Friday 1 July 2011

Welcome your new Space Pony overlords

I spent last weekend in Derby, attending the excellent Alt.Fiction, a slickly run and enjoyable cross-genre event with a nice mixture of SF, fantasy, crime and horror writers (and readers) present. As much a workshop as a convention in the usual sense, it was terrifically good fun and well situated in the heart of Derby, within easy range of restaurants and reasonably priced hotels. My thanks to Alex Davies for the invitation, and to the other guests and attendees for making everything so pleasant.

I delivered a guest of honour talk on the saturday afternoon. Before I got going, Cheryl Morgan presented me with this, which she had kindly ferried home from Stockholm:


This is the European Science Fiction Society Hall of Fame award for best writer, and I'm delighted to be the recipient in 2011, following on from my colleague and friend Stephen Baxter last year. When Cheryl emailed me from Stockholm to say the award was mine, I was doubly delighted because I hadn't even realised I was up for it. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to rub your hands and say "excellent" in a Mr Burns style.

The significance of the pony is that these wooden statuettes are a Stockholm speciality; mine has been transmogrified with a spacesuit and helmet. I understand that the other awards given out that night were similarly wacky.

I am immensely grateful to the ESFS for the award, to Cheryl for bringing it home, and to the organisers, guests and attendees of Alt.Fiction for an excellent time.
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7 comments:

  1. Rusty Carl1 July 2011 at 04:18

    congrats - you and Stephen Baxter are my two favorite authors so it's appropriate you've won these awards in consecutive years.

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  2. R. Doyle1 July 2011 at 10:34

    Congratulations on your win Alastair, great news indeed and well deserved. I gotta say, your award statuette reminds me of some of the images i've seen in Russia of Laika!

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  3. Griffindell1 July 2011 at 12:02

    Hi Al,

    I hope you have a big shelf for all your awards...

    Godspeed,

    Adrian

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  4. Anonymous2 July 2011 at 02:43

    You just need a hugo now for Troika, they're mostly in the shape of a rocket which would sit nicely beside your horsetranaut.

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  5. George Berger2 July 2011 at 10:36

    Congratulations on winning the Award. I was at the con for one day only, and was unable to attend any sessions. Until yesterday I had little time to read, so I learned about this honor less than fifteen minutes ago.

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  6. Anonymous2 July 2011 at 15:04

    Nice, I guess that is an astronaut 'dalahäst'. The more traditional ones are painted red and with brigth colours and patterns.

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  7. Al R5 July 2011 at 10:14

    Thank you all!

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