Even More About “An Important Failure”: Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award Nomination

It’s nice when things happen at once, when you get a flurry of activity regarding things you’ve worked on in silence (often frustrated silence) for months. That novelette I mentioned in my previous blogpost– “An Important Failure“– has now been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, a juried award administered by the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. This is a Big Deal.

The stories that have won or been nominated are so very excellent: “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience(tm),” “Bears Discover Fire,” “Nine Last Days on Planet Earth,” “The Story of Your Life,” “The Chief Designer,” “Spar,” and so very many others. Finding my work on a list that includes those other stories is… mindboggling.

The nominees are uniformly excellent. You can learn a lot about contemporary speculative fiction by reading them:

• “If You Take My Meaning,” Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com 2/20)
• “An Important Failure,” Rebecca Campbell (Clarkesworld 8/20)
• “The Translator, at Low Tide,” Vajra Chandrasekera (Clarkesworld 5/20)
• “The Pill,” Meg Elison (Big Girl)
• “The Mermaid Astronaut,” Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/20)
• “50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know,” Ken Liu (Uncanny 11/20)
• “Yellow and the Perception of Reality,” Maureen McHugh (Tor.com 7/20)
• “A Mastery of German,” Marian Denise Moore (Dominion)
• “Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon,” Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (Dominion)
• “A Guide for Working Breeds,” Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Tor.com 3/20)
• “AirBody,” Sameem Siddiqui (Clarkesworld 4/20)