2010 Locus Award winners!

The 2010 Locus Magazine Awards for science fiction were handed out today -- many of the winners were reviewed here as well (links below). You'd be hard pressed to find a better reading list of great contemporary SF:

Best SF Novel: Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)

Best Fantasy Novel: The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)

Best First Novel: The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

Best Young Adult Book: Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

Best Novella: The Women of Nell Gwynne's, Kage Baker (Subterranean)

Best Novelette: ''By Moonlight'', Peter S. Beagle (We Never Talk About My Brother)

Best Short Story: ''An Invocation of Incuriosity'', Neil Gaiman (Songs of the Dying Earth)

Best Anthology: The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos; HarperCollins Australia)

Best Collection: The Best of Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe (Tor); as The Very Best of Gene Wolfe (PS)

2010 Locus Awards Winners

• [chgotchr]

  I’m glad The City And The City is getting recognition – it’s one of my favorite novels.

  I tried to read Boneshaker, really I did, but I kept getting bored. The novel tries so hard to be steampunky, but I just felt that the efforts fell flat.

• [Euryale]

  I loved Boneshaker and I’m glad it won something, but I’d have called it fantasy rather than SF. But then, I don’t suppose the “Is This Really SF?” debate ever actually ends.

• [Nancy Jane Moore]

  You left off one of the winners: The best non-fiction/art book award went to Ursula K. Le Guin for Cheek by Jowl, a collection of essays on why fantasy matters from Aqueduct Press.

• [Mark Bourne]

  The full list of finalists, all deserving of a nod some applause: http://www.locusmag.com/News/2010/04/locus-awards-finalists.html

  At the awards banquet the finalists weren’t named there either, which unhappily surprised me. (Hell, we had a finalist at our table.) If acknowledging them at the ceremony was cut to make more time for the trivia/Hawaiian shirt contest, I’d say priorities got flipped.

  Congrats to them all.

• [smonkey]

  All amazing reads but….

  Boneshaker?

  Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, a fun silly read about zombies, airships and steampunky goodness.

  But best SF novel?

  Maybe best pseudo-young-adult-hitting-all-the-hot-trends-steampunk novel. (well, actually the Affinity Bridge blew it away in that realm too…hmm).

  I guess that’s what reader polls are for.

• [afs97209]

  Bad enough that the right wingers fill the airwaves with anti-science propaganda, and we’re stuck with religious propaganda in science classrooms. Now we’re stuck with both fantasy and SF wings of this genre clogged full of “better, simpler, earlier” times.

  You can’t run to the SF aisle as a refuge from anti-science attitudes anymore. Look at the Locus Awards. Steampunk, swords and sorcery, apocalypse, literary fantasy, Victorian England. A space opera anthology is the closest we get to any message from any Locus Award winner that science is a positive force on society.

  • [Felton]

    If steampunk is part of an anti-science agenda, then boingboing has to be in on it. Lets see…unicorns represent magical thinking, ukuleles are low-tech, anti-science musical instruments. By jove, you’re right! Conspiracy! How do the bananas fit into it, though?

• [bardfinn]

  Saw Boneshaker at the store today, recognised the cover, staff had put a handwritten note in front of it : “2010 Locus Award Winner”. Bought. Am deep into it now. Thanks for putting it in my consciousness.

• [afs97209]

  Felton… there’s just as many people using the phrase “there’s no things as conspiracies” as magical protective talisman as there are using Rosaries and St. Christopher’s medals.

  There’s not just some conspiracies. There’s lots. Oodles. That’s why the Federal government created the RICO (The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act

  It’s why the economy crashed, and the Gulf of Mexico is in the state it’s in right now.

  • [Felton]

    Sorry for the snark. I agree that there are plenty of actual conspiracies now and throughout history. I just think it’s a little far-fetched to see these award choices as evidence of an anti-science conspiracy in the sci-fi world. Do you think organized religion is behind it somehow?

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    You’re way off topic.

    • [afs97209]

      Antinous “You’re way off topic.”

      How is that? Cory listed the Locus Awards, then said
      “You’d be hard pressed to find a better reading list of great contemporary SF”

      To which I replied…”You can’t run to the SF aisle as a refuge from anti-science attitudes anymore. Look at the Locus Awards. Steampunk, swords and sorcery, apocalypse, literary fantasy, Victorian England. A space opera anthology is the closest we get to any message from any Locus Award winner that science is a positive force on society.”

      I challenge the idea that “Science Fiction” can promote a pro-superstition, anti-scientific method message at it heart. I do not accept that you can call literature that in conflict with the scientific method “science fiction.”

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        Your attempt to politicize the thread is out of order.