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Left to right: Nancy Fulda, Connie Willis, Sheila Williams, John Kessel (for Kij Johnson), and Geoffrey A. Landis |
On May 19, we treated our Twenty-Sixth Annual Readers’ Award winners to a breakfast celebration at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City’s lovely Cinnabar Restaurant in Arlington, Virginia. As usual, our ceremony was held in conjunction with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Nebula Awards Weekend. We were pleased that this meant a number of our winners were on hand to accept their awards in person.
In addition to winning the short story award for her beautiful tale of “Movement,” Nancy Fulda also qualified for the award for furthest distance traveled. Nancy had flown in from her home in Germany. She was met in DC by her charming sister, Sandra Tayler, who’d just arrived from Utah. The women told us they’d both suffered from jet lag, but with polar opposite symptoms. I’m not sure when they arrived, however, because both sisters seemed refreshed and well rested by the time they joined us for the reception. Nancy’s story was also nominated for the Nebula Award and she will get another chance at jet lag when she returns to the US over Labor Day weekend to celebrate being a finalist for the Hugo Award as well.
Poet/author/aerospace scientist Geoffrey A. Landis received a Readers’ Award for his captivating poem about “Five Pounds of Sunlight.” We were pleased that Geoff and his wife, poet/author Mary Turzillo, were also able to join us for breakfast. Mary was returning to their home in Ohio after the Nebulas, but Geoff was remaining in Washington to attend the Global Space Exploration Conference (May 22-24), sponsored by the International Astronautical Federation, and the International Space Development Conference (May 24-28), which is the annual conference of the National Space Society.
Connie Willis, her husband Courtney, and their daughter, Cordelia, have often been invited to our Readers’ Awards breakfast because of Connie’s long association with the magazine. Over the years, her Asimov’s stories have been recipients of four of her seven Nebulas and nine of her eleven Hugos. This year, the family attended our breakfast because Connie’s delightful tale “All About Emily” was the winner of our Readers’ Award for best novelette. Later that evening at the Nebula reception, she became the newest of SFWA’s Grand Masters. We are proud that we’ve been, and continue to be, a part of this brilliant author’s storied career.
Due to a family commitment, Kij Johnson couldn’t attend our breakfast or the Nebula weekend. Fortunately, she sent the distinguished author John Kessel to collect her best novella Readers’ Award for “The Man Who Bridged the Mist.” Later that night, John had the additional honor of collecting her Nebula Award for the same story.
Another person absent from the breakfast was Paul Youll. Paul won the Readers’ Award for his October/November cover. He sent along a speech that read, “That’s really fantastic to hear my cover was picked out of the many great covers you’ve had this year. I always say to my agent, Alan Lynch, that I’ve done some of my favorite and best covers for Asimov’s in my many years as a cover artist and you are always a pleasure to work with. I loved reading ‘The Man Who Bridged the Mist’ so doing the cover was immensely enjoyable. Many thanks to you and the art directors I’ve worked with over the years and to your readers who chose my cover. It’s always a pleasure to work for the magazine.”
Other guests at the breakfast were author and internet columnist James Patrick Kelly and Locus editor Liza Groen Trombi. Stanley Schmidt hosted Analog’s AnLab Awardsin conjunction with Asimov’s Readers’ Awards. His guests included his wife, Joyce; Adam-Troy Castro and his wife, Judy; Richard A. Lovett; John G. Hemry; Craig DeLancey; and Gregory Benford. As near as I could tell, a terrific time was had by all.
As usual, one of the bonuses of processing the ballots for our award was perusing the accompanying comments from our readers. We heard from long-time readers like Alan K. Lipton, who wrote, “Another year, another set of tough choices. And as I relived the experiences of reading all this fine material, I experienced a sense of ownership. Well, as a thirty-three-year subscriber, I suppose it’s only natural to feel this is ‘my’ magazine. Thank you for continuing to make me proud.” And we heard from brand-new readers like Joy Solomon who told us “My boyfriend just got me reading Asimov’s this year. I mentioned that I really liked ‘Movement’ when I heard it on EscapePod, and then he had me read a bunch of stories. Really great to see Ken Liu published in your magazine. I’m glad that you publish poetry, too, I’ve never seen a sci-fi magazine that did that. Keep up the good work!” Although she didn’t say how long she’d been reading the magazine, Jeanne Dowd added, “You didn’t ask for editorial votes, but Robert Silverberg’s Reflections would win hands down—the only difficulty would be deciding which columns were the best.” And finally, Gaspar Garçã remarked, “Let me stress my pleasure in receiving your magazine every month, which in a time of economic difficulties is always a high point in my life, and just a quick final note to mention the enormous quality of the short stories this year, especially one of the highlights, I think of the magazine itself, ‘The Music of the Spheres,’ by Norman Spinrad.”
We appreciate all of your comments and hope to receive many more ballots when the award opens next year for voting in the Twenty-Seventh Annual Readers’ Award contest. |
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