There’s an excellent post here by Adam Roberts, written with his characteristic perspicacity and wit, on awards and self-pimping. Now I must hang my head in shame, as I did post a little something of that sort back in December, but in my defence I’m just farting in a thunderstorm. (And Adam himself admits he’d thought The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself was published in 2012, and I wanted to make people aware that it was actually out in 2013. Note to self: do not publish anything in January.) However, I was intending to post something here about what I’d myself nominated for the BSFA (and I will likely do the same for the Hugo), just as soon as I’d figured out what I was going to choose…

Each year, I tell myself I will read more short fiction, or I will read more books during their year of publication. Each year, I fail to do so. So it’s a rare year when I get to actually cobble together a list of nominations in all four BSFA categories – novel, short fiction, non-fiction, artwork – of reasonable length. This year, sadly, is no exception. So, for what it’s worth, these are what I’ve nominated so far…

Novel
Checking back over my records, I see I’ve read nineteen books published in 2013, but only six of them are genre novels. Which doesn’t give me much of a pool to nominate from – but the following are easily the best of those six, and I’d be happy to nominate them even if I’d read ninety books published in 2013.

• A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth L Ozeki (Canongate)
• Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit)
• God’s War, Kameron Hurley (Del Rey)

Short Story
At the start of the year, I made an effort to keep abreast of new genre short fiction as it was published – not just in the various online venues I regularly visit, but also the genre print magazines to which I subscribe – which would be, er, Interzone. Sadly, that effort didn’t last long. I did, however, read two genre anthologies published in 2013, and both contained some very good fiction.

• ‘A Bridge of Words’, Dinesh Rao (We See a Different Frontier, Fernandes & al-Ayad, Futurefire.net)
• ‘Golden Apple’, Sophia McDougall (The Lowest Heaven, Perry & Shurin, Jurassic London)
• ‘Selkie Stories are for Losers’, Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons)
• ‘Build Guide’, Helen Jackson (Interzone)

As for the non-fiction and artwork categories… I’ll be spending this weekend trying to cobble together a short list of each to nominate (nominations close on Tuesday 14 January). And I have until 31 March to decide what I’m going to nominate for the 2013 Hugo Awards…