I’d say the finalists for this year’s Quill Awards — by McDonald, Marusek, Walton, MacLeod, and Rothfuss — are better representative of the field than the bestseller-oriented selections in the previous two years… and would attribute this to the removal of open voting to the public to determine the nominees. On the other hand, the current procedure amounts to the award being a function of Publishers Weekly magazine, whose editors and reviewers determine the finalists.
But what struck me about the list is the selection of categories. There is, most glaringly, no science category…. Apparently, the awards intention to “honor the most entertaining and enlightening titles” includes religion/spirituality, and cooking, and health/self-improvement, and sports, and even poetry (!), but not books about science or technology…
