2018 Geffen Awards

Jules Verne won his Geffen Awards category, but L. Frank Baum lost to Rick Riordan. (Has Verne ever won an sff award before? I’d say he was overdue.) The Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy announced the winners of the 2018 Geffen Awards (Israel Speculative Fiction Awards) at Icon 2018, held September 25-27.

The awards are named in honor of editor and translator Amos Geffen, who was one of the society’s founders.

Many thanks to Gili Bar-Hillel for assisting with the English versions of Hebrew titles for the 2018 awards.

2018 GEFFEN WINNERS

BEST ORIGINAL NOVEL

  • Journey to the Heart of the Abyss by Hagar Yannai, Oceanus Press (3rd in the “Whale of Babylon” trilogy)

BEST ORIGINAL SHORT STORY

  • Witch by Adi Loya, published in “Once Upon a Future” 2017

BEST TRANSLATED SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

  • Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, translated from French by Immanuel Pinto, Oceanus Press

BEST TRANSLATED FANTASY NOVEL

  • Fool’s Quest by Robin Hobb, translated by Tsafrir Grossman, Opus Press

BEST TRANSLATED YA FANTASY OR SCIENCE FICTION

  • The Dark Prophecy by Rick Riordan, translated by Yael Achmon, Kinneret-Zmora-Bitan

RETRO GEFFEN

In addition, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Geffen Prize, the “Retro Geffen” prize was distributed in the same categories.

BEST ORIGINAL NOVEL

  • The Coincidence Makers (title of English-language edition) by Yoav Blum (Keter)

BEST ORIGINAL SHORT STORY

  • “Latte, To Go,” originally published in “Once Upon A Future 2012”

BEST TRANSLATED SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

  • Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card

BEST TRANSLATED FANTASY NOVEL

  • A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

BEST TRANSLATED YA FANTASY OR SCIENCE FICTION

  • Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

[Via Locus Online.]

Update 10/02/2018: Corrected title of winning Retro Geffen short story per Standback.

5 thoughts on “2018 Geffen Awards

  1. It was a lovely ICon this year, and congrats to the winners!

    A correction: in the Retro-Geffen award for best original short story, Rotem Baruchin is indeee the winner, but with a different story! The correct story is “Latte, To Go,” originally published in “Once Upon A Future 2012” (reprint in Hebrew here).

    Baruchin’s “In The Mirror” is also an excellent story, and that one you can find in the just-published anthology “Zion’s Fiction” — an excellent place to go for anybody interested in what us Israelis with our Geffen awards have been doing in Hebrew 🙂

  2. Thanks for the correction. I don’t suppose there’s any point in explaining the extent of my research and the geometric logic used to deduce the translated title of the winner since I got it wrong….

  3. It’s quite weird to see Verne awarded an Israeli award. I was quite young when I read Off on a Comet, and quite uneducated, and I was still disturbed by a character in it :
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_on_a_Comet#Antisemitism_controversy
    Then, I think it’s worst he’s done (re antisemitism)

    And The Mysterious Island is THE book which made me a reader for life. It’s one the first book I read (the first “not for children” at least), at 7. I could have bounced hard on it. But no.

  4. (no edit button ?)
    I wanted to say that the antisemitism in Off the Comet is not seen in his other books – at least IIRC

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