Ray Bradbury Award Shortlist

The Science Fiction Writers of America have just announced the shortlist for the 2011 Nebula Awards, which includes the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation.

The Bradbury nominees are as follows:

• Attack the Block, Joe Cornish (writer/director) (Optimum Releasing; Screen Gems)
• Captain America: The First Avenger, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely (writers), Joe Johnston (director) (Paramount)
• Doctor Who: “The Doctor’s Wife,” Neil Gaiman (writer), Richard Clark (director) (BBC Wales)
• Hugo, John Logan (writer), Martin Scorsese (director) (Paramount)
• Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen (writer/director) (Sony)
• Source Code, Ben Ripley (writer), Duncan Jones (director) (Summit)
• The Adjustment Bureau, George Nolfi (writer/director) (Universal)

I confess to only having seen a few of these, although I know of most of them. I personally found "The Doctor's Wife" disappointing, and have a feeling that it is the novelty of Neil Gaiman writing for Dr Who that drew attention to it, rather than the quality of the work itself. (We saw a similar phenomenon when Richard Curtis wrote an episode of Dr Who, which was neither the best Who episode of its season nor the best TV writing Curtis had ever done.)

I don't for one minute think that this award should in any way reflect what Bradbury would like, but suspect that either Hugo or Midnight in Paris would be more his cup of tea.

Full details of the Nebula nominees can be found on the SFWA website. Previous winners are listed here.

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Today I have discovered a whole pile of comments that people have submitted to various blog posts I made over the last year. For some bizarre reason, I hadn't been notified of these comments, and so I was unaware that they were awaiting moderation. If you have posted a comment but never seen it appear, I offer you my sincere apologies.

I think I have now fixed the problem (which seems to be due to Blogger "forgetting" my email address, even though it clearly hasn't forgotten it), so comments and responses should appear more swiftly in the future.

Meanwhile, if you'd care to scan through the old posts, you might well find that old comments have now appeared and been responded to.

Nebula Awards

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have announced the winners of the Nebula Awards. Among the worthy winners are the following:

Ray Bradbury Award (for film/tv): Inception

Best short story: a tie between "Ponies" by Kij Johnson and "How Interesting: a Tiny Man" by Harlan Ellison.

Full details are here.

And The Bradbury Award Goes To...

The Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) have announced that the 2009 recipient of the Ray Bradbury Award will be Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. The award is given for outstanding work in a dramatic medium.

Whedon is quoted as saying:

Like everyone who picks up a pen, I was a rabid Bradbury fan and as greatly influenced by him as any other writer I read. To receive the award named for him is an honor I'd not dreamed of. In my defense, it didn't exist back then. What did exist were the very lovely, very twisted and very human stories that warped my impressionable mind, and that I have tried, in whatever medium they will let me, to measure up to.

The full story is on the SWFA website, here. The award will be presented at the annual Nebula Awards bash in April.

Reviews of Bradbury's latest book We'll Always Have Paris are popping up around the place. I haven't had time to read the book yet myself, but I'm encouraged to see some positive press being received for this volume. See what the Los Angeles Times has to say here. And the Toledo Blade here.