The shortlists for the Sunburst Award, Canada’s premiere juried award for science fiction and fantasy literature (featuring not only a shiny medal but $1,000 cash) were announced today, and…no, Marseguro is not on either the adult or young adult shortlist (though many other fine works are–I was particularly glad to see Dave Duncan‘s The Alchemist’s Code on there).
However, I can take some comfort in the fact that one of the jurors, John Dupois, mentioned Marseguro on his blog. In response to a comment noting, “Not much hard sci-fi, is there?,” then asking, “Is this a bias of the jury? Or are Canadian authors just not interested?”, Dupois replied, “a bit of both I guess. We did see a few more straightforward sf novels but they didn’t strike us the same way that the others did. Two that I enjoyed from last year were that were harder sf: Marseguro by Edward Willett and Omega Sol by Scott Mackay.”
So, although I made neither the shortlist nore the honorable mention list, at least one of the jurors liked my book enough to mention it on his blog.
I’ll take what I can get.
(And have I mentioned the deadline for voting for Marseguro–or anything else, for that matter–for the Aurora Awards, which you can do online here, is July 15? I have? Well, fancy that.)
