BSFA Awards Shortlist 2019

... is out!

I like literary awards for loads of reasons, one of which is that they raise similar questions to AI and automation: Can you design and implement a procedure that will reliably replicate human judgment? You run the program again and again, and sometimes it appears to work, and sometimes it's a bit dodgy, and sometimes it's so dodgy you consider tweaking the code. (See note). In fact, it's probably time we had literary awards judged by AI. I will fully get on that.

Also, I like the way they are a democracy cosplay.

Also, I like the way they make so many people incredibly grouchy.

Including me. Comparing longlist with shortlist, I'm personally a little disappointed not to see Sandra Newman's The Heavens and Tim Maughan's Infinite Detail up for Best Novel. Zen Cho would have been great too.

Other minor kvetches? Well, no shade to the brilliant work of the shortlisted artists, it feels a slight shame that the BSFA Award for Best Artwork has once again effectively become the BSFA Award for Best Cover, after a just slightly more varied selection last year. I pledged 50 superdelegates to Cedric Mizero's A New Life in the Village exhibition and 50 superduperdelegates to SinJin Li Studios' Productive Futures conference ephemera (notably an insanely gorgeous booklet, but also name badges sporting symbols later revealed to assign each conference-goer to a science fictional profession and class status: this was a conference with worldbuilding), but no dice.

One of the nice and slightly precarious things about the BSFA Awards specifically is that they don't boundary-police too much, but despite technically allowing any genre fiction authored anywhere in the world -- there is no hard design rule, for example, that prevents the British Science Fiction Association Awards from being completed flooded one year by US-authored epic fantasy -- they do keep a focus on what you might roughly flail your arms at and designate "British SF."  Still, in recent years Best Novel has included the likes of Yoon Ha Lee, Ann Leckie, Tricia Sullivan, Aliette de Bodard, and Nnedi Okorafor, and in Brexit year especially, it might have felt better to have a shortlist that wasn't so Very Very UK?

But like I say, these are nano-kvetches and overall -- looks like a seriously strong list! I've not read many of them or anything, but, you know, I Know the authors' Work. A bit of a mix of big publishers and smaller indie stuff is also a plus. I feel like BSFA Awards have a kind of Iowa and New Hampshire energy to them. Not bellweathers exactly, but at least an upward spurt of force that might propel something unusual into the swirling weather of the Nebulas and Hugos. Well done algorithm and the horde of human hearts that execute it.

The Non-Fiction category is a weird one, since it's so often comparing across different forms and modes. One big glitch: a piece I wrote for Big Echo, about Star Trek and work, slipped onto the Non-Fiction shortlist, among proper big books with squillions of hours of research and labour embedded in them.

Also maybe kind of interesting: the Shorter Fiction category is dominated by novellas. Why??? IS THE SHORT STORY DEAD???

Note: Except it's weird, because most of the circuitry this 'AI' is running on is actually made out of human judgments in the first place, only these are a different set of judgments from the set of judgments it's endeavouring to simulate. I.e. the judgment it is attempting to simulate is something like, "What is the best eligible book?" Whereas key judgments which actually operationalise the simulation include things like, "What system shall we use to tally up the votes? What stages shall we have? How shall we time things? Is this particular borderline work eligible in the first place?" And, "Shall I join the BSFA? Shall I vote? Shall I vote for this thing by my friend? Shall I vote for this thing I haven't read but which is by an author whose work I admire?" So related judgments, but different. Also, of course, not just judgments but also plenty of work, in particular the work of BSFA Award Administrator Clare Boothby.

Recent Stuff

Over at the Vector site, my brief note on last week's SFF conference in London, Productive Futures: The Political Economy of Science Fiction.

I have a novelette in Gross Ideas, an anthology about architecture and degrowth. The anthology includes Cory Doctorow, Camilla Grudova, Will Self, Mill & Jones, Joel Blackledge, Sophie Mackintosh, Steve Webb, Lesley Lokko, Rachel Armstrong, Lev Bratishenko, Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen, Maria Smith, Robin Nicholson, Deepak Unnikrishnan, Edward Davey, and Jane Yeh. Edited by Edwina Attlee, Phineas Harper and Maria Smith, with design by Studio Christopher Victor.

We've just released the Call for Papers for the next themed issue of Vector, which will be about speculative fiction and art. Feel free to share, and get in touch with your ideas. If you're interested in writing for Vector in other capacities, also please do get in touch.

The latest issue of Vector, co-edited with Polina Levontin and Michelle Clarke, was all about African and Afrodiasporic SFF. If you'd like a copy, join the BSFA or get in touch with me. Some of the articles are on the Vector website.

WorldCon wasn't too long ago: here's a report.

And my essay 'Away Day: Star Trek and the Utopia of Merit' is in the latest issue of Big Echo. It's mostly about Manu Saadia's Trekonomics, and it thinks a bit about the role of gift economies in recent political SF and SF-influenced political theory. It takes issue with this:

Saadia’s Trekonomics, I think, invites Star Trek to join the satirical zeitgeist of Walkaway, If/Then, ‘Nose Dive’ et al. It offers the Federation as a society of abundance co-ordinated by egalitarian mechanisms of reciprocity. It recognises the close relationship between work and reputation in the Federation, and discerns immense informal social pressure to pursue status and success. At the same time, it supposes, forms or aspects of labour which traditionally have been difficult to automate – care work, emotional labour, creativity, teaching, “learning, making, and sharing” – take on enhanced significance in the Federation, softening this pressure. Pre-Fordist craft is offered as a point of comparison: “the organization of work in the Federation resembles older, preindustrial forms of arrangements.” Furthermore, “work in the Federation fulfills the deep human need for belonging and recognition. Work is another way to love and be loved and to express one’s unique sensibility.” Saadia’s Federation is certainly not primitivist! – its technology generates its abundance, and is instrumental in distributing it – but it is an attack on both contemporary capitalism and on the seductive nostrums of techno-meritocracy.

I'm hoping to write a sequel eventually.

One or two mini-reviews recently up on Goodreads.

The novel that I thought had found a home maybe hasn't after all. But hey.

Poetry stuff: Sad Press has just published Maria Sledmere's nature sounds without nature sounds. Poetry & Work: Essays on work in modern and contemporary Anglophone poetry, a collection I edited with Ed Luker, is in the final proofing stages and should be out by December.

I've also just written a fairly substantial draft of a series of essays dealing with the "marvellous moneys" stuff I've been working on over the past few years, i.e. money and value in SFF. If anyone wants a peek, let me know.

British Science Fiction Association Awards

So, if you're a member of the BSFA, you have one day left to nominate the best SF of 2017 for the BSFA Awards.

If you're not a member yet, consider joining? It's 29 pounds in the UK, and it includes the voting rights, a subscription to Vector, the magazine I'm now co-editing, and lots of other stuff. Oh, and you definitely don't need to live in the UK to join (although it is more dear if you don't).

(Personally, I haven't read much recent SF this year, so, idk. If you need reminding, there is a list of suggestions here that you can scan (and add to). I'll probably nominate Erin Horáková's 'The Bacchae' (on par with Euripedes' version) and Tim Maughan's 'Last Christmas' (almost as good as Wham!'s version) for short fiction. I don't really know if the Shadow Clarke Awards would be collectively eligible as a non-fiction entry ... maybe?

UPDATE: Confirmed, yes, eligible!

You know how I feel about awards).

AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Over at the Vector website, an article on speculative fiction and bioterrorism, with an emphasis on so-called 'lone wolf' bioterrorism.