• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

  • Thank you to everyone who reached out with concern about the upcoming UK legislation which requires online communities to be compliant regarding illegal content. As a result of hard work and research by members of this community (chiefly iainbhx) and other members of communities UK-wide, the decision has been taken that the Sea Lion Press Forum will continue to operate. For more information, please see this thread.

At the 2021 Sidewise Awards Ceremony at DISCON III

The Convention circuit is definitely an issue with that. WorldCon seems to at least try and not be completely North-America centric, but for the casual first-timer trying something out in the UK, it looks like the most recent dates are Glasgow 2005, London 2014, Dublin 2019 and maybe Helsinki 2017.

Feasible, certainly, but something which requires rather more planning in terms of mindset than, for example, the more generic MCM Comicons which happen annually in several UK locations.

Certainly if I was going to try and do some sort of outreach to a wider audience I'd be aiming for something like that.
 
Another part of it, I think, is that many online AH fans, and SLP forum dwellers in particular, are not regular attendees at science fiction conventions.
Click to expand...

I think there's some truth to @SpanishSpy's words here. I've tried attending a couple of general SF conventions, but they were so general (or, in one case, purely literary to the point of having a standoffish attitude toward non-literary SF) that I found them borderline unwelcoming. That said, most of the conventions I've attended since have been Doctor Who centric and it occurred to me too late for this past November's Chicago TARDIS to pitch a panel on AH as a potential topic. I will aim to do so next year, possibly with a Who spin on the topic (the show has featured enough of them across various media over the decades).
 
Fascinating to read about these two parallel worlds in terms of AH writing. I would imagine there is a one-way door, in that I have read many of the classic AH novels (though I was warned off Jo Walton's for seeming too sympathetic to its subject matter), but I imagine most Sea Lion ones are unknown to people who stay reading just printed books. I did write to Uchronia more than once suggesting they cover ebooks, but did not even get a response, let alone any modification of their policy. We can only hope Kresal's award will open a chink in what seems rather like an iron curtain between the two AH worlds. However, there is nothing to say that this was not an exception that proved the rule which Wallace's article admirably highlights.

Can I suggest Sea Lion launch awards (they need simply be a certificate) for AH ebooks (whether self-published or published) let alone blog and other online content, to raise the profile of them and give more recognition where recognition is due.
 
Alexander Rooksmoor said:
Can I suggest Sea Lion launch awards (they need simply be a certificate) for AH ebooks (whether self-published or published) let alone blog and other online content, to raise the profile of them and give more recognition where recognition is due.
Click to expand...

I'd be interested in such an award - perhaps voted upon by the SLP forum membership? This gets muddled a bit when self-published AH often gets both paperback and ebook publication, but I certainly think it's a good idea in principle.

If I could nominate those for this year, I'd choose Between the Helpless and the Darkness by Brent Olson and To Climates Unknown by Arturo Serrano.
 
While there may have been issues in the past (not sure), the Sidewise Awards are open to things published as e-books only. Matthew Kresal's award was not only published in an e-book only anthology, another story in the same anthology was nominated, and a long form e-book only work (mine) was nominated for the 2019 awards too.

That's not to knock the suggestion of creating an SLP award, but the Sidewise Awards are not closed to SLP books or e-books, either.
 
Jared said:
While there may have been issues in the past (not sure), the Sidewise Awards are open to things published as e-books only. Matthew Kresal's award was not only published in an e-book only anthology, another story in the same anthology was nominated, and a long form e-book only work (mine) was nominated for the 2019 awards too.

That's not to knock the suggestion of creating an SLP award, but the Sidewise Awards are not closed to SLP books or e-books, either.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think one of the reasons why Matthew's win last week was so exciting was because it meant that there was a path for us, in a (relatively) mainstream award. It proves we're not cut off entirely from that recognition.

Obviously we have a massive disadvantage, we don't have the recognition of other names. But lets be honest we also don't have the sales of them. This company is less than 7 years old, we're having to earn our place and signs are that we are doing that.

Like when Matthew talked about his sidewise award on twitter both Turtledove and Robinette Kowell congratulated him. Turtledove at least does know who we are, because I interviewed him for the blog. It's not entirely one way.
 
Gary Oswald said:
Obviously we have a massive disadvantage, we don't have the recognition of other names. But lets be honest we also don't have the sales of them. This company is less than 7 years old, we're having to earn our place and signs are that we are doing that.

Like when Matthew talked about his sidewise award on twitter both Turtledove and Robinette Kowell congratulated him. Turtledove at least does know who we are, because I interviewed him for the blog. It's not entirely one way.
Click to expand...
That's a big part of the picture right there. I've no idea of Turtledove or Robinette Kowell's sales numbers, but I suspect that both of their worst-performing AH works have sold at least an order of magnitude more copies than SLP's bestselling works.
 
Gary Oswald said:
Yeah, I think one of the reasons why Matthew's win last week was so exciting was because it meant that there was a path for us, in a (relatively) mainstream award. It proves we're not cut off entirely from that recognition.

Obviously we have a massive disadvantage, we don't have the recognition of other names. But lets be honest we also don't have the sales of them. This company is less than 7 years old, we're having to earn our place and signs are that we are doing that.

Like when Matthew talked about his sidewise award on twitter both Turtledove and Robinette Kowell congratulated him. Turtledove at least does know who we are, because I interviewed him for the blog. It's not entirely one way.
Click to expand...
In terms of earning our place, our own awards could help with that. The Hugos exist, but so do the Nebulas, the Locuses, the Arthur C. Clarkes, etc. It'd help us get name recognition and advance AH as a genre (as opposed to a weird peripheral outgrowth of broader SFF fandom).
 
M_Kresal said:
most of the conventions I've attended since have been Doctor Who centric and it occurred to me too late for this past November's Chicago TARDIS to pitch a panel on AH as a potential topic. I will aim to do so next year, possibly with a Who spin on the topic (the show has featured enough of them across various media over the decades).
Click to expand...

I happened to think to do so for this year’s call for panels a few weeks ago. The call for panelists came out yesterday and I was happy to see this:

0183E39D-C448-4543-BA44-587CEC8E22E5.png
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top