Have been sitting on this since yesterday evening: the tireless Donna Scott let me know my Interzone short story “The Shipmaker” has made the shortlist in the Best Short Fiction category. Where it’s, er, up against some very stiff competition by Nina Allan, Peter Watts, and Neil Williamson.

Wow?

While I go for a liedown, you can go congratulate Lauren Beukes, whose Zoo City is on the shortlist for Best Novel. And indeed, everyone else on the list (it’s quite an impressive rollcall).

The Award Ceremony will take place at this year’s Eastercon in Birmingham–any members of the BSFA/Eastercon can vote. I’ll see about getting the story up online.

As usual–many many thanks to everyone who nominated it, to Andy Cox and Andy Hedgecock for publishing it in the first place, and to the BSFA Awards administrator, Donna Scott, for so quickly tallying up the votes.

ETA: an online version is now available here. Thanks for Andy Cox for the sheer reaction speed.

Small reminder that today is the last day to vote for the British Science Fiction Association awards if you’re a member. Over at Torque Control, Niall Harrison is posting the list of works which have received at least one nomination in the categories of Best Artwork, Best Non Fiction, and Best Short Fiction (Best Novel forthcoming). Among other things:

-Best Non-Fiction is really sparse this year: there’s about 10 works nominated all in all, so any extra ideas would presumably be very much welcome.

-Best Novel not up yet, but from what I saw on the BSFA forums, the Best Novel category, more so than the Short Fiction, is still skewed towards men: a quick headcount reveals that out of 45 nominations, only 6 are for works by women (vs. 25/72, insofar as I can tell, in the short fiction category). If you’d like to recommend more works by women or to vote for something already on the list, now is the time. Just be careful that unlike the Short Fiction category (where anything published in English worldwide is eligible), the novels have to have been published in the UK in 2010 to be eligible.

So if you’ve got any recommendations and are a BSFA member, there’s still time to squeeze your votes in before the deadline. Send to awards@bsfa.co.uk.

(and yeah, if you’ve got any love for my Interzone short story “The Shipmaker” and feel like expressing it today, I’d of course be overjoyed. But again, the most important thing at this stage is getting in as many votes as possible to ensure the awards represent the BSFA membership as well as possible. So, as we say in France–“to the ballot boxes, everyone” 🙂 )

ETA: Best Novel is up, too.

PS: and to whoever already nominated either “The Shipmaker” and Servant of the Underworld: wow, thanks!