Views from Medina Road

First, the spam attack problem was solved the morning after I reported it to our hosting service, CI Host; it's called 'spoofing', as several readers advised me, and the boffins at CI Host had some method (something about a 'PTR record') of preventing the effects of the incursion.

Second, the Locus Poll votes have been processed and databased and scrubbed for egregious voting sins (people-- we tell you this every year, but if you vote for the *same item* five times in the same category, you have violated our voting rules and we will *throw out* your entire ballot) and tabulated and scored and ranked. The results are known. As we've done for two or three years now, we have posted a list of 'finalists', i.e. the top five ranking items in each category, as an enticement to attend the actual Locus Awards event in Seattle and learn who the actual winners are, before they appear in print in Locus Magazine (or are posted online here).

I've watched the ballots come in and have done several incremental tabulations of results, but I'm nevertheless impressed by the final results: the sets of five finalists in each category are, it seems to me, solid indicators of the year's best books and stories, and are at least as impressive and substantial (maybe moreso in some categories) as the Hugo finalists, in those categories that correspond. If you've read nothing all year, you could do far worse than using these finalists as reading guides. Actually, there are a couple three categories where I need to do that myself.