The John W. Campbell Memorial Award

Harry August is a finalist this year in the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and I’m right chuffed!  It’s a wonderful short list to be on, with some awesome people – including Nina Allan and William Gibson!  It’s also wonderful to see Europe in Autumn there, and especially Bete by the scarily awesome Adam Roberts.  (Confession: I was a bit intimidated by Adam Roberts when I first encountered him, not only because he reads faster than any human I’ve ever met, but because his reading, his writing and his words are so soggy with intelligence you begin to wonder if there’s a drug for that.  He denies that there is.)

There are many things to love about this shortlist, not least it’s origin as a thing honouring John Campbell, a man who helped shape both the literary and the commercial future of the genre.  I also love the fact that it’s hosted by the Gunn Centre for Science Fiction.  I’m not aware of anything really like it in this country; (though I’d be hugely excited to find out that I’m wrong) – an academic institution dedicated to science fiction.  In the UK, the University of Dundee does a postgraduate course, and I think Liverpool University dabbles a bit, but to an outsider it seems as if the academic study of ‘literature’ doesn’t seem to extend much to a broader celebration of genre as a whole, and yet in the US it also seems to receive greater respect as a thing worthy unto itself of exploration.

One of the other things I love about this list is a little note at the bottom of the announcement – ‘This year’s list of finalists is longer than usual partly in response to controversy over other, non-juried awards, and partly because 2014 offered so many fine SF novels.‘

To which I think I say… yes.  Yes and hurrah and yes.  As a finalist, grateful to be on a list with so many greats, but also as an SF fan and lover of this genre… yes, and thank you the John W. Campbell Memorial Award!