1994 World Fantasy Award Nominees

Location: World Fantasy Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Comments: I don't really have much that I can say about the 1994 World Fantasy Awards. Charles de Lint received two nominations, but that was par for the course for him by now. Neil Gaiman also received two nominations, which would shortly become par for the course for him as well.

But as I have read none of the winning works, and precious few of the other nominees, exacerbated by the fact that I have not even read any other fiction by the winners, there isn't really a whole lot of useful commentary that I can give about the field as a whole, or the results specifically.

Best Novel

Winner:
Glimpses by Lewis Shiner

Other Nominees:
Drawing Blood by Poppy Z. Brite
The Innkeeper's Song by Peter S. Beagle
The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick
Lord of the Two Lands by Judith Tarr
Skin by Kathe Koja
The Throat by Peter Straub

Best Novella

Winner:
Under the Crust by Terry Lamsley

Other Nominees:
The Erl-King by Elizabeth Hand
Mefisto in Onyx by Harlan Ellison

The Night We Buried Road Dog by Jack Cady (reviewed in Fantasy & Science Fiction: Volume 116, No. 2 (February 2009))

Wall, Stone, Craft by Walter Jon Williams

Best Short Fiction

Winner:
The Lodger by Fred Chappell

Other Nominees:
Death in Bangkok by Dan Simmons
England Underway by Terry Bisson
The Little Green Ones by Les Daniels
The Moon Is Drowning While I Sleep by Charles de Lint
Some Strange Desire by Ian McDonald
Something Worse by Terry Lamsley
Troll Bridge by Neil Gaiman

Best Anthology

Winner:

Full Spectrum 4 edited by Lou Aronica, Amy Stout, and Betsy Mitchell

Other Nominees:
Christmas Forever edited by David G. Hartwell
The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales edited by Alison Lurie
Sinistre edited by George Hatch
Snow White, Blood Red edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixth Annual Collection edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Best Collection

Winner:
Alone with the Horrors by Ramsey Campbell

Other Nominees:
Angels & Visitations: A Miscellany by Neil Gaiman
Antiquities by John Crowley
Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint
Hogfoot Right and Bird-hands by Garry Kilworth
Transients and Other Disquieting Stories by Darrell Schweitzer
Under the Crust by Terry Lamsley

Lifetime Achievement

Winner:
Jack Williamson

Other Nominees:
None

Best Artist

Winner:
(tie) J.K. Potter
(tie) Alan M. Clark

Other Nominees:
Rick Berry
Thomas Canty
Jason Eckhardt
Harry O. Morris

Special Award, Professional

Winner:
Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller

Other Nominees:
John Clute
Ellen Datlow
David J. Skal
Terri Windling
Mark V. Ziesing

Special Award, Non-Professional

Winner:
Marc Michaud

Other Nominees:
Richard T. Chizmar
George Hatch
Brian Stableford
Joe Stefko and Tracy Cocoman

Go to previous year's nominees: 1993
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1995

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1994 Campbell Award Nominees

Location: Campbell Conference Awards Banquet at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

Comments: Of all the Campbell Award voting results, this one is the one that seems to me to be the most inexplicable. Somehow the judges decided that there was no science fiction novel published in 1993 that was worthy of being honored, despite the fact that two excellent science fiction novels - Beggars in Spain and Moving Mars - were voted second and third place. How is it possible that "No Winner" was a better choice than either of those two novels? Looking at novels nominated for other awards in the same time frame one has to wonder how "No Winner" was a better choice than Kim Stanley Robinson's Green Mars, or David Brin's Glory Season, or Gene Wolfe's Nightside of the Long Sun, or any number of other novels. The only real answer here is that the judges for the 1994 Campbell Awards failed, and should be ashamed for returning with this unconscionable result.

Best Novel

Winner:

No Winner

Second Place:

Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress

Third Place:

Moving Mars by Greg Bear

Go to previous year's nominees: 1993
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1995

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1994 Mythopoeic Award Nominees

Location: Unknown.

Comments: Now that the full slate of non-winning nominees for the scholarship awards are available to the public, it is possible to evaluate them to see if they are as balanced as the Mythopoeic Society's fantasy awards have been. And happily, the answer is that they appear to be. Seven of the ten nominees and both of the winners in the fantasy literature categories were works written by women. Four of the nine nominees and one of the winners in the scholarship category were written by women (and one work was a composite work that has no specified author, but did have its introduction written by a woman). In short, it appears that the Mythopoeic Society displays roughly as much balance when it comes to recognizing scholarship as it does when it comes to recognizing fantasy literature.

Best Adult Fantasy Literature

Winner:
The Porcelain Dove by Delia Sherman

Other Nominees:

The Cygnet and the Firebird by Patricia A. McKillip

Deerskin by Robin McKinley
The Innkeeper's Song by Peter S. Beagle
The Little Country by Charles de Lint

Best Children's Fantasy Literature

Winner:
The Kingdom of Kevin Malone by Suzy McKee Charnas

Other Nominees:
Calling on Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
The Giver by Lois Lowry
The Mystery of the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
Nevernever by Will Shetterly

Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies

Winner:

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography by Wayne G. Hammond and Douglas A. Anderson

Other Nominees:
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Patterning of a Fantastic World by Colin Manlove
The Fiction of C.S. Lewis: Mask and Mirror by Kath Filmer
J.R.R. Tolkien: Life and Legend introduction by Judith Priestman
Tolkien: A Critical Assessment by Brian Rosebury

Myth and Fantasy Studies

Winner:

Twentieth-Century Fantasists: Essays on Culture, Society, and Belief in Twentieth-Century Mythopoeic Literature edited by Kath Filmer

Other Nominees:

For the Childlike: George MacDonald's Fantasies for Children edited by Roderick McGillis

Off with Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood by Maria Tatar

The Reclamation of a Queen: Guinivere in Modern Fantasy by Barbara Ann Gordon-Wise

Go to previous year's nominees: 1993
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1995

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1994 Prometheus Award Nominees

Location: Unknown.

Comments: Although it didn't win, one has to wonder why Beggars in Spain was nominated for the Prometheus Award. I suspect that its nomination was something of a case of mistaken identity. Originally, Beggars in Spain was published as a novella, and the dominant theme of that novella was the contrast between the productive members of society with those who, through either inability or inclination, were not - a contrast highlighted by an analogy concerning "beggars in Spain" that gave the story its title. Later, Kress expanded the story into a novel, and in the final third of the new version turned around and eviscerated the earlier libertarian premises. I suspect that those who nominated the book were either content with a book that brought up libertarian ideas, even if it then engaged in some criticism of them, or simply didn't read the expanded story and didn't realize that it contained this kind of turnaround in tenor.

Best Novel

Winner:

Pallas by L. Neil Smith

Other Nominees:

Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress

Rainbow Man by M.J. Engh
The Silicon Man by Charles Platt
Virtual Girl by Amy Thomson

Hall of Fame

Winner:

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Other Nominees:
None

Go to previous year's nominees: 1993
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1995

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