A Son of the Rock

The BSFA is the British Science Fiction Association, of which I am a member.

Every year the members can nominate works of Science Fiction from the previous year for an award. These nominations are collated and a final ballot paper sent out to members. Attendees at Eastercon (the annual British Science Fiction Convention – this year taking place in Bradford) may also vote for the awards. This year’s BSFA award shortlists are given here. (The award part of the BSFA website was down when I tried to link to it. They’re in the middle of revamping the site.)

Every two months or so BSFA members receive a mailing containing the Association’s review magazine Vector and (less regularly) its mag for writers, Focus. Non-members can buy these separately from the Association.

This month’s mailing dropped through my letter box today. It was conspicuous by its unusual girth.

Along with the normal goodies there was a small chapbook containing the four short-listed stories in the best short fiction category along with the ballot form for all the awards. This was a surprise as it is the first year we have been treated to the actual fiction in this way. Normally, if you hadn’t read any of the stories, you would have to get hold of the magazine or anthology etc. where they were published; and time between ballot paper and Easter is usually quite short. Now all four are in the one package – no excuses for not reading them! Congratulations to the BSFA for getting this together.

And there’s more. There was a handsome sample booklet of Postscripts (PS Publishing) containing ten stories published there over the past few years. (Postscripts – now publishing as a hard back anthology – is where I recently sold my story, Osmotic Pressure.)

In addition this month’s Focus contains the winning entry (plus the runners-up) in the BSFA’s recent short story competition.

Looks like I’ll be reading a lot of short fiction in the next few weeks.

Information on joining the BSFA is here.