Archive for Awards

Sapkowski wins Legend!

Blood of Elves US edition
Blood of Elves US edition

Andrzej Sapkowski’s Blood of Elves has won the inaugural David Gemmell Legend award! The announcement was made at the awards ceremony on Friday in London.

The award — chosen by popular vote — honors works “written in the ‘spirit’ of the late, great David Gemmell, a true Master of Heroic Fantasy.”

Blood of Elves is out now from Orbit in the US. ( print | ebook )

You can read an extract from the book here.

Rival nominee Joe Abercrombie was also in attendance, and reports:

“The validity of the David Gemmell Legend Award was called into serious question on Friday night when I didn’t win.”

Joe did get a chance to wield the axe though.

Congratulations to Ken MacLeod!

So, how did you spend your Saturday evening? I spent mine at LX 2009, the 60th Eastercon, watching multiple World Fantasy Award-winning author, Tim Powers, present Ken MacLeod with a well-deserved BSFA Award for Best Novel for his latest book, The Night Sessions. A gripping hybrid of SF thriller and police procedural, The Night Sessions is set in the future of The Second Enlightenment, where religion has finally been crushed and removed from political life:

A priest is dead. Picking through the rubble of the demolished Edinburgh tenement, Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson discovers that the explosion wasn’t an accident. When a bishop is assassinated soon afterwards, it becomes clear that a targeted campaign of killings is underway. No one has seen anything like this since the Faith Wars.

After the Middle East wars and the rising sea levels – after Armageddon and the Flood – came the Great Rejection. The first Enlightenment separated church from state. The Second Enlightenment has separated religion from politics. In this enlightened age there’s no religious persecution, but believers are a marginal and mistrusted minority. And now someone is killing them. But who? And – perhaps more importantly – why?

The more his team learns, the more the suspicion grows that they may have stumbled upon a conspiracy way outside their remit. Nobody believes them, but if Ferguson and his people fail, there will be many more killings – and disaster on a literally biblical scale . . .

It’s a terrific book with a mystery to unravel and a future world to explore, told with the characteristic dry wit and insight that makes Ken MacLeod one of British science fiction’s most consistently interesting and acclaimed voices. But don’t take my word for it – you can read an extract of The Night Sessions, here, and if that whets your appetite, you’ll be delighted to learn that it’s out now in paperback from all good booksellers. Or you could always buy it in hardback if you wish – it is an award-winning novel, after all!

Congratulations, Ken, from all at Orbit!

Iain M Banks and Charles Stross shortlisted for 2009 Prometheus Award

We’re delighted by the news that both Matter by Iain M Banks and Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross have both been shortlisted for the 2009 Prometheus Award.

This award is given by the Libertarian Futurist Society in recognition of the best pro-freedom novel published during the previous year. The award will be presented during Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention, which takes place from August 6-10, 2009, in Montréal, Quebec, Canada.

Best of luck to both!

Six of the Best: Charles Stross’s Hugo Award Record

Fantastic news just in: the final ballot for the 2009 Hugo Awards has been announced and we are absolutely delighted to congratulate Charles Stross, whose Saturn’s Children is nominated in the Best Novel category.

As if having a book shortlisted for the premier award in the SF world isn’t enough, the unfeasibly talented Mr Stross becomes the first author to have a novel on the Hugo shortlist in six consecutive years!

Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril, but I feel quite confident in saying that it will be quite some time before that amazing achievement is matched or bettered. Even the great Robert Silverberg only managed four-in-a-row.

Many congratulations to Charlie from all at Orbit, and if you are eligible to vote for the Hugos, remember:

Vote early
Vote often*
Vote Stross!

*Actually, maybe you shouldn’t vote often. That would probably be bad.

Ken MacLeod’s THE NIGHT SESSIONS shortlisted for BSFA Award

The Night Sessions UK HardbackFollowing on from Ken MacLeod‘s excellent showing on last year’s awards shortlists, we’re delighted to announce that 2009 has begun in similar fashion. We’ve just received news that his dark, near-future SF thriller, The Night Sessions, has been shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Best Novel!

Many congratulations to Ken and thanks to those who nominated The Night Sessions. The award will be presented over the Easter weekend at LX, the 60th National Science Fiction Convention, in Bradford. In the meantime, may I urge you to vote early and vote often!

David Gemmell Legend Award update

David Gemmell Legend Award

Just a quick reminder that the public ballot to decide the finalists of the inaugural David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy opens on December 26th.

Following a recently announced change to the voting system, the five most popular fantasy titles of 2008 – as decided by the voters – will then be put forward to a second round of public voting in April 2009 (as opposed to the original panel of judges) for final consideration, with the winner announced on Friday 19th June 2009.

The final long-list of eligible nominated titles – including entries from Orbit authors Brian Ruckley, K.J. Parker, Brent Weeks, Kate Elliott, Jennifer Fallon, Karen Miller and Russell Kirkpatrick – has been made available via the DGLA website as a pdf download and an online voting form will be available from Thursday, with an additional incentive to participate early: the fist 100 voters will receive a limited edition DGLA wristband.

Visit www.gemmellaward.com for more information on the award, or to discuss the nominated titles. And don’t forget to vote, from December 26th onwards!

Three Orbit authors shortlisted for 2008 Aurealis Awards

Many congratulations to three of our Australian authors whose novels have been named on the shortlists for the 2008 Aurealis Awards – recognising the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror writers – as follows:

Chaos Space by Marianne de Pierres, UK paperback Earth Ascendant by Sean Williams, UK paperback The Riven Kingdom by Karen Miller - UK paperback
  • Chaos Space by Marianne de Pierres for Best Science Fiction Novel
  • Earth Ascendant by Sean Williams for Best Science Fiction Novel
  • The Riven Kingdom by Karen Miller for Best Fantasy Novel

Sean Williams has also been shortlisted in three other categories: Best Collection (for Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams from Ticonderoga Publications), Best Young Adult Novel (for The Changeling from Angus & Robertson) and Best Children’s 8-12 Years (for The Changeling sequel volume Dust Devils).

The Winners will be announced at the Aurealis Awards ceremony in Brisbane on Saturday the 24th January 2009. For more information on the 13th annual awards, visit www.aurealisawards.com.

2 out of 10!

MatterWe’re thrilled to point to the Amazon Editors’ Best of 2008 top 10 list in Science Fiction & Fantasy, which includes both Matter by Iain M. Banks (US|UK) and Black Ships by Jo Graham! (US|UK)

Black ShipsJo Graham’s next book, Hand of Isis, will be out in March 2009. You can keep up with the author and enter to win an advance copy of the book at her livejournal.

And at the official Iain M. Banks site you can catch up on our recent fan QAs with the author (part one, part two, part three) and read an extract from Matter.

Stan Nicholls on the David Gemmell Legend Award

If you’ve been reading the major blogs and genre fiction news sites recently then you’ve surely heard about the launch earlier this year of The David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy.

Here at Orbit we’re delighted that David Gemmell’s memory – and his truly massive contribution to the development of fantasy fiction before his tragic and untimely death in 2006 – is being honoured by the launch of this new award, which, in the words of the introduction on the award website “will be given to a work written in the ‘spirit’ of the late, great David Gemmell, a true Master of Heroic Fantasy.”

Stan Nicholls (author of Orcs, which we published recently in the US) is a member of the initial steering committee that came together to establish the award. So we thought he’d be an ideal person to tell us how the award came about, and how its unique processes and mechanism will hopefully result in a genuine, all-round winner of the very highest quality being named when the first award is presented, next June.

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2008 SFX Awards now open for online voting

The UK’s largest sci-fi magazine, SFX, has opened its annual reader’s poll – the SFX Awards – for online voting.

Along with all the film and tv-related categories, there’s also one for Best Novel and we’re delighted to note that three Orbit titles have been included in SFX’s drop-down selection of suggested titles:

  • Matter [UK | US | Aus] by Iain M Banks
  • The Escapement [UK | US | Aus] by K.J. Parker
  • Halting State [UK | Aus] by Charles Stross
Matter, by Iain M Banks, UK hardbackThe Escapement by KJ Parker, UK paperbackHalting State by Charles Stross, UK paperback

Visit the SFX website if you’d like to cast your votes for this year’s Awards.