Campbell and Sturgeon Winners Announced

CAMPBELL AND STURGEON WINNERS ANNOUNCED

For immediate release
Lawrence, KS — June 29, 2012

The winners of this year's John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best science fiction novel and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction have been revealed, Christopher McKitterick, Director of the University of Kansas Center for the Study of Science Fiction, announced today.

The Campbell Award is shared by Christopher Priest's The Islanders (Gollancz) and Joan Slonczewski's The Highest Frontier (Tor). Third place goes to China Miéville's Embassytown (Ballantine/Del Rey), and Lavie Tidhar's Osama (PS Publishing) takes Honorable Mention.

Paul McAuley's "The Choice" (Asimov's) won the Sturgeon Award. Second place goes to Charlie Jane Anders' "Six Months Three Days" (Tor.com), and third place goes to Ken Liu's "The Paper Menagerie" (F&SF). Finalists for both awards were also announced on the Center's website.

Winners are invited to accept their awards at the University of Kansas Awards Banquet on Friday, July 6, and will be featured at the Campbell Conference on Saturday and Sunday. Slonczewski will be present to accept her award, and Asimov's editor Sheila Williams will accept for McAuley.

Using the theme “Communication and Information,” this year's Campbell Conference explores how changing technologies and the ways we gather and share information is changing science fiction and how we buy, share, and tell the stories that define the genre. Saturday afternoon, Kij Johnson hosts a curated readings session, which includes several attending authors and scholars, and serves to launch the new James Gunn's Ad Astra journal. Other authors and editors attending include Robin Wayne Bailey, M.C. Chambers, Tina Connolly, Andy Duncan, Sheila Finch, James Gunn, Kij Johnson, Vylar Kaftan, Larry Martin, McKitterick, and Eric T. Reynolds.

This is the fourth time in Campbell Award history that juror balloting has resulted in a tie: in 1974 between Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and Robert Merle’s Malevil; in 2002 between Jack Williamson’s Terraforming Earth and Robert Charles Wilson’s The Chronoliths; and in 2009 between Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and Ian MacLeod’s Song of Time.

Priest and McAuley are Britons. A full-time author, Priest won the BSFA award in 1974 for Inverted World, in 1998 for The Extremes, in 2002 for The Separation, and in 2011 for The Islanders. He also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the World Fantasy Award for The Prestige (1995). McAuley is a biologist who has taught at universities around the world, and is now a full-time author. His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, won the 1988 Philip K. Dick Award; Fairyland won the 1997 Campbell Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award; and has been nominated for many more. Slonczewski is a Professor of Biology at Kenyon College, a novelist, and a textbook author. She also won the 1997 Campbell Award for A Door into Ocean, the only author besides Frederik Pohl to have been so honored twice.

http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu