (as I think many children are), and this didn’t really begin to shift until my early twenties. I like to think five years of dissecting texts in other languages did something to the ol’ brain chemistry and made my thoughts turn those newly minted critical faculties back onto the things I read for pleasure in English.”
- “Neither Girls Nor Friends: the Artificial Women in American Science Fiction”, by William Shaw – takes us from Helen O’Loy to Annie Bot, a very specific topic; and although I didn’t feel the journey was that far, persuaded me that it is at least interesting. “The artificial woman, in all of these stories, is caught in a contradiction; torn between her creators’ desires both for a perfected version of an exploited underclass, and for that perfection to still, ultimately, be subservient.”
(Links are to the pieces themselves.)
Best Long Non-fiction
Here Colourfields, by Paul Kincaid, deserves lots of votes and will get one of mine. But I’ll also spare a vote for two others that I nominated. Castrovalva, by Andrew Orton, was the best of last year’s generally excellent Black Archive monographs on Doctor Who. And Exterminate / Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who, by John Higgs, pulls together the existing lore and some new material very efficiently. (Links are to my own reviews.)
Best Original Audio Fiction
I’m skipping this category because I haven’t yet listened to any of it. Big Finish fans failed to get organised this time around to get anything on the ballot.
Best Fiction for Younger Readers
Two of the best Doctor Who novelisations from last year are on this list, Lux by James Goss, who I consider the best Who writer currently active, and The Robot Revolution by Una McCormack, and I’m voting for both of them. I haven’t read any of the others yet. (Links to my own reviews.)
Best Collection
I haven’t read any of the nominees, so far.
Best Short Fiction
I gritted my teeth and read about 60 of the 76 nominees here. I personally nominated Salvage by Emily Tesh (link is to my review), published as a chapbook at Novacon, but I’m not going to vote for it because I suspect that very few others will have ad the chance to read it. Instead I will vote for:
- “Missing Helen”, by Tia Tashiro, a well imagined story of what happens if your ex gets off with your clone. (I voted for Tashiro for the Astounding Award last year, and I reckon she’s a talent to watch.)
- “Autogas Ferryman”, by Champ Wongsatayanont: a great ghost story set in contemporary Bangkok. I’ve just been re-reading The Windup Girl,. and this is so much better.
- “Dead Dog Mans The Lighthouse”, by Max Franciscovich: Does what it says on the tin – a dog has been reincarnated as a human and gets put in charge of a lighthouse. Brilliantly realised.
- “The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends”, by Eugenia Triantafyllou: A terrifically sweet story of friendships based on shared literary tastes. At first I questioned if it was really sfnal, but I was won over in the end.
(Links are to original stories)
Best Shorter Fiction
The only one of these that I have read is The Well by Gareth Powell (link is to my review), another Doctor Who novelisation that I am definitely voting for.
Best Novel
I have read three of these, Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh and Shroud, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (links are to my reviews). I am probably voting for all three, definitely for The Incandescent.
I have listed the above, not in the order that they are on the ballot but in what seems to me to be a much more sensible order – art, non-fiction, fiction.
You have five more days to vote – go do it.