Views from Medina Road

As it turned out Bantam Spectra said they were very reluctant to ship copies of the winning book outside of North America; they've had problems with deliveries. Three of the 10 announced winners are in Europe. I should have thought of this possibility before I announced the winners, but I didn't. So I sent Bantam names of three runners-up, including two who got only 9 questions correct, and told the 3 Europeans I'd send them a copy of the book myself, via Amazon. Seems they have no problem getting books from Amazon...

Next time I'll have to establish more restrictive rules for entrants.

In retrospect, though, I think the difficulty of the test was about right. Most of the questions were easily answered by anyone familiar with Locus Online -- the interview index, the awards index, etc. -- while the final question required either knowledge of Locus Magazine itself, or an especially canny Googling ability. About 1/3 of all entrants got all 10 questions correct. I just had to remind people to keep submitting...

As for the Hugo nominations... I was surprised not to see Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys on the final list. I was disappointed not to see any of my favorite short stories on the list. I was unsurprised to see Hugo regulars Resnick, Burstein, and Sawyer on the final list; they seem to have their constituencies, regardless of what reviewers and anthologists think (disclosure: I haven't read their stories here yet). Happy to see Stephan Martiniere, my current fave artist, make the ballot. Interesting to see that Locus has three editors this year. Predictions: Stross for novel, Willis or Link for novella, Doctorow for novelette, Resnick or Lanagan for short story, Scalzi for the Campbell. And am I a teeny bit happy that the Best Interactive Video Game category collapsed..? (Actually, I nominated Myst V.) When there could have been a wildly popular Best Website category, whose contenders, granted, change every year...?