January 2009 – John Joseph Adams

Archive for January, 2009

BookSpot Central on Seeds of Change

BookSpotCentral has an extensive review of Seeds of Change, which the reviewer rather liked: “Without exception these stories will provide the reader with a lot of food for thought. So much in fact, that it took me a full week to work though these nine stories, needing a break after most of them to think about what I had just read. … This anthology contains quality stories. It is not one of those effortless reads, this book demands your full attention. Paying attention is absolutely worth the effort though. I think I enjoyed Seeds of Change even more than reading the outstanding Wastelands anthology.”

Hugo Award Nominating Deadlines

When I made my Hugo Awards post, I neglected to mention that in order to nominate for this year’s award, you have to have either been an attending or supporting member of last year’s Worldcon (Denvention), or you have to register as an attending or supporting member of this year’s Worldcon (Anticipation) by January 31.

So, if you want to nominate, and you didn’t have a membership last year, go here to register. Since the deadline is approaching, you should probably do that now.

If you just want to vote, choose an adult supporting membership ($55 Canadian, about $44 US dollars). Otherwise, buy an attending membership. If you’re not sure if you want to attend, you can buy a supporting membership now, so that you can nominate, and then upgrade your membership later to a full attending membership if you decide to go to the convention.

Once you’re registered, you have until February 28–or rather, your ballot must be received by February 28.

SFBC Edition of The Living Dead

For those of you who’d like to own a nice hardcover edition of The Living Dead, now’s your chance. The Science Fiction Book Club edition of the book is now available. I haven’t seen a copy of it yet myself, but now that I know it’s ready I hope to be holding a copy soon. Anyone seen it yet?

ConTweeting

I value efficiency and convenience very highly, so I’m often thinking of ways to improve upon both.

I was just reading an article in the SFWA Bulletin called “Learn How to Twitter” as I was curious what it would actually say. Something it talked about gave me an idea about convention networking–wouldn’t it be great if we could use Twitter to help organize stuff at conventions? Not for everyone, of course, but for we TwitterFolk. So what you do is, if you’re posting something about a convention while at the convention, you can use the hash mark + con name to make your Tweets findable in Twitter by anyone searching for it. So, for instance:

johnjosephadams: #wiscon anyone know of any parties tonight besides the one in room 256?

And then people can chime in. It would be like bringing the groupmind power of Twitter into the convention. Which would be awesome.

Also, it would be great if the concoms got in on the action and posted notes to #[convention name] if there are changes in the schedule or whatever. Surely at least one person on any concom uses Twitter, no?

And while I’m wishing for technological convention assistance, I think we’re at the point where we should expect and demand good, user-friendly electronic convention program books. I mean, if I create a bunch of program listings in Outlook, including all the information, such as room number, time, panelists, and program description, I can easily setup a whole convention program book, which can then be exported into any number of formats. The thing is–I’m never going to carry around my program book at all times, but I will always carry my iPhone, and I should be able to put the schedule on there with very little effort. This would also be great because I could download it from the website before leaving for the convention and that way I can actually browse through the schedule while traveling there; once I actually get to the convention it can be really hard, with all the people you want to talk to, to actually find time to sit and read through the program book.

Hugo Awards Eligibility

Since the Hugo Award nominations are now open, and since all the cool kids are doing it, I thought I should make note of my eligibility and the eligibility of works I’ve published in 2008.

Novelette

“Judgment Passed” by Jerry Oltion (Wastelands, Jan. 2008)
“How the Day Runs Down” by John Langan (The Living Dead, Sep. 2008)
“Endosymbiont” by Blake Charlton (Seeds of Change, Aug. 2008)

Short Story

“N-Words” by Ted Kosmatka (Seeds of Change, Aug. 2008)
“The Future by Degrees” by Jay Lake (Seeds of Change, Aug. 2008)
“Drinking Problem” by K. D. Wentworth (Seeds of Change, Aug. 2008)
“A Dance Called Armageddon” by Ken MacLeod (Seeds of Change, Aug. 2008)
“Arties Aren’t Stupid” by Jeremiah Tolbert (Seeds of Change, Aug. 2008)
“Faceless in Gethsemane” by Mark Budz (Seeds of Change, Aug. 2008)
“Spider the Artist” by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (Seeds of Change, Aug. 2008)
“Resistance” by Tobias S. Buckell (Seeds of Change, Aug. 2008)

Best Editor (Short Form)

John Joseph Adams (Seeds of Change, Wastelands, The Living Dead)*

Best Artist

David Palumbo (The Living Dead)
Daniel Kvasznicza (Wastelands)
John W. Campbell Award

Ted Kosmatka
Blake Charlton

* Hugo Awards rules for this category state: “The editor of at least four (4) anthologies, collections or magazine issues primarily devoted to science fiction and/or fantasy, at least one of which was published in 2008.” Shimmer: The Pirate Issue is my fourth qualifying editorial experience, but it came out in 2007, so I’m not listing it there beside my name, which space is reserved to point out 2008 work.