The winners of the 2012 British Fantasy Awards were announced last weekend. Jo Walton’s Among Others won in the best novel category, beating out George R.R. Martin’s and Stephen King’s latest offerings among others (yes, this is a pun). The award for the best horror novel went to The Ritual by Adam Nevill. The full list of winners can be found here.
I can’t really disagree with any of these choices. I enjoyed Among Others very much and so did a whole lot of people considering that it already won the Hugo and the Nebula earlier this year. It’s quite rare that any one novel wins such unanimous approval, even though some people disagree (more on that in a future post). And since I’m not a big fan of the prevailing taste for grimdark in fantasy, I’m glad to see a fairly gentle tale win over such monuments of grimdarkness like George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons or Joe Abercrombie’s The Heroes.
I’ve always enjoyed Rob Shearman’s work, all the way back to the time when he was still writing Doctor Who audioplays. Lavie Tidhar is good writer, even if I haven’t read this particular novella. The Weird anthology by the Vandermeers got almost universal acclaim. I can’t say much about Adam Nevill’s horror novel, since I hardly ever read that genre (and have never heard of Mr Nevill, sorry), nor of the short story, comic and art categories. The only decision that surprised me is Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris winning in the best screenplay category, since I would have expected that one to go to Attack the Block, which I like a whole lot.
More awards: The winners of the German TV Awards, which are Germany’s equivalent to the Emmys or BAFTAs were announced Tuesday night. My reaction to the winners is largely “meh”. If anything, this reminds me of how little German made TV I actually watch, since I haven’t heard, let alone watched most of the winners and nominees. The lone exception is Der letzte Bulle (The last cop), which won in the best TV series category. Der letzte Bulle is a sort of Life on Mars in reverse story. A tough macho cop is shot sometime in the late 1980s, lands in a coma and wakes up again more than twenty years later to find that things have changed. It’s a surprisingly enjoyable show by the generally low standards of German television.
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