Sunday, December 31, 1995

1995 World Fantasy Award Nominees

Location: World Fantasy Convention, Baltimore, Maryland.

Comments: In 1995 the World Fantasy Awards finally got around to giving Ursula K. Le Guin a Lifetime Achievement Award. The only trouble is that this award seems to have been bestowed at least ten years too late. Le Guin published her Earthsea trilogy between 1968 and 1972. She published The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969, and The Lathe of Heaven in 1971. The Wind's Twelve Quarters came out in 1975, Orsinian Tales in 1976, and The Eye of the Heron in 1978. And yet the World Fantasy Awards spent the 1980s handing out Lifetime Achievement Awards to guys whose accomplishments were for the most part, at best equal to hers, and in some cases, clearly inferior. Even in 1984, when a pile of Lifetime Achievement awards were handed out to a collection of male authors, Le Guin was passed over.

One can take some comfort in the fact that by 1995 the World Fantasy Awards were getting better with respect to gender equity as evidenced by Le Guin's Lifetime Achievement Award and Elizabeth Hand's Best Novella win and Best Novel nomination, but there was still a lot of ground to make up, and a long way to go before the blatant sexism of the 1970s era would be offset.

Best Novel

Winner:
Towing Jehovah by James Morrow

Other Nominees:
Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop
The Circus of the Earth and the Air by Brooke Stevens
From the Teeth of Angels by Jonathan Carroll
Love & Sleep by John Crowley
Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand

Best Novella

Winner:
Last Summer at Mars Hill by Elizabeth Hand

Other Nominees:
Fee by Peter Straub
The God Who Slept With Women by Brian W. Aldiss
The Last Time by Lucius Shepard
Out of the Night, When the Full Moon Is Bright . . . by Kim Newman
A Slow Red Whisper of Sand by Robert Devereaux

Best Short Fiction

Winner:
The Man in the Black Suit by Stephen King

Other Nominees:
The Changeling's Tale by Michael Swanwick
The Homecoming by Nicholas Royle
The Sisterhood of Night by Steven Millhauser
To Receive Is Better by Michael Marshall Smith

Best Anthology

Winner:
Little Deaths edited by Ellen Datlow

Other Nominees:
Black Thorn, White Rose edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Love in Vein edited by Poppy Z. Brite and Martin H. Greenberg
Shadows Over Innsmouth edited by Stephen Jones

Best Collection

Winner:
The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians and A Conflagration Artist by Bradley Denton

Other Nominees:
The Early Fears by Robert Bloch
The Earth Wire & Other Stories by Joel Lane
Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque by Joyce Carol Oates
Travellers In Magic by Lisa Goldstein

Lifetime Achievement

Winner:
Ursula K. Le Guin

Other Nominees:
None

Best Artist

Winner:
Jacek Yerka

Other Nominees:
Bob Eggleton
Brian Froud
Rick Lieder [nomination withdrawn]
Dave McKean
Gahan Wilson

Special Award, Professional

Winner:
Ellen Datlow

Other Nominees:
John Clute
Fedogan & Bremer
Paul Williams
Mark V. Ziesing

Special Award, Non-Professional

Winner:
Bryan Cholfin

Other Nominees:
Michael Andre-Driussi
John Betancourt and Kim Betancourt
Richard T. Chizmar
David Sutton

Go to previous year's nominees: 1994
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1996

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