Work-In-Progress Report
I haven’t been posting much lately, have I? That’s because I’ve mostly been writing, with time off for workouts — but even the workouts stopped a few days ago as other chores intruded.

Anyway, as noted in the title, this is my last work-in-progress report for the new novel, because that novel is officially “done.”

Of course, in this business there are many phases of “done,” and there will certainly be more revisions to come, but it’s now with my agent, so that’s a draft!

John W. Campbell Memorial Award
The Hugo Awards, given out at Worldcon this past weekend, were casting shade, but the winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award was also announced during the convention — and no, it wasn’t me. The award went to Eleanor Lerman for her novel Radiomen. Congratulations to Eleanor! As it turns out, Going Dark was tied for second place alongside Adam Roberts’ The Thing Itself.

Follow this link for details.

Recommended Audiobook
Malka Older’s Infomocracy is a near-future look at politics and the way a global system of “micro-democracies” might work — and of course how people, being people, will attempt to game the system. The story takes place during a world-wide election, held every ten years, in which “centinels” — geographic divisions of a hundred-thousand people — are each choosing new leadership, and there is a lot of competition among the various political groups to pick up these new centinels.

The world building behind Infomocracy is absolutely brilliant and at times some of the observations made in the story are quite funny — but be aware that there is a lot of detail as the characters discuss statistics, voting, and political platforms. Think of Infomocracy as a bureaucrat’s thriller. I won’t be at all surprised to see it on next year’s Campbell Memorial list.

The audio narration is by Christine Marshal and I thought it was very well done.

The list of finalists for this year’s John W. Campbell Memorial Award was just released, and I’m very pleased to report that Going Dark was included.

Back in 2014, The Red: First Light also made the list.

The Campbell Memorial award honors the best English-language science fiction novel published in the prior year.

For the full list of finalists, and information about the award, visit the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction.

So this is kind of cool…

As I mentioned last month, The Red: First Light was included as one of fifteen nominees for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, a juried award presented for the best science-fiction novel of the year. It didn’t win the award — that enviable honor went to Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux — but as it turns out, it placed third, behind Paul McAuley’s Evening’s Empires. I’m happy with that.

The link above will fall out of date as time passes, so here’s a link to a PDF announcement detailing both the John W. Campbell Memorial Award results, and the associated Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction.

More good news for The Red: First Light! The novel has been honored as a finalist for The John W. Campbell Memorial Award. This must have been a good year for science fiction, because there are fifteen finalists — more than in any other recent year.

The Campbell Memorial Award is a juried award presented for the best science-fiction novel of the year. It’s considered one of the three major annual awards for science fiction, and is generally limited to science fiction — in other words, it does not consider fantasy novels. The award is administered by Christopher McKitterick, Director of the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas.

The winner has not been announced yet, though no doubt it will be soon. Again, I have no expectation of winning, but as with the Nebulas, it truly is an honor just to be nominated.

This is actually my second Campbell nomination. My novel Memory was nominated back in 2004 — something I never knew at the time. It was only in the last year or so that I discovered it on the list of nominees — a rather ironic surprise.

The full list of finalists can be found here.

And more information on the award itself can be found here.