The list is out, and my work is done.
I have been, since November, reading as a judge for the World Fantasy Awards. There are stacks and stacks (and stacks, and stacks and stacks) of books in my living room, my bedroom, my garage. As of this week the other judges and I have turned in the slate and it has been made public. Our work is pretty much done, except for keeping our mouths shut until the awards are given at the World Fantasy Convention in October.
If anyone ever asks if you’d like to be a judge–consider saying Yes. Also, consider saying No. It is a huge undertaking. We received over 300 novels, about 75 novellas, I’ve’-lost-count-of-how-many short fiction entries, plus anthologies, collections, and a fascinating hodge-podge of works for the Special Award categories. Even with five judges (each work is seen by at least two of the judges) it’s a pretty massive undertaking. I was fortunate that my fellow judges (Ann VanderMeer, Richard Thomas, Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ, and Tamsyn Muir) were all smart funny people who were willing to dig in and do the work. We did not agree on every work (there were a couple of books I read early on that I thought were great, but the best I was able to get from the other readers was that they could see why I thought the books were great but they were less than thrilled). But when one of the other judges posts something like “Holy Shit, this is a great book!” you want to look at it right away.
The World Fantasy Award encompasses fantasy, horror, and a sort of catchall of weird, slipstream, and magical realism. It does not include Science Fiction, which is well represented and awarded elsewhere. I am not much of a horror reader, but I came to have a new appreciation for the genre. And there are a number of works I read that were an intriguing mix of two or more genres that put me in mind of the players in Hamlet, working in combinations of pastoral-comical-historical etc. And I have to say that I have a new awe for the range of talent, and of reach in the Fantasy/Horror field. A lot of great work out there.
As I said: consider saying Yes: you will be exposed to what is best in the field. You will be inspired and impressed, and you will get to work with great people. Consider also saying No: I got no writing done from November until the end of July, barring only posts in the Treehouse and necessary correspondence. My brain was filled with other peoples’ stories. And because I am me, and a compulsive stage manager, I wound up deploying a lot of spreadsheets to keep track of what came in, who was reading what, who thought what of which, and what had to happen next. It’s a lot.
Still: consider saying Yes. But you have been warned.