This year’s nominees for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History have been announced.  

Short Form

• Lou Antonelli, “Great White Ship” (DailySF, 5/11/12)
• Sean McMullen, “Steamgothic” (Interzone 241, 7-8/12)
• Ian Sales, “Adrift on the Sea of Rains” (Whippleshield Books)
• Catherynne Valente, “Fade to White” (Clarkesworld Magazine #71, 8/12)
• Rick Wilber, “Something Real” (Asimov’s, 4/12)

Long Form

• Thomas Brennan, Doktor Glass (Ace)
• Mark Hodder, Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon (Pyr, Snowbooks)
• Jack McDevitt & Mike Resnick, The Cassandra Project (Ace)
• Matt Ruff, The Mirage (Harper)
• C. J. Sansom, Dominion (Mantle, Pan McMillan)

The Sidewise Award is another designated by the calendar year of eligibility rather than the year in which the award is presented, thus the 2012 Sidewise Award nominees. The winners will be announced at LoneStarCon 3.

The Short-Form Award is presented for the best work of less than 60,000 words. This includes short stories, novelettes and novellas, and poems. One winner was a three-issue comic book series.

The Long-Form Award is presented for the best work longer than 60,000 words. This category includes individual novels and longer works.

Nominees were selected by a panel of judges: Stephen Baxter, Evelyn Leeper, Jim Rittenhouse, Stu Shiffman, Kurt Sidaway, and Steven H Silver.

The Sidewise Awards have been presented annually since 1995. The award takes its name from Murray Leinster’s 1934 short story “Sidewise in Time,” in which a strange storm causes portions of Earth to swap places with their analogs from other timelines.