The 2023 winners of The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards were announced on September 16.
FANTASY
- Simon Jimenez, The Spear Cuts Through Water (Del Rey)
SCIENCE FICTION
- Ray Nayler, The Mountain In The Sea (MCD Books)
BLURRED BOUNDARIES
- Lorraine Wilson, The Way The Light Bends (Luna Press)
NOVELLA
- Sam A Miller, Kid Wolf And Kraken Boy (Solaris Books)
SHORT FICTION
- Leora Spitzer, This Excessive Use Of Pickled Food (Khoreo)
The book critics responsible for this set of honors are –
- Adri, from Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together.
- C., from The Middle Shelf
- Imyril, from There’s Always Room For One More
- Gautam Bhatia, from Strange Horizons magazine.
- Kris Vyas-Myall, from Cloaked Creators
- L.A. Young, from Aquavenatus and Fantasy-Faction
- Matt aka Womble, from Runalongtheshelves
- Robin Rose Graves, from The Book Wormhole
- Roseanna, from A Reader of Else
- Sara, from Fiction Fans Podcast
- Sun, fromWormholes and Wooden Doors.
Book critics so firm in their convictions that they use screen names? Really?
@ Andrew Porter
People have been known to write SF reviews and criticism under pennames before. That William Atheling Jr. guy is still pretty well-known for it (and still in print).
I’ve known reviewers who used a penname for various reasons. In some cases, they wanted to keep their reviewing and their mundane business personas separate. (They might not want prospective clients coming across a genre fiction review and making a silly assumption.) Others used a penname because of everything from stalkers to prying family members. Or even because they had been harassed by authors in the past.
People follow these reviewers because they’ve come to trust their reviews, whether they display their names or not.