Kitschie Awards Presented

The winners of the 2016 Kitschie Awards have been announced. The prize, sponsored by Fallen London, is given to “the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining science fiction.”

Red Tentacle (Novel) Category

  • The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood (Bloomsbury)

Atwood received £1,000 and a hand-crafted tentacle trophy.

The judges referred to all of the books as “batshit brilliant” and Atwood commented that she was glad to know “you can never be too old to be batshit”.

Golden Tentacle for Debut

  • Making Wolf by Tade Thompson (Rosarium)

Thompson received £500 and a hand-crafted tentacle trophy.

Inky Tentacle for Cover Art

  • The Door That Led to Where by Sally Gardner, art direction and design by Jet Purdie, illustration by Dover Publications Inc & Shutterstock (Hot Key Books)

The Invisible Tentacle for “Natively Digital Fiction”

  • Life Is Strange (Square Enix)

The Black Tentacle

  • A discretionary award given to an outstanding achievement in encouraging and elevating the conversation around genre literature went to the genre community, personified by Patrick Ness, for the response to the humanitarian refugee crisis.

The fund Ness began raised £689,793.56 for Save the Children, from over 6,000 donors, including a marathon series of £10,000+ matching prizes from over 20 authors. Virgin Giving even waived their fees.

 

[Via Ian Mond.]

11 thoughts on “Kitschie Awards Presented

  1. The [Kitschie Awards]… is given to “the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining science fiction.”

    Margaret Atwood: Thrilled! #TheHeartGoesLast won huggable Red Tentacle at @TheKitschies!

    So today would be one of the rare “Okay, my work is actually science fiction” days?

  2. @JJ

    ::snort::

    ETA: She did wear it with panache and style. It’s humanizing to see people not being too self-important.

  3. I’m afraid ‘most progressive… science fiction’ appears to be a misprint; the linked site says ‘speculative fiction’. The more formal description is ‘novels which contain elements of a speculative and fantastic nature’, and works that no one would call science fiction have sometimes been nominated.

    That said, Atwood has before now accepted a Clarke award, which is undoubtedly for science fiction.

    Her attitude to science fiction is actually quite complex, and is not fully summed up in half a sentence of uncertain context.

  4. Andrew M: “Her attitude to science fiction is actually quite complex, and is not fully summed up in half a sentence of uncertain context.”

    So, not “talking squids in outer space.”? :p

    There is some additional irony in her accepting an award that has tentacles.

  5. I actually tried to track down the exact source of the alleged “squids in outer space” comment once and the closest I came was Dave Langford writing in Ansible that he had heard Margaret Atwood make the “science fiction is squids in outer space” comment in a radio interview with the BBC. Of course, the interview itself was no longer online by that point, so there was no way of checking what she really said. So it’s possible that Margaret Atwood expressed herself badly or that Dave Langford misunderstood her or a combination of both.

    At any rate, Margaret Atwood has repudiated the claim that she doesn’t like SF several times since that interview, including in some of the essays collected in In Other Worlds – SF and the Human Imagination. Besides, from reading Atwood’s work, I’ve always had to impression that she was at least tangentially one of us, because there were fannish references e.g. to Doctor Who, the Shadow, Margaret Brundage’s Weird Tales covers, etc…

    So it’s probably time to put this whole “Margaret Atwood thinks she’s too good for SF” thing to rest. And personally I think she’s a very worthy Red Tentacle winner.

    Also thrilled for Tade Thompson and Making Wolf.

  6. Cora Buhlert: Although I think it has been some time since I wrote anything about Atwood’s willingness to be identified with sf, I know I have in the past. So I must say, after seeing her wearing the Tentacle Award on her head, I decided to retire that question for all time.

  7. Cora Buhlert: “So it’s possible that Margaret Atwood expressed herself badly or that Dave Langford misunderstood her or a combination of both.”

    There has never been a misunderstanding about what Atwood meant. She has always maintained that there is a difference between speculative and science fiction, and she was being colourfully illustrative of that. There are other instances where she has made the distinction (e.g. “Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen.” from here ), but the “squids” quote is that much more memorable.

    To many her definition of science fiction is way too narrow, and she specifies that science fiction and speculative fiction are distinctly different things, rather than (possibly completely) overlapping things (i.e. perhaps science fiction is a type of speculative fiction).

    Anyway, whatever she classes it as, long may she write.

  8. Whatever her feelings about science fiction and having her work described as “science fiction”, I have to say that it’s wonderful that Atwood went to the ceremony and embraced her tentacled trophy so enthusiastically.

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