{"id":25,"date":"2007-06-05T05:07:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-05T13:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=25"},"modified":"2007-06-05T05:07:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-05T13:07:00","slug":"not-the-orange-juice-the-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=25","title":{"rendered":"Not the Orange Juice. The Award."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of these objects does not belong with the others. Guess which one.<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0in;\" type=\"disc\">\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"\">&#8220;a      complex drama of faith, love, church politics, and art, set in 17th- and      18th-century Cremona&#8221;<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"\">&#8220;A      delicate, haunting story-within-a-story told by a girl who must choose      between her bright, beloved town and the dark forest beyond it&#8221;<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"\">&#8220;A      mortally injured child lying in a coma seems to influence, or somehow      preside over, the lives of her parents and others.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"\">&#8220;Keylanders,      the boys are told, must keep within their walls to avoid the filth and      disease spread by the Droughtlanders\u2014those who struggle to survive on the      parched land between the Keys.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"\">&#8220;Neurobiology,      vampires, alien encounters, mommy issues, deep space&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">What we&#8217;re talking about here is the short list of the 2007  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sunburstaward.org\/2007_Shortlist.htm\">Sunburst Award<\/a> for speculative fiction.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>Most of you probably haven&#8217;t heard of it; it&#8217;s young and Canadian, which is enough to ensure its obscurity even (especially) amongst young Canadians.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>But it&#8217;s juried, and it carries a thousand-dollar prize, so it&#8217;s plenty credible as far as I&#8217;m concerned.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">And <i>Blindsight<\/i> is on it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">I have to say I&#8217;m surprised, given the nature of the other contenders on the list; literary, small-press stuff mostly, <i>respectable<\/i> tales which, one gets the sense, not even Margaret Atwood would feel ashamed to be caught reading.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>I recognise none of these titles from other recent sf shortlists (although Jo Walton&#8217;s much-lauded <i>Farthing<\/i> made the Honourable Mentions).<span style=\"\">  <\/span>In fact, I confess\u2014 with some embarrassment\u2014 that I recognise none of these titles, full stop.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Which, while it reflects badly on me personally, is a good thing overall.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>Here is an award recognising works others have overlooked, an award that eschews bandwagons and makes its own choices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">I&#8217;m not quite sure what my luridly-packaged space-vampire novel is doing there.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>Kinda sticks out like a sore thumb.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>But<span style=\"\">  <\/span>I&#8217;m grateful and honoured that the jury felt it belonged.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">That&#8217;s four now.<span style=\"\">  <\/span>I&#8217;m starting to reach the point where I figure I may just win one of these things through random chance&#8230; <u><o:p><\/o:p><\/u><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of these objects does not belong with the others. Guess which one. &#8220;a complex drama of faith, love, church politics, and art, set in 17th- and 18th-century Cremona&#8221; &#8220;A delicate, haunting story-within-a-story told by a girl who must choose between her bright, beloved town and the dark forest beyond it&#8221; &#8220;A mortally injured child [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}