SFSF Awards 2018

Roll up, roll up, set fire to the curtains and smash the lights! No wait, that’s Brexit. Anyway, apologies once again for the lack of communications this last year, we’ve felt like Schrodinger’s Cat, trying to keep the box closed so we don’t have to face the outside world for much of it.

But we did manage to get SPFBO award winner Rob Hayes and double British Fantasy Award nominee Anna Smith Spark to speak at The Grimdark SFSF, and the crowd was suitably entertained by a truly banging body count. You can rest assured too that 2019 will feature more SFSF events, especially in light of the excellent news that Sheffield will host Fantasycon in 2020. Surely not even Off The Shelf Festival will be able to ignore that.

Right, time to put the snark away, because this is the legendary annual awards post, administered by a shadowy, unelected cabal of immoral and merciless sociopaths under the control of an authoritarian foreign power!

No, wait, that’s Brexit again.

Anyway, these are the brilliant books we wholeheartedly and enthusiastically recommend to you all. With pictures of cats, of course. And there are multiple winners because that’s the rules, folks!

Best Collection/Anthology

N K Jemisin, How Long ’til Black Future Month (Orbit)

Skadi eyes up the winners

Best Novel (the Skadi Award)

The Tower of Living & Dying, by Anna Smith Spark (Harper)
The Bitter Twins, by Jen Williams (Headline)
The Synapse Sequence, by Dan Godfrey (Titan Books)
Darksoul, by Anna Stephens (Orbit)
Rosewater, by Tade Thompson (Orbit)
Children of Artifice, by Danie Ware (Fox Spirit)

Mycroft contemplates completion

The Mycroft Award for Best Completed Series

The Wounded Kingdom, by RJ Barker (Orbit)
The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells (Tor.com)
The Ben Garston trilogy, by James Bennett (Orbit)

SFSF Awards 2017

Again, it’s been something of a quiet year for SFSF. We’ve been hibernating and plotting, and working on lots of other things, and fitting the Socials in with everything else on the calendar proved to be one step too far – our apologies for that, but we will be back in the new year, promise!

Meanwhile, it’s time for the annual giving of awards! Last year’s format worked nicely, so we’ve kept the judges, the rituals, and the absolute lack of public accountability to bring you a selection of worthy winners that we believe you should all read.

Best Anthology

Pacific Monsters, ed. Margret Helgadottir (Fox Spirit Books)
Escape Artists Podcasts (Pseudopod, Cast of Wonders, Escape Pod, Podcastle)

Best Novel (The Skadi Award)

So many contenders for this one this year! Thank the gods everyone’s a winner, eh? Imagine the bloodshed and chaos if we had to choose just one…

The Court of Broken Knives, Anna Smith Spark (Voyager)
Under the Pendulum Sun, Jeanette Ng (Angry Robot)
Age of Assassins, RJ Barker (Orbit)
The Ninth Rain, Jen Williams (Hodder)
The Rift, Nina Allan (Titan)
100 Best Video Games That Never Existed, Nate Crowley (Rebellion)

The Mycroft Award for Best Completed Series

Shades of Magic, VE Schwab (Titan)
Fitz and the Fool, Robin Hobb (Voyager)

SFSF Awards 2016

Hello one and all, and welcome to the inaugural edition of the hopefully annual SFSF Awards, in which we tip a pint glass to some of the very best Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and WTF? (that one’s for you, Angry Robot) we encountered during 2016. No juries were hung, no votes were rigged, and electoral colleges and referendums were punted very firmly off the edge of the world. Most importantly, you can stand and applaud whenever you feel like it. Nobody’s judging you here.

(Um… except us. But in a good way.)

Best Anthology

Monstrous Little Voices – ed. David Thomas Moore (Rebellion)
Fight Like a Girl – ed. Joanne Hall & Roz Clarke (Grimbold Books)
African Monsters – ed. Jo Thomas & Margret Helgadottir (Fox Spirit Books)

How can you choose between these three? Imaginative spinnings of Shakespearian characters into a web of diverse perils; kick-ass stories of physically and mentally tough women crossing all genres; a sumptuously designed volume of African-centric monster stories that dares you not to enjoy it. How do you choose?

If you’re like us, then you don’t. They all win. And more power to them.

Best Collection

Signs in the Moonlight – David Tallerman (Digital SF)
Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom – Juliet E McKenna (Wizard’s Tower Press)

Best Novella

Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan Maguire (Tor)
Patchwerk – David Tallerman (Tor)
Winter – Dan Grace (Unsung Stories)

Best Novel (The Skadi Award)

Sherlock Holmes & The Servants of Darkness – Paul Kane (Rebellion)
Chasing Embers – James Bennett (Orbit)
Revenger – Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz)
13 Minutes – Sarah Pinborough (Gollancz)
False Hearts – Laura Lam (Macmillan)
A Close and Common Orbit – Becky Chambers (Hodder)

The Mycroft Award for Best Completed Series

The Copper Cat trilogy – Jen Williams (Hodder)
The Age of Darkness – Stephen Aryan (Orbit)

Congratulations, one and all! We hope to see you next year! 🙂