Stalking the Rampant Manticore

Two awards were started in reaction to the Puppy controversy about the Hugos, the Dragon Awards and the Rampant Manticore Awards. They were given for the first time last year. They had one winner in common. Can you guess? It was Larry Correia’s 2015 novel Son of the Black Sword. Remarkably, considering why these awards were started, there was no other overlap at all. And that will still be true whenever we find out all the Rampant Manticore winners, which for some reason has been practically impossible.

The Dragon Awards winners in all 15 categories were announced September 4 at Dragon Con. The Rampant Manticore Awards were presented October 29 at HonorCon in Raleigh, North Carolina but to this day I have been unable to discover three of the seven winners.

The Rampant Manticore Awards (and the H. Beam Piper Memorial) are given for the best Military Science Fiction and Fantasy published in the preceding year. They are sponsored by The Royal Manticoran Navy: The Official Honor Harrington Fan Association, founded a decade ago by fans of David Weber. The group runs two cons a year, MantiCon every May in Minnesota and HonorCon each October in North Carolina. Nominations are taken at MantiCon, and voting on the finalists happens at HonorCon.

Under the rules, not only the award winners but all the voting information should have been published online. That never happened.

TRANSPARENCY

To ensure this is all done in a transparent manner, the vote tallies will be posted publically at MantiCon for the nominees, and at HonorCon for the finalists. They will also be posted the webpage http://www.rampantmanticore.com which will be set up for the Rampant Manticore Award. Full names of voters will be removed, but the vote counts will be posted and the weight of each vote, for the nomination phase, will be shown.

This award is about the quality of the work, and not the politics of the author. Should politics become an issue, further voting restrictions may be enacted to ensure the apolitical quality of the Rampant Manticore remains intact.

Larry Correia and Marko Kloos publicly thanked fans for the awards and from them we know the results in four categories – the three they won, and another Kloos mentioned offhand in his post.

Here are the 2016 nominees with the four known winners in bold.

Best Author – Fantasy Short Story

  • “Rules of Enchantment” by Klecha & Buckell
  • “The Way Home” by Linda Nagata
  • “Look at Me Now” by Sarah Norman

Best Author – SciFi Short Story

  • “Horus Heresey #31” by Graham McNeill
  • “Blue Knight” by Carol Pedroso
  • “Yes! Yes! Yes!” by Lily Velden

Best Author – Fantasy Novella

  • Tallaran: Ironclad by John French
  • Bounty Hunter by Samantha Harvey
  • Tiger’s Paw by Kimberly Rogers

Best Author – SciFi Novella

  • Riding Redemption by Jolie Mason
  • Draxius Redeemed by Brian Dorsey
  • Burnsides Killer by Timothy Ellis

Best Author – Fantasy Novel

  • Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia
  • The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher
  • Cold Iron by Stina Leicht

Best Author – SciFi Novel

  • Angles of Attack by Marko Kloos
  • Oncoming Storm by Christopher Nuttall
  • An Ancient Peace by Tanya Huff

H. Beam Piper Memorial Award

  • Angles of Attack by Marko Kloos
  • Riding Redemption by Joile Mason
  • Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia

Unable to find the rest of the winners anywhere online, I wrote to several people who might know. The chair of MantiCon courteously answered my email and said she would try to track down the information. When I followed up a couple of weeks later she still hadn’t located anyone who knew.

Just the same, MantiCon is already publicizing the second round of awards. The con is coming up on May 26-28.

Also, join us for the second annual nominations of the Rampant Manticore Award for Literary Military Fiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy, featuring the H. Beam Piper Memorial Award for Best Author in the Category of Literary Military Fiction, Science Fiction, and Fantasy!

If nothing else, we know the Rampant Manticore is a handsome little award in the shape of a crystal book, bearing the crest of the Royal Manticoran Navy.

photo by Marko Kloos

10 thoughts on “Stalking the Rampant Manticore

  1. Huh. This is the first I have heard of this Award; their PR for it outside their organization has been non-existent. The first appearance of the awards website in the Wayback Machine was on May 29, 2016.

    Based on the rules, it sounds like a well-run award apart from the lack of publicity, and the trophy is lovely. I hope that they’ll start promoting it to the public this year so that they can gain more awareness.

  2. Well, congratulations to the winners, who hopefully know who they are even if we don’t 🙂

    I’m very happy to see Linda Nagata getting recognised for The Way Home. I really enjoyed that story, and her Red trilogy is good stuff as well.

  3. Mark: I’m very happy to see Linda Nagata getting recognised for “The Way Home”.

    I just realized which story that is, and you’re right! It was so good that I still remember the details of the story more than a year after I read it. I think it may have even been on my Hugo nominating ballot. How wonderful that it won an award.

  4. “The Way Home” was indeed an excellent story.

    Regarding the SF novella category, I occasionally hang out on the same forum as Timothy Ellis and I’ve never seen him mention that he won the Rampant Manticore or any other award, so I suspect one of the other two nominees in that category won.

  5. It would be labor-intensive, but one could contact the individual nominees in the undeclared categories and ask “Did you win? If not, do you know who did?”

    In the SciFi Short Story category, McNeil, Pedroso and Velden all have Twitter accounts.

    Data point: I’d never heard of this award until this post, either.

  6. @Mark

    I’m very happy to see Linda Nagata getting recognised for The Way Home.

    Agree completely. I wonder why they can’t figure out whom they gave the awards to.

  7. @Greg Hullender: It’s absurd, isn’t it? It shouldn’t be so tough, even if it is an insider award for that fan group. How bizarre.

  8. In a loose organization, finding who has the information may not be trivial. It may also not be a high priority for the few receiving the question.

  9. George Phillies: Well, someone I KNOW has the information did not answer my email at all. (Not on either concom as far as I know.) That’s life.

  10. I was another nominee in the novella category and I am assuming I did not win. So if Timothy Ellis didn’t win, then it must have went to Jolie Mason. Maybe??

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