Yeah, but is it eligible?

A friend of mine was wondering aloud recently if his anthology -- edited by Canadians, but with stories by Canadians, Americans, and Brits -- was eligible for the Aurora Award, or whether the administrators might disqualify it for being "insufficiently Canadian." My response:

Go ahead and nominate your book. The Aurora administrators don't routinely overrule the will of the masses; that is, they'd have to make a case to disqualify something if it was nominated by enough people to make the final ballot -- and why would they do that?

Yes, they'll reject things that were published in the wrong year, because that clearly violates the rules, but beyond that the rules are deliberately vague so that the will of the people can be heard.

If enough people nominate something so that it makes the final ballot, I'd be surprised if the Aurora administrators felt any need (or, indeed felt they had any mandate) to disqualify it -- unless, as I say, it was clearly from the wrong year.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site