Gaylactic Spectrum gay SFF awards

**Contrarius** · October 10th, 2012, 03:04 PM

Strange name for an award, I know. I never heard of em before. But somebody posted a list on a different forum, and I thought the contenders were interesting.

This year's short list of nominees:

The Highest Frontier by Joan Slonczewski

The Cold Commands by Richard Morgan (reviewed)

Grail by Elizabeth Bear

Rule 34 by Charles Stross

The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff

A Rope of Thorns by Gemma Files

Static by L. A. Witt

Huntress by Malinda Lo

God’s War and Infidel by Kameron Hurley

The Winner:

Honeyed Words by J. A. Pitts

Loerwyn should be happy about the winner, even if it's an award we've never heard of!

**Loerwyn** · October 10th, 2012, 03:09 PM

You've never heard of, not "we've". And it's not really a strange name when you consider it's about LGBT representation in SFF fiction ('Gaylactic' is a play on 'Galactic'), i.e. awards for books by or containing characters who fit within the LGBT spectrum.

And I am happy about the winner, though I must confess my own personal choice of those (from what little I've read of that list) would be Malinda Lo's Huntress, but as John is someone I consider a friend I'm very happy he won and I think he deserves it.

**Contrarius** · October 10th, 2012, 03:11 PM

Originally Posted by Loerwyn

You've never heard of, not "we've".

Well pardon me, Ms. Snippy McSnipperson. ;-)

**Loerwyn** · October 10th, 2012, 03:12 PM

I'm snippier than that.

**Contrarius** · October 10th, 2012, 03:16 PM

Incidentally, I've only read two entries on the list -- The Cold Commands, and Static. A couple others are on my TBR list, although I had no idea they had any LGBT themes to them.

LA Witt, the author of Static, writes erotic romance. Nonetheless, Static has interesting ideas in it. The setup is that some people are shifters -- but instead of shifting from human to animal, they shift from gender to gender. And, in fact, they have a biological imperative to do so. Then fundamentalists get involved, and try to force the shifters to remain static. Complications ensue. The ideas are interesting, but IMHO the writing doesn't measure up to the "real" sff authors on the list.

**KatG** · October 10th, 2012, 04:24 PM

Some good books there. Just bought the Stross one, haven't read it yet.

**Raule** · October 11th, 2012, 08:19 AM

I liked the first book in Gemma Files' Hexslinger series (Rope of Thorns is the 2nd in that series). I have the entire trilogy and have been meaning to go back and re-read the first so I can read them back-to-back.