I’ve recently been thinking about the value of awards. If they are simply a popularity contest, as most seem to be, and the award is merely a trophy, then why should I care if a book has won one?
The author of that book should care – an award can help prompt sales with at least some readers – but unless that award is backed up by something substantial, like cold hard cash, what should make me, a skeptical reader, take notice of any one award over another?
There are more than 40 SFF related awards listed on Wikipedia entry for “science fiction awards”!
I can’t say I’d trust a single one to deliver me something I’d like to read.
Maybe the fact they mostly don’t offer prizes, other than the honor of winning, is the problem.
The Nobel Prize is a big, big deal. It offers big money to its recipients (more than $1,000,000 USD over the last couple of years). The Man Booker Prize offers presents a prize of £50,000. The Pulitzer offers $10,000 USD.
The Hugo Award and Nebula Award, the two most prestigious SFF awards, only offer trophies.
I just got an email, informing me that Michael Martineck’s Cinco de Mayo, published by EDGE Science Fiction and
Fantasy, is a finalist for a new award the Alberta Readers Choice Award.
That was a new one to me, but unlike the Hugo and Nebula awards, it is a real cash award – $10,000 CDN. Apparently this is the “first time that a Science Fiction novel has made it to the finals.”
The books sounds pretty interesting with a premise similar to Robert J. Sawyer’s FlashForward |READ OUR REVIEW|. Sez Janice of Edge books: “this great book that tells the story of what happens in the world after May 5th, when suddenly every man, woman and child ends up with a second set of memories in their mind along side their own”
If you’ve read the novel, consider voting for it (within the next couple of days).
Awards with money behind may carry the possibility of being something more substantial.
Here’s the author, Michael Martineck, presenting Cinco de Mayo‘s premise:
Posted by Jesse Willis