We finish our series of blogs presenting the 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards Nominations. Tomorrow we’ll list the award winners. If the suspense is too much to withstand, hop on over to the Shirley Jackson Award Website for a sneak peak at the results.
Today we’ll look at the last two award categories: Novelettes and Short Stories.
Remember, if you are interested in any of these books, click the mouse on the book cover or the store name to order them from an online bookseller. Online stories can be found by clicking on the book covers or no cover image next to the citation.
Best Novelette
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“Hunger Moon”Collected in: The Ghosts of Kerfol |
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Nominated for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette In an enthralling work of Gothic suspense, an Edith Wharton story inspires five connected tales set in the same haunted manor over the centuries. In her classic ghost story “Kerfol,” Edith Wharton tells the tale of Anne de Barrigan, a young Frenchwoman convicted of murdering her husband, the jealous Yves de Cornault. The elderly lord was found dead on the stairs, apparently savaged by a pack of dogs, though there were no dogs — no live dogs — at Kerfol that day. In this remarkable collection of intertwining short stories, Deborah Noyes takes us back to the haunted manor and tells us Anne de Barrigan’s story through the sympathetic eyes of her servant girl. Four more tales slip forward in time, peering in on a young artist, a hard-drinking party girl, a young American couple, and a deaf gardener who now tends the Kerfol estate. All these souls are haunted by the ghosts of Kerfol — the dead dogs, the sensual yet uneasy relationships, and the bitter taste of revenge. |
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“The Lagerstatte”Author: Barron, Laird |
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Nominated for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette From Del Rey Books and award-winning editor Ellen Datlow, two of the most respected names in science fiction and fantasy, comes a collection of fifteen all-new short stories, plus a science fiction novella, that could count as a virtual “best of the year” anthology. Here you will find slyly twisted alternate histories, fractured fairy tales, topical science fiction, and edgy urban fantasy. In “Daltharee,” World Fantasy Award-winning author Jeffrey Ford spins a chilling tale of a city in a bottle — and the demented genius who put it there. In “Sonny Liston Takes the Fall,” John W. Campbell Award-winning author Elizabeth Bear pens a poignant and eerie requiem for the heavyweight forever associated with his controversial loss to Cassius Clay. From hot new writer Margo Lanagan comes “The Goosle,” a dark, astonishing take on Hansel and Gretel. In the novella “Prisoners of the Action,” Paul MccAuley and Kim Newman take a trip down a rabbit hole that leads to a Guantanamo-like prison whose inmates are not just illegal but extraterrestrial. Many of the writers you’ll recognize. Others you may not. But one thing is certain: These stars of today and tomorrow demonstrate that the field of speculative fiction is not only alive and well — it’s better than ever. |
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“Penguins of the Apocalypse”Author: Spencer, William Browning |
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Nominated for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette Fantasy comes in all shades, from gentle tales of elves and fairies, to the blackest of horrors. Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy tends toward the darker edges, where the fantastic mixes with the horrific. With all original tales by a number of SubPress favorites, and writers new to our stable, we ve aimed to illuminate these shadowed corners, to bring into the light the creatures that venture forth from the sea, those that alter our reality to suit their sinister needs, and others who head into territory so bleak it s best left undescribed. |
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“Pride and Prometheus”Author: Kessel, John |
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Nominated for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette “Pride and Prometheus” was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction January 2008. |
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The SituationAuthor: Vandermeer, Jeff |
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Nominated for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette “The last raise had been a huge leech shaped like a helmet. It was meant to suck all the bad thoughts out of your head. It smelled like bacon, which seemed promising. I had invited Mord and Leer over to my apartment and we’d fried it up in a skillet. I’d gotten a week’s worth of sandwiches out of it.” In a city where the future has betrayed the past, a nameless employee struggles to hold onto his job at the Company, fighting off the predations of the merciless Scarskirt and his former friends: a transformed Mord and helpless Leer. In addition, he has to deal with a Manager he calls “Damager” who puts him in ever more difficult situations: “Up close, her eyes were like the glistening grit you find at the edges of drying asphalt. Her fingers on the desk seemed as long as the legs of a spiny crab. In the quiet, I could hear the leaf in her chest — just the slightest whispering shift of dead plant matter against plastic each time it touched the sides of her ribcage. I wondered if each time another piece disintegrated into the dust at the bottom of her chest cavity. ‘Do you love me?’ she always asked. I could remember a time and a world where such a question could never have been asked.” Is there a way out? Will he find it in time? What awaits him in the city beyond? “Her knife sliced down, up, down, up, down as the fish tried to get away from her ever more slowly, spurting a thick green blood.” In The Situation, Jeff VanderMeer has written the most chilling, and the funniest, commentary on corporate office life since Kafka and Dilbert. Cover art by Scott Eagle. |
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Best Short Story
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68° 07’ 15″N, 31° 36’ 44″WAuthor: Williams, Conrad |
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Nominated for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story Do you love the sound of a peg leg stomping across a quarterdeck? Or maybe you prefer a parrot on your arm, a strong wind at your back? Adventure, treasure, intrigue, humor, romance, danger — and, yes, plunder! Oh, the Devil does love a pirate — and so do readers everywhere! Swashbuckling from the past into the future and space itself, Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, presents an incredibly entertaining volume of original stories guaranteed to make you walk and talk like a pirate. Limited to 500 copies. Deluxe smythe sewn, 800-page hardcover, bound in black imitation leather, and stamped in gold leaf with an original cover design by Allen Koszowski. |
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“The Dinner Party”Author: Ferris, Joshua |
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Nominated for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story “The Dinner Party” was published in The New Yorker August 11, 2008 and is available on The New Yorker Online. |
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“Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandomnent: One Daughter’s Personal Account”Author: Rickert, M. |
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Nominated for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story “Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandomnent: One Daughter’s Personal Account” was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction October/November 2008 (An Anniversary Issue). |
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“The Inner City”Author: Heuler, Karen |
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Nominated for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story “The Inner City” was published in Cemetery Dance Magazine #58, February 2008. |
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“Intertropical Convergence Zone”Author: Bulkin, Nadia |
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Nominated for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story “Intertropical Convergence Zone” was published in the online magazine called ChiZine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Words issue #37. You can click on the link to read the story online or download a pdf copy from a link just before the story. |
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“The Pile”Author: Bishop, Michael |
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Nominated for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story “The Pile” was published in the online magazine called Subterranean Online Winter 2008. You can click on the link to read the story online. |
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