First awarded in 1976, the annual British Fantasy Awards are running for another consecutive year. Administrated by The British Fantasy Society, they see great and well-established artists competing against upcoming and promising ones under various categories. It is beyond the tough choice to select the winners, but the jury has already made an attempt to do so by narrowing the list of participants to four nominees per category (with the exception for the Best Short Story category that holds two inseparable stories that were both short-listed) plus no more than two further nominees in each category, added by the juries as “egregious omissions” under the rules.
Book related categories seem to be making up the biggest part of the competition. This year, awards for writers will be presented to the winners under seven exciting categories, as presented below.
It is worth to emphasize here that British Fantasy Awards saw some of the greatest names becoming competition veterans, for example Stephen King who was recognized a winner five times under different categories; last time in 2005 for Best Novel: The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower; and was nominated 12 times in total throughout his career!
Experiencing minor ups and downs, the establishment was faced with a major controversy just back in 2011 when a British Fantasy Award winner returned their prize. Sam Stone, the winner of the Best Novel award – named after American writer and editor August Derleth – stated that her decision was driven by criticism of the judging process and a big attack on the awards delivered by the fellow writer via one of the media platforms. Will there be a place for such an unexpected turn of events with this years awards?
The jury that will make the big decisions this year has already been announced; the honour of deciding the winner of the special award (the Karl Edward Wagner Award) will fall to the British Fantasy Society committee. The winners are set to be announced at an awards ceremony at FantasyCon 2014 in York on 6 or 7 September 2014, depending on the convention’s scheduling.
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