Philip K. Dick Award nominees announced

The press release has gone out listing the nominees for the 2009 Philip K. Dick Award. The winner will be announced at Norwescon 33 on Friday, April 2, 2010. I was pleased to sit on the jury for the 2009 award. Here’s the portion of the press release that provides the short list:

The judges of the 2009 Philip K. Dick Award and the Philadelphia SF Society, along with the Philip K. Dick Trust, are pleased to announce seven nominated works that comprise the final ballot for the award:

BITTER ANGELS by C. L. Anderson (Ballantine Books/Spectra)
THE PRISONER by Carlos J. Cortes (Ballantine Books/Spectra)
THE REPOSSESSION MAMBO by Eric Garcia (Harper)
THE DEVIL’S ALPHABET by Daryl Gregory (Del Rey)
CYBERABAD DAYS by Ian McDonald (Pyr)
CENTURIES AGO AND VERY FAST by Rebecca Ore (Aqueduct Press)
PROPHETS by S. Andrew Swann (DAW Books)

First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, April 2, 2010 at Norwescon 33 at the Doubletree Seattle Airport Hotel, SeaTac, Washington.

The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the Philip K. Dick Trust and the award ceremony is sponsored by the NorthWest Science Fiction Society. Last year’s winners were EMISSARIES FROM THE DEAD by Adam-Troy Castro (Eos Books) and TERMINAL MIND by David Walton (Meadowhawk Press). The 2009 judges are Daniel Abraham (chair), Eileen Gunn, Karen Hellekson, Elaine Isaak, and Marc Laidlaw.

UPDATE 2010-01-17 to add: The official announcement is now up at the PKD Award Web site.

This text is copyrighted under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. This post was originally written on January 16, 2010. It may be freely copied anywhere. If you read this document at a site other than its original, I may not see any comments you might append, and I’d love to hear from you. Please comment at the original blog post if you wish me to see your remarks.

“Fan fiction” hits MW

Yes, it’s finally happened: fan fiction is finally in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary. The term dates from 1944, and it’s defined as, “stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the Internet —called also fan fic.” Culturally speaking, I suppose this means that fan fiction is now mainstream enough to make it into a lexicon known for its descriptive, rather than prescriptive, use.

Screencap of MW entry for fan fiction

In my capacity as production manager for Transformative Works and Cultures, I am the Keeper of the Style Sheet. As a professional copyeditor, I know that the only way to ensure consistency across the work of multiple people is to have as few in-house styling rules as possible. We thus slavishly follow two standard reference works: Webster’s for terms, and Chicago 15 for grammar rules, compounds, reference styling, and the like.

TWC’s overarching styling rule is simple: look it up. Thus it’s not website, it’s Web site; it’s not internet, it’s Internet. Potentially compound words that are not in the dictionary are treated as two words; thus it’s not gameplay, but game play.

TWC styled fan fiction as two words because the term was not in the dictionary, but we styled fanfic as one word. I made this call on the basis of the usage I saw most. However, now that Webster’s has stated a preference for fan fic as two words, TWC will begin to use that styling, even though fan fic does not have its own Webster’s entry. And we will retain them as open compounds always; the terms will never be hyphenated (that is, not “fan-fiction study” but always “fan fiction study”).

I oppose violating the dictionary on any number of principles, the first being that it’s just confusing; but one reason I object to fanfiction, as well as any other number of fan words made solid, such as fanart or fanvid, is that fan is not a prefix.

I sometimes see heated discussions of why a term ought to be presented a certain way, as though hyphenating or presenting solid or presenting italic (or whatever) is laden with shades of subtle meaning. I suppose it often is. But me? I just look the term up in Webster’s. It’s usually there. It represents a consensus of the most common usage. That’s good enough for me.

This text is copyrighted under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. This post was originally written on January 6, 2010. It may be freely copied anywhere. If you copy this post, please copy the image too and host it yourself. If you read this document at a site other than its original, I may not see any comments you might append, and I’d love to hear from you. Please comment at the original blog post if you wish me to see your remarks.

“Better Off Ted” Dalek follow-up

I wrote recently about how half-hour workplace sitcom Better Off Ted could be profitably read as a science fiction text. Well, the BOT folks have now sealed their cred as totally cool geeks: there’s a Dalek in a storeroom at Veridian Dynamics, where all the old electronic equipment goes to die!

I’m not the only one who pointed and laughed when I saw this. Others have done my screencapping and vid-cutting work for me.

Dalek, Phil (Jonathan Slavin), and Lem (Malcolm Barrett) [1]

Here’s a low-quality YouTube video of the Dalek moment created by Kinkoman:

You can watch the full ep (2.05 “The Great Repression”) on Hulu here in much better quality; the Dalek moment occurs about 9 minutes in. Hit the link while it’s hot; full-length eps do not remain up indefinitely.

Image credit

1. Image screencapped from 2.05 “The Great Repression” by TV Obsessed, available at: http://www.spoilertv.com/2010/01/review-better-off-ted-season-2-episode.html.

This text is copyrighted under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. This post was originally written on January 5, 2010. It may be freely copied anywhere. “Better Off Ted” is owned by ABC. If you copy this post, please copy the image too and host it yourself. If you read this document at a site other than its original, I may not see any comments you might append, and I’d love to hear from you. Please comment at the original blog post if you wish me to see your remarks.