Friday, 1st March turned out to be a rather smashing day all round. I was getting ready for work and thought I would just check social media and I noticed a link posted to the BSFA Awards, so I checked the link and… Wow, Best of British Science Fiction 2022 has been shortlisted for Best Collection! One, I didn’t realise this was one of the new categories, and two, I had no idea it had even been longlisted, let alone made it to the ballot! So that’s the second award that BOBSF22 is up for. I’m so pleased!
Congratulations to all the contributors: Rober Bagnall, Stewart Baker, Brent Baldwin, Keith Brooke and the much-missed Eric Brown, Alice Dryden, E.M. Faulds, J.K. Fulton, Liam Hogan, L.N. Hunter, Phillip Irving, Ida Keogh, A.J. McIntosh, Dafydd McKimm, Tim Major, Fiona Moore, Val Nolan, Stephen Oram, Vaughan Stanger, Matt Thompson, Lavie Tidhar, Ian Whates, David Whitmarsh, Neil Williamson, and Andrew J. Wilson.
If you are a member of the BSFA or Eastercon this year, you will be able to vote in the awards. You can vote at the convention, or here if you wish to vote in advance, or if you’re not going to be there in person.
I had made a bit of a decision in that regard. I have been booked to perform comedy at Levitation Eastercon, and was only going for that on Friday (catch me at 8.30pm!). But I’ve changed my mind and am now going for the whole weekend so I can be there for the BSFA Awards ceremony at 1pm on Saturday, after the BSFA Lecture (the schedule at present is still subject to change, so please check again beforehand). I am now in a whirl of trying to get things organised, as you can well imagine, with just two weeks until SciFi Weekender, and then Eastercon at the end of the month.
Speaking of Best of British Science Fiction… I am almost ready to announce the next ToC for Best of British Science Fiction 2023. Watch this (or this) space!
Over on The Slab, the submissions period is now open for Laughs in Space, and a flurry of submissions has already landed, which makes me very excited.
There was much for me to be personally happy about yesterday, but I also went to the theatre to watch a play. Oh yeah, what play was that, I hear you ask? Only the marvellous Bert’s House, written by and starring my brilliant friend Lou Chawner.
Bert’s House centres on Dunedin Guest House, run by tight fisted but kind-hearted Bert. It would be his seaside paradise – if it weren’t for all the guests. Bert has a crush on his assistant Emily. Little does he realise she feels just the same. Can the new summer girl, Jane, help them to see they want to get together? And Jane seems to have another agenda in choosing to work there – what is it? And what secrets do the strange and awful guests all have that have brought them to this run-down B&B?
It was brilliant! Beautifully written, funny, heartwarming. And sweary! Chawner has a very distinctive writing style, and it won the audience over from the get-go. In the lobby afterwards, people were repeating jokey lines and memorable sayings from the play to each other, which is always a good sign. It’s a very tightly written story, and the jokes are really sharp. With a cast of three men and three women, it’s so refreshing to see quirks, slapstick, physical comedy, silliness and clowning shared among the cast regardless of gender, too, though the Mr Stevens character affords particular opportunity for some hilarious physicality. Neil says he would describe it as somewhere between Rising Damp and Blackadder. It certainly has legs, and Lou has already got himself a tour for the show, which is fantastic! It has come a way since the scratch night we attended a while back, which was good back then too, but now it’s proper!
Well done, Lou!
