On Being a Judge

It's a wrap.

The final ballot for the Phillip K. Dick Award has been created and released.  For the record, it is (in alphabetical order by author):

GREY by Jon Armstrong (Night Shade Books)
UNDERTOW by Elizabeth Bear (Bantam Spectra)
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF DR. BRAIN by Minister Faust (Del Rey)
NOVA SWING by M. John Harrison (Bantam Spectra)
GRADISIL by Adam Roberts (Pyr)
ALLY by Karen Traviss (Eos)
SATURN RETURNS by Sean Williams (Ace Books)

Gentlejudge's behavior (and Gordon van Gelder's hidden snipers) forbids me from saying anything about judging the finalists or hinting anything about the ultimate winner, of course.  Once the winner is announced, I might post little reviews about the finalists, but until then I remain mum.  I do have some observations about the judging process itself:

--My mail carrier must hate me.  I think I averaged over two books a week all year.

--Some people don't pay attention to the rules.  The PKD award is for original paperback science fiction, which could include single-author collections of SF short stories.  Nevertheless, I got fantasy, horror, and hardcovers.  The crown winner for rule-breaking was a hardcover anthology of horror stories.  Sheesh!

--I never want to read science fiction again!  Well, not for a while, anyway.  This year, the only books I read were PKD award material and whatever I was reading for my own research.  I read nothing for pure pleasure (unless you count the PKD books that turned out to be pleasure).  I have a pile of fantasy, mystery, and thriller novels that I'm dying to get to now.  Once the PKD books were done, I dove straight into Terry Pratchett's MAKING MONEY, for example.  Ohhhh, it was nice to read something different!

--I did get to read a lot of stuff I never would have picked up on my own, including all the books that appear on the finalist ballot.  It was an extremely interesting trip through this year's SF field.

--It continues to amaze me what can get published.  We judges received many, many books that we unanimously agreed were horrible, in an "embarrassingly badly written" sort of way.  Clunky, awful stuff, and not all of it from small presses, either.  (Actually, I think GREY and GRADISIL are from small or medium presses, which goes to show that the little guys shouldn't be ignored.)  Some really dreadful stuff came from The Big Guys.  Not, I suppose, that this is news, but it was interesting to see it reaffirmed in such a big way.

--We also received many books that deserved to be on the final ballot but couldn't be there because only so many are allowed.  It was painful to make those cuts.

--Some books started out so very promising and then turned on us, like A students who abruptly failed in the second semester.  Extremely disappointing when that happened.  In the PKD newsgroup, we'd get comments like, "Hey, everyone, I'm reading TEQUILA SUNRISE ON BETELGEUSE, WITH MERMAIDS* and it's really, really good.  Take a look."  And then, a few days later: "Aw man!  Halfway through, it just dies.  Awful!"  This happened more often than you might think.

--So when do I get my honorarium . . . ?  Gordon?  Hello?

*Not a real title, though now that I think about it, it's a pretty good one.