Tuesday, December 31, 1991

1991 Campbell Award Nominees

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

Comments: In 1991, Pacific Edge, Kim Stanely Robinson's final installment in his Three Californias series, won the Campbell Award. This victory seems to continue a trend among award voters to give a nod to the final book in a series as a way to recognize the series as a whole, regardless of whether it was the best book in the series or not. There seems to be a trend in genre fiction towards making publishing a trilogy length series of book the de facto standard, with stand-alone novels becoming rarer and rarer. I have to wonder if this tendency of award voters to ignore books until they are the third or fourth in a series has influenced this trend, as authors and editors spend their time trying to chase accolades by pushing out more and more series fiction.

Best Novel

Winner:
Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson

Second Place:
Queen of Angels by Greg Bear

Third Place:
Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow

Go to previous year's nominees: 1990
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1992

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