Congratulations to all the Aurealis and Ditmar awards finalists. Some awesome scragfight potential in some of those categories. Click here for the AA list and here for Tansy’s blog which lists the Ditmar finalists.Hugo nominations close today so if you haven’t gotten yours in already, hop to it!NSW is holding its state election today as well but I wouldn’t recommend participating in that unless you have to. Generally speaking, I’m a big fan of compulsory voting but this time round the field is utterly barren. The current government is bent as a three dollar note. The opposition won’t tell anyone what they’d do if they got in. Down my way, the most promising of the Indies wants to abolish the local free bus route and install a train service that runs against the laws of physics and the Greens candidate is a uni student.
on awards
This morning’s Netfeed cornucopia brought news of yet another Australian spec fic award starting up. This one’s called the Victorian SF Chronos Award and it aims to recognise excellence in Victorian SF, fantasy and horror in 2008. (overseas folks, FYI Victoria is an Australian state). So its going to be a Vic version of the Tin Ducks.Last year someone asked me to estimate the size of Australian spec fic. How many of us there are writing, editing, publishing, illustrating, etc the stuff? How many Aussies identify with spec fic fandom? I had no answer to the question, but as far as I can gage, it’s a small number. In the hundreds rather than thousands. With a bodycount like this, do we really need more awards? We already have one juried award (Aurealis), one popular vote award (Ditmars) and one horror award (Australian Shadows). Perth’s Tin Ducks are a Swancon tradition,…