Monday, July 12, 2010

2010 Mythopoeic Award Nominees

Location: Mythcon 41 in Dallas, Texas.

Comments: From a certain perspective, the two scholarship categories look a little bit like a figure skating competition. Every year it seems that one or both of the winners are works that appeared on the list of final nominees in a previous year, creating the impression that in order to win, a work has to "wait its turn" before being selected. This also creates the impression that the nominees are of progressively declining quality. If, One Earth, One People, the current winner in the Myth and Fantasy Studies category, was the second or third best nominee in 2009, does that mean that all of the nominees in 2010 are worse than a work that was at best the second-best nominee of 2009? If one of the also-rans from 2010 wins in 2011, does that mean that all of the other 2011 nominees are no better than the second best option from 2010, and compare even more unfavorably to the nominees from 2009? I'm sure this isn't impression that the Mythopoeic Society wants outside observers to take away from their process, but it is the impression that their process gives nonetheless.

Best Adult Fantasy Literature

Winner:
Lifelode by Jo Walton

Other Nominees:
Avilion Robert Holdstock
Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter's Tales Greer Gilman
Palimpsest Catherynne M. Valente
Trickster's Game trilogy (Heartwood, Bloodstone, and Foxfire) by Barbara Campbell

Best Children's Fantasy Literature

Winner:
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Other Nominees:
Ash by Malinda Lo
Books of Bayern (The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets, and Forest Born) by Shannon Hale
Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev
The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker

Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies

Winner:
Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits by Dimitra Fimi

Other Nominees:
Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion by Douglas Charles Kane
Charles Williams: Alchemy and Imagination by Gavin Ashenden
The Evolution of Tolkien's Mythology: A Study of the History of Middle-Earth by Elizabeth A. Whittingham
Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Michael Ward

Myth and Fantasy Studies

Winner:
One Earth, One People: The Mythopoeic Fantasy Series of Ursula K. Le Guin, Lloyd Alexander, Madeleine L'Engle and Orson Scott Card by Marek Oziewicz

Other Nominees:
Lilith in a New Light: Essays on the George MacDonald Fantasy Novel by Lucas H. Harriman
Metamorphoses of the Werewolf: A Literary Study from Antiquity Through the Renaissance by Leslie A. Sconduto
Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn
The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale by Caroline Sumpter

Go to previous year's nominees: 2009
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2011

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