Why Gaiman Won the Best Novel Hugo

Neil Gaiman refused a 2006 Hugo nomination for Anansi Boys, but Charlie Brown’s timely insistence that he accept prevented Gaiman from declining his nomination for The Graveyard Book:

The late Charles N. Brown called me during that week having found out by his own methods, or possibly just guessing, and told me not to decline the nomination. He was astonishingly firm and bossy about it, and while I had been wavering, after that call I emailed the administrator of the awards to let them know that I accepted. I should have thanked Charlie, and I didn’t. So I am, here.

Gaiman nevertheless feels that Neal Stephenson’s Anathem ought to have been the winner.

Charlie Brown also made Gaiman a director of the Locus Foundation, which has assumed long-term responsibility for the magazine. Gaiman is having a little fun with it:

Yesterday began with the Locus Foundation Board Meeting, the Foundation founded by Charles N Brown before his death. These are the people whose responsibility it is to overlook Locus Magazine and make sure it continues into the distant future. I am on this foundation.

There may also be a shadowy Second Locus Foundation, whose job it is to ensure that the future of Science Fiction and Fantasy proceeds as Charles had planned it. Or that might be an Isaac Asimov book, now I come to think of it.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter and Lee Gold for the story.]