The Memes of Production: A cultural studies weblog

The Nebula Awards shortlist was released overnight. The winners will be announced on May 15.

Unlike the Hugo Awards, which are popular awards voted on by registrants at Worldcon, the Nebulas are peers awards, and nominations and votes are limited to active members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

There are six categories, Short Story, Novelette, Novella, and Novel, as we as the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Continuing reading this article for the full list of nominees.

The winners of the 2009 Aurealis Awards for Australian Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror were announced at the thirteenth annual ceremony at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts in Brisbane on Saturday 24 January 2010.

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL: Andrew McGahan, Wonders of a Godless World, Allen & Unwin

BEST SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY: Peter M. Ball, ‘Clockwork, Patchwork and Ravens’, Apex Magazine May 2009

BEST FANTASY NOVEL: Trudi Canavan, Magician’s Apprentice, Orbit

BEST FANTASY SHORT STORY (Tie): Christopher Green, ‘Father’s Kill’, Beneath Ceaseless Skies #24; Ian McHugh, ‘Once a Month, On a Sunday’, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #40, Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-operative Ltd

BEST HORROR NOVEL: Honey Brown, Red Queen, Penguin Australia

BEST HORROR SHORT STORY (Tie): Paul Haines, ‘Wives’, X6, Coeur de Lion Publishing; Paul Haines, ‘Slice of Life – A Spot of Liver’, Slice of Life, The Mayne Press

BEST ANTHOLOGY: Jonathan Strahan (editor), Eclipse 3, Night Shade Books

BEST COLLECTION: Greg Egan, Oceanic, Gollancz

BEST ILLUSTATED BOOK/GRAPHIC NOVEL: Nathan Jurevicius, Scarygirl, Allen & Unwin

BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL: Scott Westerfeld, Leviathan Trilogy: Book One, Penguin

BEST YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY: Cat Sparks, ‘Seventeen’, Masques, CSFG

BEST CHILDREN’S (8-12 YEARS) NOVEL: Gabrielle Wang, A Ghost in My Suitcase, Puffin Books

BEST CHILDREN’S (8-12 YEARS) SHORT FICTION/ILLUSTRATED WORK/PICTURE BOOK: Pamela Freeman (author), Kim Gamble (illustrator), Victor’s Challenge, Walker Books Australia

Here are the results of the 2009 Hugo Awards, according to the Hugo’s Twitter feed. The nominees can be found here.

Best Fan Writer goes to Cheryl Morgan
Best Fan Artist goes to Frank Wu
Best Fanzine goes to Electric Velocipede
Best Semiprozine goes to Weird Tales
Best Related Book goes to Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, John Scalzi
Dramatic Presentation: Long Form goes to Wall-E
Dramatic Presentation: Short Form goes to Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog, Joss Whedon
Best Editor: Long Form goes to David G Hartwell
Best Editor: Short Form goes to Ellen Datlow
Our brand new category, Best Graphic Story, presented by Neil Gaiman, goes to Girl Genius, Kaja and Phil Foglio
Best Professional Artist goes to Donato Giancola
Best Short Story goes to “Exhalation”, Ted Chiang
Best Novelette goes to “Shoggoths in Bloom”, Elizabeth Bear
Best Novella goes to “The Erdmann Nexus”, Nancy Kress
And finally, Best Novel goes to The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman

The Nebula Awards were announced in LA today, with the major award going to Ursula Le Guin, her fourth Nebula, after Left Hand of Darkness (1969), The Dispossessed (1974), and Tehanu (1990).

The Nebula shortlists are selected from nominations from members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, who also vote for the winning entries. The full list of winners is:

Best Novel: Powers – Ursula K. Le Guin (Harcourt)

Best Novella: “The Spacetime Pool” – Catherine Asaro (Analog, Mar08)

Best Novelette: “Pride and Prometheus” – John Kessel (F&SF, Jan08)

Best Short Story: “Trophy Wives” – Nina Kiriki Hoffman (Fellowship Fantastic, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes

Best Script: WALL-E Screenplay – Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Original story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter (Walt Disney June 2008)

Andre Norton Award (for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy): Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) – Ysabeau S. Wilce (Harcourt)

Honorees
M.J. Engh — Author Emerita (for contributions to the field)
Harry Harrison — Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master (for lifetime achievement)
Joss Whedon — Ray Bradbury Award (for excellence in screenwriting)

Solstice Awards (for authors who have had a significant impact on the science fiction or fantasy landscape)
A. J. Budrys, Marty Greenberg, and Kate Wilhelm

Oops, I’m a month late with this, but the 2009 Hugo Award nominees have been posted. The novel shortlist is a strong field, with entries from Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, and Charlie Stross. Here is the shortlist:

• Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK)
• Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
• Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

Other nominees here.

Interesting to note that Stephen Moffat picks up his fourth nomination in four years for a Doctor Who episode, this time for the “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead” double. This follows wins in 2006 for “The Empty Child”, in 2007 for “Girl in the Fireplace”, and 2008 for “Blink”.

Winners will be announced at the World Science Fiction Convention in Montréal in August.

Homan, Shane (ed), Access All Eras: Tribute Bands and Global Pop Culture, Open University Press, Maidenhead, 2006. Publisher’s website

As Shane Homan says in his introduction to this fascinating collection of essays, “the tribute act has received little critical attention in popular music or cultural studies” (2) and attributes this to the suspicion with which the “inauthentic” is held within the industry as well as within the academy. A specialist subset of cover bands, tribute acts are those bands who “exclusively perform the recordings of one band or artist, and may even concentrate on a specific period of the artist/group” (5). This is the first collection of essays to deal exclusively with the tribute phenomena, despite the format gaining significantly in popularity (if not respect) since tribute bands first started appearing in the early 1980s, and connected no doubt to the surprising paucity of publications dealing with “pop” as opposed to “rock” music (again, that issue of “authenticity”). This collection deliberately steers a path between the rejection of tribute acts as merely formulaic mimicry, and a postmodern celebration of simulacra, and instead “seeks to understand contemporary thinking about pop and rock history as it is performed on a nightly, global basis” (14).

The 14 essays in this collection cover a broad range of issues and themes, from discussions of postmodern pastiche and parody, through analyses of the fans’ attitudes to tribute acts and their place in the global economy of popular music, to discussions of the way in which tribute acts challenge the dominant rock discourses of originality and stardom.

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Oops! Missed this from about a month ago. More information here

Really happy about “Blink”: my favourite (ever) Doctor Who episode.

• Best Novel: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins; Fourth Estate)
• Best Novella: “All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis (Asimov’s Dec. 2007; Subterranean Press)
• Best Novelette: “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang (Subterranean Press; F&SF Sept. 2007)
• Best Short Story: “Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s June 2007)
• Best Related Book: Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher (Oxford University Press)
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Stardust Written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman Illustrated by Charles Vess Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Paramount Pictures)
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Who “Blink” Written by Steven Moffat Directed by Hettie Macdonald (BBC)
• Best Editor, Long Form: David G. Hartwell
• Best Editor, Short Form: Gordon Van Gelder
• Best Professional Artist: Stephan Martiniere
• Best Semiprozine: Locus
• Best Fanzine: File 770
• Best Fan Writer: John Scalzi
• Best Fan Artist: Brad Foster

The winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, sponsored by Dell Magazines and administered on their behalf by the World Science Fiction Society, is Mary Robinette Kowal.

Via Making Light, The Social Life of Information

In the years since the long economic boom of the 1990s came to an end in 2000–2001, there has been growing evidence that this view of recent economic history is flawed. In fact, the findings of the three books under review here, along with much recent research, suggest that methods of production based on top-down standardization and tight control of work are as influential in the digital economy as they were in the industrial economy. Drawing upon the virtually unlimited powers of computers to monitor the activities of employees and their use of information, these methods have simply been readapted for the white-collar workplace.

(Kind of relieved that I don’t have to do this myself…)

Great open discussion of The Deathly Hallows over at Timothy Burke’s blog.

Obviously, massive spoiler alert!

This is pretty interesting, and I wish it had been around when I was an undergraduate with a habit of returning books before I’d copied out the bibliographic details: an online bibliography generator.

Apparently designed as a semester project by students at Carnegie Mellon, it draws on data from Amazon, LookSmart FindArticles, Yahoo! News, and CiteULike Academic Papers, displays the results in MLA, APA, or Chicago style, and allows you to download them as RTF.

It’s not perfect: on my test run of the four academic titles that happened to be on my desk, it found all four but didn’t know the author of one of them, and apparently doesn’t have a way of distinguishing between an edited collection and a monograph. It also put a space in the wrong place for MLA.

I don’t know that it will take over from Endnote, and similar applications, but it’s pretty bloody impressive all the same.