The Kitschies: 2014 Winners Announced!

Our good friend Jared of Pornokitsch may no longer be heading up the Kitschies (although he is still heavily involved), but they are still one of the most interesting awards for me as a genre fiction fan. Unlike the majority of SFF lists out there which tend to focus on mainstream books – the books publishers have been heavily marketing – or books written by members of the academy/group’s membership hosting the award, the Kitschies offer their awards to the most “progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic”.

Generally this results in a list of books that contains many obscure titles from smaller publishers we’ve never even heard of… Admittedly, there is something quite unsettling about this fact and I’ve always been thankful to the award for drawing my attention to the books on the shortlist. Generally the reason these books aren’t as popular as the books winning awards such as the Gemmell Awards, for example, is because they are so ‘progressive’ that they are hard to market to the casual SFF reader. However, what I’m pretty certain of is that the books that win these awards will have an influence on the authors that read them and therefore affect the genre’s direction.  For this reason I make a point, each year, of at very least trying to read the winner of each category. My experience doing so allows me to state clearly that you – reader, reading this – should do the same!

*Note: More on why I love them here if you’re interested.

Anyway, here is this year’s – well, 2014’s technically – list:

The Red Tentacle
(Best Novel)
Judged by: Kate Griffin, Adam Roberts, Frances Hardinge, Kim Curran, and Glen Mehn:

• Winner: Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith (Egmont)
• Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Peripheral by William Gibson (Viking)
• The Way Inn by Will Wiles (4th Estate)
• The Race by Nina Allan (NewCon Press)

  …

The Golden Tentacle
(Best Debut)
Also judged by the above panel:

• Winner: Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre (Jonathan Cape)
• The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne (Blackfriars)
• Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta (Voyager)
• The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (Self)
• The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara (Atlantic Books)

  …

The Inky Tentacle
(Best Cover Art)
Judged by: Jim Kay, Dapo Adeola, Ed Warren, and Siân Prime:

• Winner: Tigerman by Nick Harkaway, cover by Glenn O’Neill (William Heinemann)
• The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin, design by Steve Marking (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar, cover by Ben Summers (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, cover by Emily Carroll and Sonja Chaghatzbanian (Faber and Faber)
• The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber, cover by Rafaela Romaya and Yehring Tong (Canongate)

  …

The Invisible Tentacle
(Best Natively Digital Fiction)
Judged by: James Wallis, Laura Grace, and Clare Reddington:

• Winner: Kentucky Route Zero, Act III by Cardboard Computer
• @echovirus12 (Twitter fiction), created/curated by Jeff Noon (@jeffnoon), Ed (@3dgriffiths), James Knight (@badbadpoet), violet sprite (@gadgetgreen), Richard Biddle (@littledeaths68), Mina Polen (@polen), Uel Aramchek (@ThePatanoiac), Graham Walsh (@t_i_s_u), Vapour Vox (@Wrong_Triangle)
• 80 Days by Inkle Studios
• Sailor’s Dream by Simogo

  …

The Kitschies also awarded the Black Tentacle to children’s illustrator and writer Sarah MacIntyre, for her recent work and discussions that have got the genre talking. Specifically, MacIntyre recently issued a challenge under the hashtag #NonIdentikit where she encourages other artists and illustrators to produce more diverse faces in their work.

You can read some reflections on the judging process here. Well done to all the winners ^_^

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