These awards are the yearly Australian awards for science fiction, fantasy and horror short stories and novels. Every year, a dedicated band of folk interested in spec-fic of all kinds gets together to organise the awards, a task which includes selecting panels of judges to read works entered in the various categories, finding sponsors for the event, ordering the trophies, organising the actual prize giving ceremony, etc, etc. You can see the website here.

The most impressive thing about this is that they are all volunteers. All of them. And when you consider that anyone can enter their work, and that it will be read and considered, their achievement is truly impressive.

I don’t have entry this year, because I haven’t published anything this year, which is one reason I am writing this — no one can accuse me of smarming up the judges, right? I just want to say that I think everyone who devotes time to this in the interests of Australian spec-fic is, in my book, pretty damn special. You rock, every single one of you.

Thank you.