The obligatory award eligibility post
Awards season is upon us
Awards season for the science fiction / fantasy community is coming, and it's a good time to highlight what I've written for folks who're nominating for awards.
The big thing for me is Cosplay: A History: The Builders, Fans, and Makers Who Bring Your Favorite Stories to Life. I'm very proud of this book and the folks who helped me with it. Amara Hoshijo was my editor (I'd definitely recommend her for the various Best Editor categories.)
Here's the back cover copy:
In recent years, cosplay—the practice of dressing up in costume as a character—has exploded, becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon. But what are the circumstances that made its rise possible?
Andrew Liptak—a member of the legendary 501st Legion, an international fan-based organization dedicated to the dark side of Star Wars—delves into the origins and culture of cosplay to answer this question. Cosplay: A History looks at the practice’s ever-growing fandom and conventions, its roots in 15th-century costuming, the relationship between franchises and the cosplayers they inspire, and the technology that brings even the most intricate details in these costumes to life.
This is something of a Star Wars-heavy book: it is, after all, drawn from my experiences as a cosplayer coming up in the 501st, and the book has its roots as a history of the organization. But I've always seen it as a history of the larger field of fandom – just just SF or Star Wars or Star Trek or anime fandom – it's a story of how people of like-minded interests come together to celebrate the love of stories.
It's garnered some pretty good reviews from the likes of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and Publisher's Weekly. If you'd like a copy, you can order it via any of the links from Simon & Schuster's product page. Check with your local bookstore as well (if you're in Vermont, Bear Pond, Phoneix, Yankee Bookshop, and a bunch of others have signed copies.) Barnes & Noble also seems to be widely stocking it (although you'll have to head over to the Social Sciences section to find it for reasons that are beyond me.)
The big category that it would be eligible for is the Hugo Award for Best Related Work, a category that encompasses a wide range of things, including histories of the genre and criticism. I guess Transfer Orbit could fall under Best Related Work or Best Fanzine, and I could sort of qualify as Best Fan Writer, but I think Cosplay: A History is the best thing that I did last year.
Members of the prior (Chicago) and upcoming (Chengdu) World Science Fiction Convention can nominate works for the award, and once nominations are out, current members will vote. You don't have to be an attending member to vote: supporting members can also vote! To purchase an attending or supporting membership, head over to the Chengdu Worldcon site.
Recommendations
2022 was a pretty excellent year for science fiction / fantasy works, and I've got a bunch of books that I'll be nominating. At the top of my mind, there's R.F. Kuang's Babel, which I adored, as well as Ray Nayler's The Mountain in the Sea, Peng Shepherd's The Cartographers, and Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Although genre sticklers will probably point out that it isn't strictly SF. Oh well..)
That's novels. I haven't really been keeping up on short fiction (something I need to do better with), but another book that comes to mind for Best Related Work is Aidan Moher's Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs in the West, an excellent history of the genre. Ryan Britt's Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World and Ben Rigg's Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons were also excellent reads that I'll be adding to the list.