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Shameless Hugo nomination touting

Nominations for the 2014 Hugo awards close on Monday night.

It occurs to me—rather late in the day, I admit—that there's a strong case I'd like to make for one particular nominee who may otherwise not make the list.

One of the less well known categories is "Best Editor, (Long Form)" meaning, basically, books. And I'd like to remind you, if you're eligible to nominate, of the existence of Ginjer Buchanan, Editor-in-Chief of Ace books, the oldest continuously-publishing SF/F publisher in North America. Ginjer has been at Ace since 1984, and is marking thirty years there, the past eight of them as Editor-in-Chief. She's a living legend, one of our field's last remaining connections with the golden age of SF; she was one of Robert Heinlein's last editors, and among other authors she's responsible for the success of Jim Butcher, Laurel K. Hamilton, Joe Haldeman, and myself. Oh, and Al Reynolds, Jack McDevitt, Charlaine Harris, and Patricia Briggs. Not to mention many others, far more than I can name here—for years she was the powerhouse behind an imprint that published over 150 books a year.

And she retired yesterday, so this is the last year she'll be eligible for the Hugo award for best editor (long form).

I'm putting her name on my ballot, and I hope that if you're eligible to nominate in 2014 you will at least consider her track record.

(Ginjer, if you're reading this it's been great working with you!)

8 Comments

1:

Did she get a character named after her in Ringworld or one of the sequels? The spelling of her name is weirdly familiar, because I could never figure out whether it was supposed to sound like ginger, or whether the two different consonants were meant to have different sounds.

2:

Dunno about Ringworld, but I gather she was doing conventions in the early 70s so it's not impossible. It's pronounced like ginger.

3:

Well, there's one OCD mystery cleared up anyway... :)

4:

Actually, if she retired this year, she's also eligible for next year's Hugo Awards, given that the Hugos are generally for work done in the previous year. That's no reason to procrastination further, though.

5:

I just checked my copy, because like tsennyipa it jogged a faint memory - it was Robert L Forward's "Rocheworld" that had a General Virginia "Jinjur" Jones :)

...this, after catching the "Big Bang Theory" episode that notes Stan Lee's alliterative naming strategies :)

6:

Straying further off topic. Re: General "Jinjur".

I think Forward's character had the nickname because of / after the Land of Oz Character General Jinjur, who led the all-female Army of Revolt in the book The Marvelous Land of Oz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinjur

7:

Ginjerofer is a character in Ringworld Throne. I suspect that the Oz reference is unrelated, but nice work spotting it—I hadn't noticed that, despite having been obsessed with the Oz books when I was a kid.

8:

Ginjer was already Ginjer when I first met her at the 1969 Worldcon in St. Louis. She was an undergrad schoolmate of my (soon-to-be) wife's and spotted us in the scrum and invited us up to a room party to meet Bob Silverberg. (Harlan Ellison intercepted us for an extended riff on how our newbie minds must be being blown by the con, so we didn't get introduced to Bob until the next year--by Ginjer at the PgHlange, the Pittsburgh regional con that she was part of.) In '69 Ginjer was still a social worker, but she was a faithful con-goer, and we would see her annually at Worldcons. We're of an age, but it's strange to see someone I think of as such a force in the business taking retirement.

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This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on March 29, 2014 1:23 PM.

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