BSFA Best Non-Fiction Award
There are 25 candidates on the BSFA Best Non-Fiction long list (the shortest of the four long lists); I nominated three of them myself - Space Helmet for a Cow, Letters to Tiptree and Companion Piece. (My fourth nomination, The Story of Kullervo, appears to have been disqualified.) Of the other 21, ten are available online (nine blog posts/articles and one collection of articles), one is an article in a magazine I don't subscribe to (Interzone), and the remaining eleven are books. I had already read one of these (Rave and Let Die); I confess that I took a mercenary attitude and just bought the three others whose titles interested me most, those being Lois McMaster Bujold, by Edward James; "Perilous And Fair: Women in the Works and Life of JRR Tolkien", eds. Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan; and Baptism of Fire: the Birth of the Modern British Fantastic in World War I, ed. Janet Brennan Croft. I make no apology for this; my time is limited and I'd rather read stuff that I am interested in.
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The three non-fiction nominees which I bought for the purpose of this exercise were all academic works, one a monograph and the other two themed collections of essays.
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Conclusion
In past years, I have sometimes expressed disappointment with the quality and relevance of shortlisted works for the BSFA award for Best Non-Fiction. If the shift to a two-round process for the BSFA awards is to prove its value, this is one category where I would hope to see a positive impact demonstrated fairly readily. I think in fact it has done so. I'm still deciding which four books I will nominate in the second round, but a short list with one or two of Space Helmet for a Cow, Letters to Tiptree, Companion Piece, Rave and Let Die, Lois McMaster Bujold, Perilous and Fair and Baptism of Fire will be a decently strong short list. And I'm considering all of these as Hugo nominations for Best Related Work.
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The three non-fiction nominees which I bought for the purpose of this exercise were all academic works, one a monograph and the other two themed collections of essays.
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Conclusion
In past years, I have sometimes expressed disappointment with the quality and relevance of shortlisted works for the BSFA award for Best Non-Fiction. If the shift to a two-round process for the BSFA awards is to prove its value, this is one category where I would hope to see a positive impact demonstrated fairly readily. I think in fact it has done so. I'm still deciding which four books I will nominate in the second round, but a short list with one or two of Space Helmet for a Cow, Letters to Tiptree, Companion Piece, Rave and Let Die, Lois McMaster Bujold, Perilous and Fair and Baptism of Fire will be a decently strong short list. And I'm considering all of these as Hugo nominations for Best Related Work.