A Curious Statistical Anomaly

This has been under-wraps for awhile and we’ve finally got all the technical, or most of the technical, details of the WSFA Press website ironed out.

From WSFA Press:

WSFA Press is publishing a very special and limited new collection of Harry Turtledove short fiction, Reincarnations, containing six stories never-before-reprinted, an original story, story notes, and an introduction by Sheila Williams, the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

Be one of the first people to own this amazing collection. There is a special rate for those who order early, so don’t miss your opportunity to own a copy. Go to the WSFA Press website: http://www.wsfapressbooks.org/ and order your copy today. Only 1000 hardcover copies will be offered for sale: 250 copies will specially signed & numbered by Harry Turtledove, the remaining 750 will not be signed – unless you come to Capclave and find Harry!

In case you’re wondering why I’m touting this book, it’s because I’m a member of WSFA, on this year’s Capclave committee, and Chair of next year’s (2010) Capclave, and on the Publications committee. I also worked on WSFA Press’ previous book, Future Washington, as copy editor and proofreader. But this time, I’m mostly an observer giving support to a great project.

A bit about WSFA Press:

From 1989 to 1992 WSFA Press published one book each year to honor the Guest of Honor of our annual convention. In 2005 WSFA Press was returned from suspended animation to produce the Future Washington anthology. And now in 2009, WSFA Press lives again, returning to its roots to publish Reincarnations by Harry Turtledove.

I’ve known for a while now that Connie Willis had agreed to be a Capclave 2010 Guest of Honor but hoped that the official website would be up by now. But as you know one thing leads to another and the WSFA Small Press Award and the reviving of WSFA Press sort of took over web design and update time but we’re working on the 2010 site and it should be up soon.

So, since I’m so excited by this I wanted to announce it here so you’ll all be as excited and anxious for October 2010 to get here as I am. I’m particularly excited because this is my first time as a convention chairperson. There’s a lot of work to be done and I’m pulling together my committee and developing my time charts and milestones. I’ve just received the emails for the other two guest and will be sending out the invitations tomorrow so stay tuned in case they say yes — should I have a plan B? I didn’t for Connie and she said, “Yes.”

If you haven’t read any of Connie Willis’s works give yourself a treat and try one. I’ve always liked her books and short stories. She manages to pull me in and get me to suspend belief and live in the world she creates along with her characters for the length of whatever form she’s writing in. She can be serious, silly, and penetratingly observant of the human psyche but always entertaining. Some random novel titles to check out: Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Passages, Bellwether, Lincoln’s Dreams, and Remake. There are also several collections of short stories too: Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, Impossible Things, and The Winds of Marble Arch. (Besides you’ll want to have read some of her works before October of 2010 now won’t you).

Capclave is the annual convention of the Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA). It’s usually held in October and the 2009 Guests of Honor are Harry Turtledove, Sheila Williams, and Rob Balder. It will be held from October 16th to the 18th, 2009.

I’ll occasionally post updates on what’s happening with Capclave 2010 here in my blog and on the official Capclave blog.

The Washington Science Fiction Association is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2009 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction (for stories published in 2008):

“Drinking Problem” by K.D. Wentworth, published in Seeds of Change, edited by John Joseph Adams, Prime Books (August, 2008).

“Hard Rain at the Fortean Café” by Lavie Tidhar, published in issue 14 of Aeon Speculative Fiction Magazine, edited by Bridget McKenna.

“His Last Arrow” by Christopher Sequeira, published in Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Jeff Campbell and Charles Prepolec, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, (October, 2008).

“Silent as Dust” by James Maxey, published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, edited by Edmund R. Schubert, Hatrack Publishing, January 2008.

“Spider the Artist” by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, published in Seeds of Change, edited by John Joseph Adams, Prime Books (August, 2008)

“The Absence of Stars: Part 1” by Greg Siewert, published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, edited by Edmund R. Schubert, Hatrack Publishing, December 2008.

“The Toy Car” by Luisa Maria Garcia Velasco, (translated from Spanish by Ian Watson) published in April 2008 edition of Aberrant Dreams, edited by Joseph W. Dickerson.

The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2008). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author (and publisher) hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.

The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (www.wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (www.capclave.org), held this year on October 16-18th in Rockville, Maryland.

Friday night was the 3rd Friday meeting of WSFA. It was a very long business meeting and the upshot is that there is going to be some exciting news about Capclave 2009 very soon now. Updates and news about what’s happening at Capclave can be found on the new Capclave blog.

Then this afternoon there was a Capclave meeting to discuss programming for this year’s convention. Lots of ideas were tossed around and refined and this tentative list of program items will soon be available on the Capclave site so you can see what we might potentially have at the convention.

After the meeting, Hyperion and I stopped to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.. I loved it. Of course I always wish that they could have everything that the book had but then the movie would last all day. But the adaptation that they did for the movie kept the spirit and the heart of the story and that’s what counts. Now, we have to wait another year (Nov 2010) for the next installment. I think at some point I’ll have to read the books from beginning to end again. (Can you tell I enjoy the books?)

It’s after midnight, I’m off to sleep I hope.

This is the 3rd year of the WSFA Small Press Award.

“The award is open to works of imaginative literature (science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc.) published in English for the first time in the previous calendar year. Furthermore, the Small Press Award is limited to works under 17,501 words in length that were published by a small press. The nominees are narrowed down by a panel elected by the membership of WSFA, and these finalists are then judged by the entire membership of WSFA in order to select a winner. Throughout the process, the author and publisher of each story are kept anonymous, and the winning story and its author are announced at Capclave, the WSFA convention held in the D.C. area each October.”

This year, I’m the award administrator. The nomination period is over and the stories have now been stripped of author and publisher information and have been entered into our database. Passwords are being generated for the committee members who will read the stories and select the list of finalists. Once the finalists are chosen, members of WSFA (Washington Science Fiction Association) will be given passwords and allowed to read the finalists and vote for the winner.

The winner will be announced at this year’s Capclave, the club’s annual convention. This year we have 59 valid nominations. We hope that with each year the number of nominations will increase as we manage to inform more of the small presses who are eligible about the contest.

Now, until the finalists are chosen my job is in wait and see mode. But, there are some great stories in this group of nominee and I’m anxious to see which of these 59 stories make the list of finalists.

Today was work, work, work — getting books entered, reading for reviews, taking notes and getting set for a WSFA (Washington Science Fiction Association) Meeting in DC. For the next six month or so the club is meeting in DC … usually we meet in Virginia for the first Friday of the month, and Maryland for the third Friday.

If you live in the DC, northern VA, Maryland area and love science fiction and fantasy you should check out WSFA. You can view their website at www.wsfa.org. There’s some great people, lots of nice geeky (SF, fantasy, science, technology, and social) discussions after the short business meeting.

WSFA puts on a yearly convention called Capclave. Capclave is usually held in October. This year it will 16-18 October 2009.
Guests of Honor will be Harry Turtledove as Author Guest of Honor and Sheila Williams as Editor Guest of Honor. The convention will be held at the Hilton Washington DC/Rockville, Executive Meeting Center, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852.

WSFA also presents the WSFA Small Press Award at a short ceremony during the convention. This is the club’s third year giving out this award and the number of nominations are growing each year. The award honors the work of small presses and the short story (under 17,500 words).

Check out the websites to learn more about WSFA and their activities. I enjoy the people, the discussions, and the chance to get involved in the community of fans.

[Besides I needed to do a post tonight and thought I’d talk about a group that I give a lot of my time to. I’m Capclave chairperson for 2010, one of the two webmasters, and the current WSFA Small Press Award Administrator.]
So if you live in the area, come to a meeting and check us out.