Thursday, February 8, 2007

Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards



Mark R. Kelly has just posted the annual update to his monumental Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards, a huge database listing award wins and nominations for awards major and minor; it's really an amazing piece of work, and must have taken an awful lot of time and effort to compile.

The summary page about yours truly is here, and you can see how I'm doing compared to other writers here. Mark shows me as having 87 nominations and 30 wins.

(I actually -- cough, cough -- have more award nominations and wins than that, since Mark's tally only lists science-fiction awards, and not such things as the Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada, which I've won once and been nominated for three times, the Ryerson University Alumni Award of Distinction, the $1,000 Mississauga Established Literary Artist Award, and so on; my own tally is 98 nominations and 38 wins -- not that anyone's counting ...)

Anyway, Mark's index is a lot of fun to poke around in, and, I'm sure, a very useful tool for librarians, researchers, and readers.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site


3 Comments:

At February 08, 2007 1:09 PM , Anonymous Fish said...

It's stunning to me how 'poorly' legends like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov stack up in the award compilation list. Any thoughts on this? Were their contributions not fully appreciated until well after eligibility?

 
At February 08, 2007 3:51 PM , Blogger RobertJSawyer said...

Actually, it's neither, Fish. Asimov and Clarke were recognized as giants in their heydey. But the proliferation of different SF awards is a modern phenomenon. Even the Nebula came after Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein did their most famous work (it was founded in 1965).

Today, we have national SF award in most countries (including one named the Arthur C. Clarke Award), we have awards for specialized themes (for instance, I've been twice nominated for the Spectrum Award, which honors science fiction that positively portrays gay, lesbian, bi, and transgendered lifestyles), and so forth.

Of course, the best-novel Hugo is still the biggie -- the one that most writers would trade every other award they might have for -- and both Clarke and Asimov have won that (off the top of my head -- I'm on the road -- for FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE and THE GODS THEMSELVES). :)

You'd find the same thing in any field. Look at how few awards Humphrey Bogart won, and how many Russell Crowe has. It wasn't that there Bogart wasn't recognized as a giant in his day, but rather that there were fewer ways to honor him.

 
At February 09, 2007 8:14 AM , Blogger Lou_Sytsma said...

Another excellent link Rob! Thanks again and you have a most excellent batting average indeed!

 

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