It is awards season; nomination lists are flying, the Hugo and Retro Hugo list was just released and many other awards are gearing up worldwide.
It is also the first year that anything published by Amazing Stories, including the magazine itself, has been eligible for consideration for any award.
We’re therefore quite shocked and VERY PLEASED to have been notified by the SFPA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association) that one of the poems we published in 2018 has been nominated for the 2019 Rhysling awards.
Flights to Impossible Cities by Sandra Kasturi, published in out Winter 2018 issue (Volume 76, Number 2) has been so nomintated.
Congratulations to Sandra and THANK YOU to our poetry editing staff Carolyn Clink and David Clink!
Poetry in science fiction enjoys a long, varied and honored place in our genre (in fact, The Poetry of Pulp Songs of Giants, an illustrated anthology of poetry by Lovecraft, Howard and Burroughs was just released) and Amazing Stories is no stranger to it either: Frederik Pohl’s first published work – Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna, appeared in the October 1937 issue of the magazine.
The SFPA was founded in 1978 by Suzette Haden Elgin and has given out the Rhysling Awards from its inception. The awards are named after Robert Heinlein’s character Rhysling, the blind singer of the spaceways, featured in the short story (and collection of the same name) The Green Hills of Earth. Rhysling was an engineer blinded by the atomic engines used in spacecraft and now making his way around the solar system by performing in ports and for ship’s crews.
The SFPA publishes an anthology of nominees every year and this year’s will be available shortly. More information about the SFPA, the anthology and the Rhysling Awards (which we are awaiting with great anticipation) can all be found here on their website.
Sandra Kasturi is no stranger to science fiction either. She’s the co-publisher of the World Fantasy Award-nominated and British Fantasy Award-winning press, ChiZine Publications. She is a poet and an editor, was born in Estonia and now lives in Canada. She is the co-founder (with Helen Marshall) of the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium and the national Chiaroscuro Reading Series. Sandra’s work has previously appeared in ON SPEC, Prairie Fire, several Tesseracts anthologies, Evolve, Chilling Tales, A Verdant Green, TransVersions, ARC Magazine, Taddle Creek, Abyss & Apex, 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin, and Stamps, Vamps & Tramps. Her two poetry collections are: The Animal Bridegroom (with an intro by Neil Gaiman) and Come Late to the Love of Birds. Her website can be found here and more information about ChiZine can be found here.
Again, congratulations to all involved and good luck to Sandra!
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Editor’s note: Wow! A nomination for a highly regarded award during our first year of publication! Not bad, not bad at all!
