This year's John W. Campbell Award for best SF novel of the year was presented to Jack McDevitt's Omega, published by Ace. At the same ceremony in Lawrence, Kansas, on July 9, the Theodore Sturgeon Award for best short SF of the year was presented to "The Empress of Mars" by Kage Baker, published in Asimov's, July 2003. McDevitt was present to accept her award; Baker was not.
Four persons, as previously announced, were formally inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, sponsored by the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society and the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. Posthumous inductees were Mary Shelley and E.E. "Doc" Smith; living authors inducted were Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison, both of whom were present for the ceremony. (The Hall of Fame will henceforth be located at Seattle's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.)
Second place in the Campbell competition was Justina Robson's Natural History (Macmillan UK), and third place was Philip Baruth's The X-President (Bantam). The Campbell is a juried award in which novels are nominated by publishers and the winners are selected by a committee of seven academics and authors chaired by Gunn and consisting of Gregory Benford, Paul A. Carter, Elizabeth Anne Hull, Chris McKitterick, Pamela Sargent, T. A. Shippey, and Ian Watson.
Second place for the Sturgeon was "Bernardo's House" by James Patrick Kelly, published in Asimov's, June 2003; third place was "It's All True" by John Kessel, published in Sci Fiction in November 2003. Stories are nominated for the Sturgeon Award by a committee of some two-dozen reviewers and editors chaired by Chris McKitterick, and the winners were chosen by Frederik Pohl, James Gunn, and Kij Johnson, with the assistance of Noel Sturgeon, Theodore Sturgeon's daughter, from a group of about a dozen finalists.
The SFWA News story about the event has a photo of several winners, past and present.
Links
Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas—
The John W. Campbell Award
The Theodore Sturgeon Award
Locus Index to SF Awards —
Campbell Award —
Past winners by Year
Past finalists and winners
Sturgeon Award —
Past winners by Year
Past finalists and winners
