The Graveyard Book

SXF, the Brit Sci Fi Fantasy mag, has announced their awards. And why should you care? Because it's a very interesting list. The magazine announced the awards at their annual convention earlier this month. Curious as to what they think about science fiction on the other side of the pond? Not surprisingly, it's brit heavy, but it's still interesting. Here are the sci-fi highlights:

Best Film Director: JJ Abrams (Star Trek)
Best TV Episode: Torchwood "Children Of Earth" Episode Five
Best Actress: Eve Myles (Torchwood)
Best Actor: David Tennant (Doctor Who)
Best Novel: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
Best Comic: Batman: Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader? Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert
Best Game: Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady)
Best Collectible: The Journal of Impossible Things (Doctor Who)

Hope for the Future: Steven Moffat (succeeding Russell T. Davies on Dr. Who)
Lifetime Award: Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds, UFO, Space 1999, Terrahawks and much more)
Cult Hero: Ianto Jones (Actor Gareth David Lloyd on Torchwood)
Sci-Fi Phenomenon: True Blood (they've only seen season 1)

Unfortunately, some of the most interesting categories are not available online, such as the Best Death Scene, Biggest Disappointment, and Best Dialogue. But my favorite award up there is easily Gerry Anderson. Not only did his work influence the SFX team as children, it made me very nostalgic.

Over at AMC's SciFi Scanner blog, author John Scalzi takes a look at the five nominees for 2009's Hugo Award for Best Novel and examines the chances any of them will one day be adapted into a film. It's an interesting perspective on how a studio may view a popular science fiction/fantasy property (What's it about? What's the pitch? Who wrote it?) rendered even more insightful considering Scalzi himself is up for the award.

Though out of fairness, Scalzi abstains from putting his own novel, Zoe's Tale, under the film audit. The four other nominees for this year's Hugo are: Anathem by Neal Stephenson (yay!), The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow and Saturn's Children by Charles Stross. However, I'm actually a little late to this post. This year's Hugo Awards ceremony were held yesterday with The Graveyard Book nabbing top honors (read all the winners here).

With that acclaim in its pocket and Neil "I wrote the books for Stardust and Coraline and co-wrote the screenplay for Beowulf"Gaiman's prowess in Hollywood on the rise, I'm starting to think Scalzi was dead-on when he pegged the tome about a boy raised by ghosts as destined for the big screen. The Graveyard Book is already in the option stage, perhaps this win will push it into production.

Past Best Novel Hugo winners later adapted to film have included: Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Frank Herberts Dune (soon to make its 4th trip to the land of motion pictures) and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.