LOCUS Awards and Hall of Fame

Yesterday were both the annual LOCUS Awards and the inductions into the SF Hall of Fame of four new honorees. The Awards, held at a Seattle hotel, were preceded by two panels: one on humor in SF (Connie Willis, Terry Bisson, Gardner Dozois, Gary Wolfe) and the other on the future of e-publishing (me, Gary Wolfe, Ellen Datlow, Mary Robinette Kowal, Paul Park), below:


The awards themselves were, as always, ably and hilariously conducted by Connie Willis, who reprimanded everyone not wearing a Hawaiian shirt. I, in my role as Official Heckler, received a grass skirt. It may be difficult to convince my Clarion class next week that I am a serious and knowledgeable instructor, since their first sight of me was performing a hula in a plastic grass skirt. Below, Connie, me, and Gardner Dozois, who is wearing a flowered, lei bra:

The Award winners for fiction were Neil Gaiman (twice, for both short story and novelette), Ted Chiang (novella), China Mieville (fantasy novel, KRAKEN), and Connie (SF novel, ALL CLEAR).

Unfortunately, my camera battery died before the Hall of Fame inductions at the SF Museum. These were far more serious, with moving speeches by honorees Gardner Dozois and Vincent di Fate. (Although the seriousness of Gardner's speech may have been slightly undercut by emcee Terry Bisson saying to him, "We inducted your butt today!" and Gardner answering from the audience, "Only my butt?") Unable to be present were honorees Jean Giraud (Mobius) and Harlan Ellison. Jim Woodring accepted for Moebius, and Neil Gaiman for Harlan. I got to introduce Neil, who made a moving speech about what Harlan's fiction had meant to him when Neil was young.

Next came a reception at the museum, after which I was tired of smiling. So Connie and Courtney Willis, Jack and I went to dinner at a Thai restaurant and snarled at each other about the movies we disagree on, which seemed to be all of them.

An enjoyable, exhausting day, steeped in the genre I love.