Views from Medina Road

Locus Online is pleased to announce that it will compile lists of books categorized by editor, as a service to the SF community in support of the new Hugo Awards category for Long Form Editor -- i.e., an editor who selects and edits novels or other books, as opposed to the Short Form Editor of magazines or anthologies, whose candidates have traditionally dominated the Hugo Awards Best Editor category.

The idea of compiling such a list was floated a year or more ago, since the editor category split was first announced, but has taken awhile to arrange. (You may ask me in person for details, if you see me at some convention.)

I will be sending out e-mails to various publishers and editors in the next week or so, but until then, for any book editors reading this, you are hereby invited to send to me (online@locusmag.com) a list of your 2006 book titles annotated with the editor of record -- the editor who should be credited for the book, for purposes of this new Hugo Awards category. I will compile the data and annotate the existing 2006 Books Directory listing, and will generate a new page, analogous to the Cover Art Gallery, which will list all 2006 book titles by book editor.

Please note that for the 2006 page (for candidates for the 2007 Hugo Awards), I will compile editors of original books published in 2006 -- not paperback reprints of books published earlier, etc. Just as the Hugo Award for Best Artist is intended to honor the artist's work for the eligibility year, so I think the award for Best Editor (in either range) is intended to honor an editor's output in that eligibility year. Locus Online will maintain separate lists for each year's original books, arranged by editor, as long as this Hugo Award category goes on.

Note per comment below (that was fast!) that John Klima has already set up a Science Fiction and Fantasy Editor Wiki that may serve much the same purpose.