awards – Tim Jones

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards 2011: Nomination Deadline Fast Approaching

Posted on March 10, 2011

I have been a very naughty boy.

Well, a slightly naughty boy, anyway. I meant to put up a post about the opportunity to nominate works and people for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards as far back as the end of January, and yet I’m only now getting around to it. Sorry for leaving it so late!

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards are the New Zealand awards for speculative fiction, awarded at each year’s New Zealand national science fiction convention. I was very pleased when Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, the anthology I co-edited with Mark Pirie, won in the Best Collected Work category in the 2010 Sir Julius Vogel Awards.

Given that the deadline for nominations is the end of March (to be precise, it’s 31 March 2011 at 8.00pm), I’m going to abandon my always-likely-to-be-unrealistic plan of taking a comprehensive look at potential nominees, and just tell you what I’m going to nominate in a few of the categories. Because NZ speculative fiction is so strong at the moment, there are lots of good books/stories/people out there for you to nominate, and I encourage you to go for it! (Suggestions, in any category, are welcome below in the comments).

First of all, SFFANZ and SpecFicNZ have details of the nomination process. The 2010 awards show the categories.

Semaphore Magazine has a guide to eligible works it has published, and Helen Lowe published a very useful guide to the categories, plus a list of some eligible novels in the Adult and YA categories.

The SFFANZ site has a number of lists of potentially eligible works – look at the works published in 2010 in each list.

So that’s plenty of information to be going on with. Here are the works I’m planning to nominate at this stage – I am sure I’ll think of others when I’m face to face with the nomination form:

– Best Adult Novel: The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe

– Best Young Adult Novel: Tymon’s Flight by Mary Victoria

– Best Collected Work: A Foreign Country: New Zealand Speculative Fiction, edited by Anna Caro and Juliet Buchanan

– Best Short Story: “Back and Beyond” by Juliet Marillier, the final story in A Foreign Country.

Time To Write One Of Next Year’s Nominees!

While you’re making your nominations, take a moment to check out the inaugural SpecFicNZ short story contest, which also closes on 31 March.

Blogging Au Contraire: Day Three, Part 1: The Sir Julius Vogel Awards

Posted on August 29, 2010

I’m a tired but happy little Tim tonight, ‘cos I got one of these on the mantelpiece.

Of course, I can only keep it for six months: it’s the Sir Julius Vogel Award for “Best Collected Work” which the anthology Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand won at Sunday night’s awards ceremony at Au Contraire. Voyagers was co-edited by Mark Pirie and I, so Mark gets to share the award – as should all the poets whose work is included in Voyagers.

The diversity and strength of the nominated works shows the good health of the New Zealand speculative fiction scene, and a lot of good work was recognised. For all the Voyagers winners and nominees, see the awards ceremony livestream.

So that was the personal highlight of a long, tiring, but rewarding day. Tomorrow, when I’ve had some sleep, I’ll blog about the rest of Sunday at this excellent and well-run convention. From chats with authors to SF poetry, there’s a lot to talk about.

Update

Author Jo Walton has made an interesting and much appreciated post about the Vogels on Tor.com.

Voyagers: More Good Reviews, Another Award Nomination

Posted on May 12, 2010

Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, the anthology co-edited by Mark Pirie and I that was published by Interactive Press in 2009, is continuing to make waves – or, if you prefer, ripples in the fabric of space-time. Here is a roundup of the latest news:

More Good Reviews for Voyagers

Joanna Preston has given Voyagers a good review in the May issue of “a fine line”, the magazine of the New Zealand Poetry Society. Joanna says:

More than 70 poets have work in Voyagers; from major luminaries like Fleur Adcock, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell and A.R.D. Fairburn, to protostellar entities like Katherine Liddy, Seán McMahon and Meliors Simms. Most are represented by only one or two poems, the vast majority of which are typical modern NZ free verse lyrics. They range in tone and mood from wonder (as in Nic Hill’s ‘Somewhere Else’), through gleeful weirdness (Helen Rickerby’s ‘Tabloid Headlines’) and ‘Martian’ strangeness (Tracie McBride’s ‘Contact’ and Jane Matheson’s gorgeous ‘An Alien’s Notes on first seeing a prunus-plum tree’), to the bleakness that has long made dystopian fiction one of science fiction’s classic concerns (Fleur Adcock’s brilliant dystopian epic ‘Gas’ being one of the collection’s highlights).

You can read the full review, other reviews, and sample poems, at the Voyagers mini-site.

Hot off the press comes Patricia Prime’s review of Voyagers in Takahe 69. Patricia ends this comprehensive rand generally positive review by saying:

… [there are] probably more contributors concerned with the insights into science fiction than we could have imagined from our community of poets.

Award Nominations

Voyagers is a finalist in the “Best Collected Work” category of the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s local equivalent of the Hugo Awards. My thanks go to all those who nominated Voyagers! The awards ceremony will be at Au Contraire, the 2010 New Zealand Science Fiction Convention, held in Wellington in August, which I’ll be attending. There is a strong lineup in “Best Collected Works”, and all the other categories – it’s a good guide to the present strength of science fiction, fantasy and horror in this country.

As previously reported, “Two Kinds of Time”, by Meliors Simms, is a nominee in the Best Short Poem category of the Rhysling Awards 2010. The Rhysling Awards, established in 1978, are the international awards for science fiction, fantasy and horror poetry. Meliors’ poem appears in the 2010 Rhysling Anthology, and the winners and runners-up will be announced at ReaderCon in Boston in July 2010.

Voyagers cover

You can buy Voyagers from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle e-book, or from New Zealand Books Abroad, or Fishpond.

You can also find out more about Voyagers, and buy it directly from the publisher, at the Voyagers mini-site.

Sir Julius Vogel Award Nominations Open For 2009 Calendar Year

Posted on January 10, 2010

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand’s equivalent of the Hugo Awards, have recently opened for nominations. Nominations close on 31 March 2010.

Grant Stone has listed some possible contenders for the Vogels on his blog, and I naturally endorse his selection of Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry From New Zealand as one of the candidates! You can find SFFANZ’s list of eligible novels on their site; I recently reviewed one of the listed novels, Lee Pletzers’ The Last Church.

Short stories and collections are also listed – look for the 2009 publication dates – and I was pleased to see Voyagers contributions and contributors included on the list.

I want to browse through the lists and catch up on some work that I’ve missed out on reading before deciding what I’d like to nominate – but if you are ready to go with your nominations, here is the official word on how to proceed.

Nomination Procedure

The Sir Julius Vogel sub-committee of SFFANZ is currently accepting nominations for science fiction and fantasy works first published or released in the 2009 calendar year.

Nominations open on 1 January 2010 and close on 31 March 2010 at 8pm.

For more information about SFFANZ and the SJV Awards, please go to the SFFANZ web-site http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/

To make a nomination please email sjv_awards (at) sffanz.sf.org.nz.. Anyone can make a nomination, and it is free of charge.

Please send one nomination per email and include as many contact details as possible for the nominee as well as yourself.

You can find full details about the nomination procedures and rules, including eligibility criteria at http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/sjv/sjvAwards.shtml

A detailed nomination FAQ can be found at http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/sjv/sjvAwardsNominationGuidelines.shtml

The voting will occur at Au Contraire, http://www.aucontraire.org.nz/ – the national science fiction convention being held in Wellington, New Zealand over the weekend of the 27 – 29 August 2010.

Anarya’s Secret on ballot for Sir Julius Vogel Awards

Posted on February 10, 2008

My novel Anarya’s Secret is on the ballot for Best Adult Novel in the 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, the New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards, which will be voted on by the members of Conjunction.

The full list of nominees is available online. It’s great news for science fiction and fantasy in New Zealand that so many works are eligible this year.