Following a 24-hour “flash nomination” period, the 5 finalists for best Clarkesworld short story and cover art of 2017 are in listed in Neil Clarke’s February editorial.
Clarke had this to say bout the first phase:
The announcement was sent out via Twitter, Facebook, Patreon, and my blog. The brevity of this phase was an experiment. In theory, it would create a sense of urgency and reduce the opportunities for a coordinated ballot-stuffing campaign. It worked. The nomination phase generated more responses than the majority of our full surveys from years past and a significant reduction in stuffing—though there were some very clumsy attempts to do so, of course.
The finalists are:
Best Story
- “A Series of Steaks” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (January)
- “Waiting Out the End of the World in Patty’s Place Cafe” by Naomi Kritzer (March)
- “An Account of the Sky Whales” by A Que (June)
- “The Secret Life of Bots” by Suzanne Palmer (September)
- “Who Won the Battle of Arsia Mons?” by Sue Burke (November)
Best Cover Art
- Waste Pickers by Gabriel Bjork Stiernstrom (January)
- Jungle Deep by Sergei Sarichev (March)
- Sea Change by Matt Dixon (June)
- Homecoming 2 by Jonas De Ro (November)
- Eistibus, Angel of Divination by Peter Mohrbacher (December)
Voting on the finalists is open through February 24. Everyone may participate whether or not they nominated in Phase 1 – vote here.
[Thanks to Mark Hepworth for the story.]
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Well, that’s a slam-dunk for story seeing’s how my #1 pick was the only one of my nominees to make the final ballot.
Question for any who may be reading: if you’re voting on “Best 2017 Clarkesworld Cover Art” do you, personally, vote for your favorite piece of art in the abstract or do you vote for the best cover as a cover and which best says “Clarkesworld“? I think Eistibus, Angel of Divination is the best art as art but doesn’t look Clarkesworldly, but I think one of Waste Pickers or Homecoming 2 are the best covers as covers.
One thing I do note, though, is that all Clarkesworld covers seem painted with the same muddy palette – uneasy blends of realistic line drawings painted over by a French impressionist.
Not that the cover art is important to me, despite this ramble. Just having a hard time deciding, anyway, and was curious how others approached it.
These were all new to me. I really enjoyed two of them, and am having difficulty deciding between them. In both cases, I would like to read further adventures of the protagonists (as unlikely as that may be). Neither of them blew me away, but both were solidly entertaining.
As problems go, these are good problems to have.
I will ponder.
“A Series of Steaks” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad may not be the best story on that list, but it’s the one I enjoyed the most.
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