One of the annoying aspects of this job is that I periodically hear from people all over the world about how some publisher or other has grotesquely mutilated my work, turning it into a poor-quality travesty of ... well, you get the picture.
And then, sometimes, something else happens.
I got home late last night from a rainy weekend in Antwerp, dog-tired and expecting a backlog of work, to discover an anonymous box. Which turned out to contain an unexpected trophy and a covering letter:
Dear Charlie Stross,
We are happy to announce you, that "Accelerando" has won Estonian SF Award Stalker 2010 in the category of best translated novel in 2009.And we are also happy to announce you, that "A Boy and His God" has wpn Estonian SF Award Stalker 2010 in the category of best translated story in 2009.
These awards are issued by Estonian Science Fiction Association, according to votes of Estonian SF readers.
And we in the publishing company Fantaasia are especially proud about it.
Many thanks and best wishes from Estonia!
(Here we see Frigg preparing to deliver the head-butt seal of LOLcat approval.)
Congratulations.
Welldone sir. Now you can say youre big in Estonia. Which may well be like big in Japan. Or something.
Well done to Estonia, for having a rather fantastic SF association.
So, the Estonian Sci-Fi award doubles as a High-Five? Cool:)
I wonder if there's a good story behind the source of the hand used to make the mould for the award - you should ask.
Congrats!
Also, kudos to Estonians for having such excellent taste in Sci-Fi :)
Sweeeeet. Lots of authors have Hugos and such. How many authors have one of these?
Not just an award - but a Cat-Approved one.
Congratulations, sir.
Ah, no.
Estonia: population 1.34 million, per-capita GDP (PPP) $17.9K
Japan: population 127.3 million, per-capita GDP (PPP) $33.5K
Let's put it this way: I may be big in Estonia, but my Japanese book advances are ten times the size (and there are many more of them)!
Being big in Estonia is nice. Being big in Japan would be awesome.
Cool. But are you bigger than Elvis in Estonia? Maybe The Beatles would be the better benchmark.
Excellent! Very nice!
If so would that make Charlie Stross more famous than Jesus?
You mean Jesus Sirach? Maybe...
Hey, go where they love you, it worked for the Hoff in Germany once his night rider gig ended
Err, they know you made Tallinn's adopted son Roman Ungern von Sternberg one of your 'heroes', do they?
"Heroes"?
He's described -- rightly, I think -- as a monster!
Well, the greater go(o)d, what measure are a few tortured mortals if it keeps the sleeper in the pyramid in Non-REM... BTW, I'm trying to use sarcasm smiley mode more reluctantly, but maybe I should change this, err.
On a related note, looking this guy up on wikipedia, I got this:
http://www.phoenix.de/content/308959.htm
Don't want to know what's going on in the parking space under the phoenix compound, paid by
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(German_TV_station)
taxpayer's money. Oh my elder thing...
Congratulations!
This is all Very Well, and I do Congratulate you on your achievement Charlie ..BUT ..
Damn it People! You just aren't Thinking ..or rather you just aren't asking the Right Questions.
It must have occurred to some-one other than me that ' Charles Stross ' is a Really good Name for a Great Detective ? Charlie may not be quite right in this role - save to the Great Detectives Intimate Friends of course - but ' Charles Stross ' ? .. there's a faint hint of Upper Class, even Royal connections with undertones of British Club-land of the Great Age of Detectives in that name .. what Secret History may be hinted at here in the 'Charles Stross' Back story ?
Thus we have " The Mystery of The Blue Hand "
We must all sit back and await The Great Detectives Deductions about The CLUE !
Be prepared to Speak up ..saying ' This is Amazing My Dear Stross ! '
I've just finished reading " Glasshouse " and halfway through the story I did think that it was morphing into a classic British Country House Murder Mystery by way of 'The Prisoner ' and then you did something else ..very Clever.
I gather that 'Glasshouse is not among peoples favorites among your books? Perhaps it's too confusing,in a neither one thing not t'other sort of way?
Oh, well, I'm even now working my way through your work and it may well be that I haven't come upon your Locked Room Mystery or the story in which your Detective Gathers all the Suspects together and says ' I expect you are all wondering why I've gathered you together ? Well ... '
In the Mean Time there's 'The Blue Hand ' ..which makes a change from The Black Hand or "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"
So ooo ..a prospective client has sent you a Blue Hand, eh? You have the various Trappings of The Great Detective .. The Rooms, the Interesting Location, the Eccentricities, the Watson in the form of your Wife.
You can't just leave it here ..we await your Deductions.
Oh no!
Hand Solo has been frozen in plaster!
Posts like this one and the "Books I will not write" threads are positively psychedelic when taken into the context of Wu's "How To Live Safely Into a Science Fictional World".
Riga just crashed into Edinburgh!
But before that I was just giggling at the implications of Wu's device use in the context of Stross's I will not write thread...particularly the space crap one. Future Stross deliberately creates a paradox to erase particularly bad memories of Baikonur with Liz Williams and Ken Macleod...
One icon for two awards? Still, very nice!
Congrats. But shouldn't you thank Iris Jeletski and Uusjärv Sash?
You were up against a few titans:
http://www.ulme.ee/Stalker/2010/2010-tulemused
Hi Charles!
Congratulations on winning also from the ESFA and thanks for your fantastic books :)
Both "Accelerando" and "A Boy and His God" beat the competition by quite large margin this year. Granted, the competition was not very big but there was number of old-time titans among them like someone mentioned, which makes the result very impressive.
The awards are presented at Estonian SF fans meetup Estcon, held over weekend in July each year at some forest house, as far from civilization as possible and as such is quite unique among the cons with its relaxed atmosphere.
By the way, the hand is not blue but black. Have a look: http://picasaweb.google.com/genkykaia/2010071618EstCon2010#5495355044251128898 The publishers of Accelerando are on the left and translator on right.
This page has more links to image galleries and blog posts about the event: http://www.ulme.ee/Estcon/Estcon-2010 Foreign visitors are most welcome to participate! Reading the blogs through google translation should provide you hours of hilarity :)
regards, zurgutt, president of ESFA zurgutt at ulme.ee
These were the first ten (out of 33):
Eva Luts publisher
I half expected something out of Accelerando, but thankfully this did not come to pass.