Good spot, thank you! That'd be an amazing film. I'm sorry they didn't make them while Clint Eastwood was still making Westerns - I wonder who would play him now...

True! I didn't actually say he was self-published, I guess the Hocking/Howey comparisons come across like that...

I would say that "winning a Hugo short story award" = "quietly making waves". Some people will think that definition is cruel, others generous.

Same guy. I've not read Soft Apocalypse but have heard good things. There are a few references to a "soft apocalypse" within Love Minus Eighty - I don't know if they're somehow connected?

That's a really good point - I love the stark white background on this. I think the leggiest of all McGinnis' ladies has to be the one from Losers Live Longer. Even with a landscape cover, her foot doesn't fit.

I disagree on a lot of that (obviously). Specifically regarding The Panopticon, another SF/F award recognised it (granted, The Kitschies only require "elements of the speculative or fantastic" so have a much lower threshold for what constitutes science fictional). So whether or not The Panopticon is SF/F isn't really an open and shut case.* What bothers me is that whether or not The Panopticon is SF, the judges would never (officially) know. I'm also not sure that arguing on a book by book basis is the right way about this.** There were more than 16 books with female authors published last year. Some of them were probably even science fiction. I guess the question is, who is responsible for getting them in front of the judges? How "activist" should the judges be? Is not being activist a form of activism? Etc. *[On that note, in regards to another book on the shortlist, Maureen Kincaid Speller's review of The Dog Stars wasn't SF "according to any criteria I’d care to exercise". I don't actually agree, with her, but I think it is interesting that we are, again, reminded that people define SF in radically different ways. Which is part of the kerfuffle about this whole thing, I guess.] **[I think we're also coming about this from completely opposite ends here. Given the remit of finding "the best science fiction novel of the year", I would far rather argue why a great novel is science fictional than why a science fiction novel is great. I can completely understand the opposite approach, but it isn't for me. (That said, all a tangent - I don't have any questions about the quality of the books on the shortlist!)]

I'm a sucker for him too. Although I generally find him interchangeable with King... or, at the very least, extraordinarily similar to King's pulpier horror.