{"id":6721,"date":"2015-04-04T03:47:13","date_gmt":"2015-04-04T07:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6721"},"modified":"2015-04-04T06:06:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-04T10:06:12","slug":"i-have-been-nominated-for-a-john-w-campbell-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6721","title":{"rendered":"I have been nominated for a John W. Campbell Award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last Sunday I was informed by email that I have been nominated for the 2015 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_W._Campbell_Award_for_Best_New_Writer\">John W. Campbell award<\/a> for best new science-fiction writer.  I was also asked not to reveal this in public until 4 April.<\/p>\n<p>This is a shame.. I had a really elaborate April Fool&#8217;s joke planned where I was going to announce my nomination in the style of a U.S. presidential campaign launch.  Lots of talk about a 50-state strategy and my hopes of appealing to swing voters disaffected with both the SJW and Evil League of Evil extremists, invented polling results, and nine yards of political bafflegab.<\/p>\n<p>The plan was to write it so over-the-top that everyone would go &#8220;Oh, ha ha, great AFJ but you can&#8217;t fool us&#8221;&#8230;and then, three days later, the other shoe drops.  Alas, I checked in with the organizers and they squelched the idea.<\/p>\n<p>It is, of course, a considerable honor to be nominated, and one I am <a href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6661\">somewhat doubtful<\/a> I actually deserve. But after considering the ramifications, I have decided not to decline the nomination, but rather to leave the decision on the merits up to the voters.<\/p>\n<p>I make this choice because, even if I myself doubt that my single story is more than competent midlist work, and I want no part of the messy tribal politics in which I seem to have become partly swept up, there is something I don&#8217;t mind representing and giving people the opportunity to vote for.<\/p>\n<p>That something is the proud tradition of classic SF, the Golden Age good stuff and its descendants today. It may be that I am among the least and humblest of those descendants, but I think both the virtues and the faults of <cite>Sucker Punch<\/cite> demonstrate vividly where I come from and how much that tradition has informed who I am as a writer and a human being.<\/p>\n<p>If you choose to vote for <cite>Sucker Punch<\/cite> as a work which, individually flawed as it may be, upholds that tradition and carries it forward, <em>that<\/em> will make me happy and proud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Sunday I was informed by email that I have been nominated for the 2015 John W. Campbell award for best new science-fiction writer. I was also asked not to reveal this in public until 4 April. This is a shame.. I had a really elaborate April Fool&#8217;s joke planned where I was going to&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=6721\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">I have been nominated for a John W. Campbell Award<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6721"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6724,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6721\/revisions\/6724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}