One of the best things about being a bookblogger is the book awards. Besides the “big awards” such as the Hugo and the Nebula Awards—which many of us have read at least half of the nominees—there are the SPFBO and the SPSFC—which gives bookbloggers and (indie) reviewers the chance to propel indie books towards more readers. How many of you have heard of SCKA? Well, I didn’t until I was asked to participate on the jury this year.
SCKA stands for Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards, which was started by bookbloggers. This year, I was asked to participate as one of the judges. Even though I had some other things going on at the same time—i.e. grad school—I said yes. This has been a fun yet tense experience because there is a process that must be followed. It makes you have a stronger appreciation for the other literary awards.
First, was the categories. There are 12 of us, including myself, who make up the jury and we agreed on which categories we all wanted to include for these awards. We agreed on: fantasy, science fiction, blurred (a.k.a. genre blended), debut work, series, novella and short fiction. Next, we all had the opportunity to nominate a work for each category; but, there was a catch: if we nominated for a category, then we had to read ALL of the nominees. Some of us had to remember how much we could read within a given time. So no, I didn’t participate in the 1st round voting in every category.
As you can observe from this chart: we all nominated on our nominees while making sure we didn’t nominate the same book, the same series, or the same stories. For the short fiction, we all made sure sources—either links or anthology titles—were provided for everyone so they could access them.
Here are the nominees for each category (I apologize for the list, but I couldn’t format the Excel chart onto WordPress):
Fantasy:
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk
Comet Weather by Liz Williams
The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K.S. Villoso
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
Sci-Fi:
Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha
Nophek Gloss by Essa Hansen
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez
Goldilocks by Laura Lam
Repo Virtual by Corey S. White
Blurred:
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
Debut:
A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson
Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko
Series:
Dominion of the Fallen by Aliette de Bodard
Islands of Blood and Storm by Kacen Callender
Sweet Black Waves by Kristina Perez
The Poppy War Trilogy by R.F. Kuang
The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty
Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell
Novella:
Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi
Sweet Harmony by Claire North
Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark
Short Fiction:
“Tiger Lawyer Gets It Right” by Sarah Gailey
“Convergence in Chorus Architecture: by Dare Segun Falowo
“In Kind” by Kayla Whaley
“Volumes” by Laura Duerr
“You Perfect, Broken Thing” by C.L. Clark
“Yellow and the Perception of Reality” by Maureen F. McHugh
“Juice Like Wounds” by Seanan McGuire
Then, we read, and we read, and we read some more.
Recently, we voted on our finalists. The finalists were determined based on votes, and whichever nominees received the highest and the 2nd highest (or, in some cases, the 3rd highest) votes moved on to the finalists round.
Here are the finalists for each category based on the most votes:
Fantasy:
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk
Sci-Fi:
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
Goldilocks by Laura Lam
Blurred:
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart (tie)
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (tie)
Debut:
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas (tie)
The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson (tie)
Series:
The Poppy War Trilogy by R.F. Kuang
Dominion of the Fallen by Aliette de Bodard
Novella:
Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
Short Fiction:
“You Perfect, Broken Things” by C.L. Clark (Uncanny Magazine, #32)
“Yellow and the Perception of Reality” by Maureen F. McHugh (Tor.com)
Please note: the finalists do NOT take away from the rest of the nominees AT ALL! In comparison to the rest of the nominees, the finalists stood out the most. Now, we have to read ALL of the finalists to determine the winner for each category. Unlike the nominees, all of the judges are allowed to participate in voting for the finalists in any or in all of the categories. This means that all of the finalists must be read by each juror before voting, which is fair. You can expect an announcement of the winners within the next couple of months.
Which one will be voted as the winners of SCKA 2021? Stick around and find out!
