This year marked the first year for the Best Graphic Story category to be offered a Hugo Award and rightly so. In my opinion it is a category that has gone underappreciated for far too long, especially in science fiction circles. The following is a list of this year’s results for the Best Graphic Story category at Worldcon.

• Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones , Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright
• The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle, written by Jim Butcher, art by Ardian Syaf
• Fables; War and Pieces, Written by Bill Willingham, pencilled by Mark Buckingham, art by Steve Leialoha and Andrew Peopy, color by Lee Loughridge, letters by Todd Klein
• Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic, Story and art by Howard Tayler
• Serenity: Better Days, Written by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews, art by Will Conrad, color by Michelle Madsen, cover by Jo Chen
• Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores, Written/created by Brian K. Vaughan, pencilled/created by Pia Guerra, inked by Jose Marzan, Jr.

Yesterday I reported that this was a Hugo Award Banquet, I accidentally wrote the wrong banquet. Please forgive me!

2) Forget Review Copies, Use Kindle

3) Move Away From a Brand and Towards a Community

. Let me make something clear, when I say move towards a community I don’t mean simply adding Facebook, Twitter, and Delicious icons to your website or having a newsletter—these should be givens already.

If you were to go to the major science fiction imprints (i.e. Roc, Ace, Bantam Spectra, Dell, etc.) they would appear very similar—if not identical—to the website of the publishing house that represents it. Now once again I’m singling out Tor.com because of it’s boldness to take a chance on something different. It’s a website for the well-informed (and well-read) science fiction aficionado, with blog posts as well as original stories from its community of authors that are informative, enjoyable, and regularly updated.

Tor.com gives more than it takes and has become a vehicle to discuss issues of science fiction, literature, and the publishing industry in general. In addition to creating a loyal fanbase where people repeatedly visit on a daily basis, it has also become a unique platform for Tor to market its own works without coming off a preachy or desperate. Many book publishing websites gives off the impression that publishing is this closed off industry in big Ivory Towers, but Tor’s website fosters an atmosphere of transparency, acceptance, and most importantly, inclusion, and hopefully some science-fiction publishers will soon follow suit.

4) Don’t Just Offer All of your Authors under One Publisher Username (Twitter)

While I applaud science fiction and fantasy houses for creating accounts on Twitter many are forgetting one simple fact. “We don’t read every author across your imprint!” Say, for example, I’m a fan of Robert J. Sawyer (which I am) and only read Robert J. Sawyer under the Tor/Forge imprint line, then why would I join a group of thirty or more authors and receive tweets from authors I hadn’t even heard of, let alone like. Take note: if you’re going to cluster all of your authors into one Twitter username, make sure you highlight authors with individual accounts as well close by. By doing this, not only does it save your readers some hassle but also acts as a yardstick to gauge which authors are more popular by the number of users applied individually rather than as an entire group.

5) Consider Freelancing Your Artwork

They say you should never judge a book by its cover. This is true. However, if you don’t have a firm grounding in literature and what’s out there on the market, chances are all you’re going to care about is the artwork. Case in point is the cover to the first edition hardcover for Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin released by Tor a few years ago. Personally I think this is one of the worst covers to be released by a science fiction publishing house.

It’s far too dark, ugly, difficult to read the title, and quite frankly looks like it was put together by a junior high school student for an art school project. It’s hard to believe I was so close to not reading this book, because not only did it win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2007, it was also one of the best science fiction novels I’ve ever read period.

Now compare this to another classic like Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash which in my opinion is one of the best crafted covers in science fiction literature, no doubt helping push sales over the last fifteen years, despite some of the literary shortcomings of Stephenson’s novel.

My point is covers do count, and sometimes an art department handing twenty (maybe thirty novels) titles a year might be over-encumbered to pay particular attention to one novel. This is where freelance artists come in. If you don’t already have a bevy of artists outside of your company to handle artwork for your covers than it would be a good idea to hire some. If you have second thoughts about a particular cover, then these guys are your back-up. A great cover can sometimes make up for a lacklustre cover (as you no doubt already know), but it can also be a staple of your imprint if many of your covers are drawn in the same style or format across all author lines. Be aware of the message your covers are sending to your readers and whether or not that’s the message you want your imprint to be sending.

Click Here to View the Works of Robert Charles Wilson on Ebay

Click Here to View the Works of Robert Charles Wilson at Amazon

I had first met Robert Charles Wilson in my freshman year at York University, and this wasn’t the first Robert Charles Wilson book I’d read (the other two being ‘Bios‘ and ‘Blind Lake‘). So I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into before I opened this book. I was wrong, for a number of reasons. While ‘Blind Lake’ was a great standalone novel, and went on to be nominated for the Hugo Award as well, I got the feeling that he could still do better. Wilson is a great author and I think many of his works have gone under-appreciated over the years. However, with the recent 2007 Hugo Award for best novel, no doubt his presence on the science fiction literary scene has gained immensely as a result. Since Hugos are a largely a popularity contest, judged by those attendants at the annual Worldcon, some books tend to be beat out by other books that are of lesser literary merit. Here this is not the case.

Without giving too much of the story away, the book opens up to an October night when all of the stars in the sky suddenly disappear and the Earth is encased in a type of membrane. Now it would have been so easy to have make this novel a hard science fiction epic similar to say Ian M. Banks or Alastair Reynolds, but one of Wilson’s great strengths is his ability to create sympathic real characters. And through those characters we get something both beautiful and utterly devastating.

The novel is told through the first-person perspective of Tyler Dupree, from his experiences as a 10-year old boy to when he becomes a doctor in later life, and how his life intercepts with twin siblings, Diane and Jason Layton. For Tyler, these two represent the great divide for humanity, the science (as Jason becomes a great physicist) and the spiritual (as Diane gets sucked in the cult-like fanaticism of the Spin). Now as the novel progress we also get a better sense of the bigger American landscape  and how its slowly coming apart at the seams. Much in the same way the movie Children of Men is presented we’re very subtly presented with the devastation slowly unraveling chapter by chapter. Some might even call Spin apocalyptic in a sense, I sure do. It’s a cozy catastrophe in which everyone survived, yet as the years go by more people are killing themselves and each other, and the death toll quickly mounts.

However, throughou the entire novel Tyler is the self-sacrificing Jesus figure, and never gives up hope even in the darkest moments of the Spin. I don’t think Wilson would admit this if I asked him but while most of his novels are told from a third-person perspective, he writers a better first person narration. This is a great read, very rarely does a science fiction novel grasp at your heart, rather than hit you over the head. This is a novel that shouldn’t be missed.

1) Ender’s Game by by Orson Scott Card

This book has been in what I love to call ‘development hell’ for at least a decade. Believe it or not this actually came close to becoming an actual film as early as three years ago. It’s script was finished and they even managed to sign on Wolfgang Petersen to direct (which in my opinion would have been a fantastic choice). However, for some reason shortly after that Petersen removed himself from the project leaving the film adaptation to slowly recede once again into the flames of development hell.

The story revolves around Ender Wiggin and his adventures aboard a satellite military station where children are trained in war games in preparations to fight aliens known as ‘buggers’ later on in adult life. The plot revolves around our nine-year-old protagonist as he slowly rises among the ranks of his fellow cohorts eventually becoming captain of his squad. Of all the movies listed I think this one has the best chance of succeeding, plus it would have been cool to see it on the big screen.

2) Neuromancer by William Gibson

I think I can safely say that the chance of seeing a film adaptation of ‘Neuromancer’ by William Gibson is slim to none unless it was done as an anime feature en par with ‘Ghost in the Shell’. When this novel was first published in 1984 (the year I was born) it defined the genre that would shortly thereafter be known as cyberpunk and developed a wide legion of fans to boot. It made words like ‘cyberspace’ and ‘ICE’ enter our lexicon and won Gibson the ‘Triple Crown’ of science fiction awards (that being the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Philip K. Dick Award).

This novel also happens to be one of my personal favorites as well. I even went so far as to write a cyberpunk novel entitled ‘Second Death’ which to this day I’m still trying to get published (Read ‘Second Death’ here). Nonetheless, Neuromancer solidified and distilled our postmodern fears of late capitalism and technology and how Gibson was able to write this twenty-five years ago (also his first novel) I’ll never know. But I do know this, this book does deserve to be made into a film.


3) Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

I have a confession to make, I haven’t read this book, but I’m more than halfway through it as I write this post. For those who aren’t unfamiliar with ‘Spin’, or indeed the works of Robert Charles Wilson, let me give you the watered-down synopsis of the book. Three children in October are playing in their backyard one night while their parents are throwing a party inside their home. It is not too long after that when they look up at the sky and see the stars slowly disappearing out of the sky. What’s come to be known as ‘The Spin’.

That’s as much as I’m going to say about the plot. Sufficed to say, the story revolves around three best friends and follows the path of their lives well into adulthood. Wilson paints a landscape of humanity’s reaction to the ‘The Spin’ but it is always pushed into the background. This is a dense page-turner that will leave you agape with surprises and shocks with each passing chapter, but is also detailed enough to vividly imagine each scene as I’m reading it. Whether or not, you’re a science fiction fan, this would make a great film.

4) A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller

More than fifty years ago Walter Miller is flying during World War II as a tailgunner and witnesses a church being blown up over the Italian landscape. It was that moment that inspired him to write ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’. It’s hard to believe that the original text was written half a century ago alongside Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. I often see it as a companion piece to Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’.

I should point out that if someone did decide to make this into a film it would be long, slow, and not appeal to mainstream audiences. Think of Solaris (the 2002 version), The Fountain, even 2001: A Space Odyssey. The book is split into three sections that were published separately in the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. The first section takes place 500 years after a nuclear war known as ‘The Deluge’ and humanity experiences an era similar to that of the medieval dark ages. The second takes place 1000 years after ‘The Deluge’ in what would be comparable to our Renaissance period. The final section takes place 1500 years after the holocaust, where humanity has risen relatively the same point as before the Earth was destroyed, only to be destroyed again. Through it all you follow the ‘Order of Saint Leibowitz’, Leibowitz, a Jew originally, who is given sainthood when several articles are found in his abandoned fallout shelter. An epic film.

5) The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

I know what you all are thinking. Another movie based on the work of Philip K. Dick, and while I share in your sympathies this is more of a personal choice more than anything. That being said it should be noted that ‘The Man in the High Castle’ is one of Dick’s tightest works, with well thought-characters and just a fantastic plot.

The book follows 1960s San Francisco after Germany and Japan won World War Two and has divided America down the middle. As an alternate history novel where the Nazis won the war, it was nice to read a book that was honestly not that different than the world we live in now, at least to all appearances. It’s the characters that drive this novel, as the book follows six connected subplots and string it all through an underground text entitled ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’, a book written about a reality where the Nazis didn’t win the war.

While readers are probably scoffing at me for even suggesting another Philip K. Dick book keep in mind this list is what I’ve read. There’s still plenty of science fiction books out there to be enjoyed and read and, with any luck, made into a film or two.

Best Novel – Hugo Award                  Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) – Hugo Award
Anathem by Neal Stephenson                                                    “Strange Love” (True Blood)
Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery                                    “The Beginning of the End” (Lost)
Matter by Ian M. Banks                                                   “There’s No Place Like Home” (Lost)
Valley of Day-Glo by Nick Dichario                                                                   “Pilot” (Fringe)
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow              “He Hath Believeth in Me” (Battlestar Galactica)

Best Dramatic (Long Form) – Hugo Award                                 Aurora Award for Best Novel
The Dark Knight                                                               Valley of Day-Glo by Nick Dichario
Wall-E                                                                     The New Moon’s Arm by Nalo Hopkinson
Iron Man                                                                                Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Repo: The Genetic Opera

Twilight

John W. Campbell Award for best New Writer
Tony Pi
Stephen Kotowych
Gord Sellar
Christopher Barzak

I’m not placing hyperlinks because it would simply take too damn long, however, I believe these to be worthy nominations.