Special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen, 92, died May 7, 2013.

Harryhausen pioneered the “Dynamation” stop-motion model animation process, which revolutionized fantasy and SF filmmaking. He classic works include 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and the iconic skeleton warrior battle in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), which influenced hosts of SF/fantasy filmmakers. After three busy decades in Hollywood, his last major effects work was on 1981′s Clash of the Titans. Harryhausen was influential on generations of SF writers and artists, and was close with many in the field, notably Ray Bradbury and Forrest J Ackerman.

Raymond Frederick Harryhausen was born June 29, 1920 in Los Angeles. After seeing King Kong in 1933 he began to experiment with creating animated shorts, eventually being mentored by King Kong animator Willis O’Brien. He joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society in 1939, where he became close with Ackerman and Bradbury. Harryhausen made films for the military in WWII (with director Frank Capra), and after the war began working in Hollywood. His first major job was as an assistant animator for O’Brien on Mighty Joe Young, winner of the 1949 Academy Award for special effects. He created effects for about 20 finished films (and worked on several that never made it to screen) during the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, producing a body of work that inspired future filmmakers including James Cameron, George Lucas, Peter Jackson, and Terry Gilliam.

Harryhausen received a First Fandom Hall of Fame Award in 1996, was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and received a Karl Edward Wagner life achievement award from the British Fantasy Society in 2008.

For more, see his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. See the June issue of Locus for a complete obituary.

The 2013 Edgar Award winners were presented by the Mystery Writers of America for the best mystery fiction, non-fiction, and television produced in 2012.

Winners of genre interest include The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters (Quirk), winner for Best Paperback Original; Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego & Redondo Beach CA, awarded the Raven for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing; and publisher Akashic Books, recipient of the Ellery Queen Award, which honors writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry.

Awards were presented at the 67th Gala Banquet, May 2, 2013 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.

For the full list of winners, visit the Edgar Awards site.

The 2012 Shirley Jackson Awards nominees have been announced. The awards are presented for outstanding achievement in horror, psychological suspense, and dark fantasy fiction.

NOVEL

• Immobility, Brian Evenson (Tor)
• Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn (Crown)
• The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)
• The Devil in Silver, Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)
• Edge, Koji Suzuki (Vertical)

NOVELLA

• 28 Teeth of Rage, Ennis Drake (Omnium Gatherum Media)
• “The Indifference Engine”, Project Itoh (The Future Is Japanese)
• I’m Not Sam, Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee (Sinister Grin)
• Delphine Dodd, S.P. Miskowski (Omnium Gatherum Media)
• “Sky”, Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls)

NOVELETTE

• “Wild Acre”, Nathan Ballingrud (Visions, Fading Fast)
• “The Wish Head”, Jeffrey Ford (Crackpot Palace)
• “The Crying Child”, Bruce McAllister (originally “The Bleeding Child,” Cemetery Dance #68)
• “The House on Ashley Avenue”, Ian Rogers (Every House is Haunted)
• “Reeling for the Empire” Karen Russell (Tin House Winter 2012)

SHORT FICTION

• “How We Escaped Our Certain Fate”, Dan Chaon (21st Century Dead)
• “Little America”, Dan Chaon (Shadow Show: All New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury, William Morrow)
• “A Natural History of Autumn”, Jeffrey Ford (F&SF 7-8/12)
• “Bajazzle”, Margo Lanagan (Cracklescape)
• “Two Houses”, Kelly Link (Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury)
• “The Magician’s Apprentice”, Tamsyn Muir (Weird Tales #359)

SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION

• The Woman Who Married a Cloud, Jonathan Carroll (Subterranean)
• The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories, Andy Duncan (PS Publishing)
• Windeye, Brian Evenson (Coffee House)
• Crackpot Palace, Jeffrey Ford (Morrow)
• Errantry, Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer)
• Remember Why You Fear Me, Robert Shearman (ChiZine)

EDITED ANTHOLOGY

• Night Shadows, Greg Herren & J. M.  Redmann, eds. (Bold Strokes)
• 21st Century Dead, Christopher Golden, ed. (St. Martin’s)
• Black Wings II, S. T. Joshi, ed. (PS Publishing)
• Exotic Gothic 4:  Postscripts #28/29, Danel Olson, ed. (PS Publishing)
• Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury,  Sam Weller & Mort Castle, eds. (Morrow)

The awards will be presented on on Sunday, July 14, 2013 at Readercon 24 in Burlington MA.

The results of the SFWA officers’ election were announced. As of July 1, 2013, the new board will be:

President: Steven Gould

Vice-President: Rachel Swirsky

Secretary: Susan Forest

Treasurer: Bud Sparhawk

South/Central Regional Director: Lee Martindale

Overseas Regional Director: Tansy Rayner Roberts

There were 516 ballots cast by the April 26, 2013 deadline, up from 395 last year. Of those, 23 were discarded as invalid due to lack of the required cover sheets, down from 87 invalid ballots last year.

The winners of the 2013 Ditmar Awards, for Australian SF, have been announced:

Best Novel

• Sea Hearts, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)

• Suited, Jo Anderton (Angry Robot)
• The Corpse-Rat King, Lee Battersby (Angry Robot)
• Bitter Greens, Kate Forsyth (Random House Australia)
• Perfections, Kirstyn McDermott (Xoum)
• Salvage, Jason Nahrung (Twelfth Planet)

Best Novella or Novelette

• “Sky”, Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls)

• “Significant Dust”, Margo Lanagan (Cracklescape)
• “Flight 404”, Simon Petrie (Flight 404/The Hunt for Red Leicester)

Best Short Story

• “The Wisdom of Ants”, Thoraiya Dyer (Clarkesworld 12/12)

• “The Bone Chime Song”, Joanne Anderton (Light Touch Paper Stand Clear)
• “Sanaa’s Army”, Joanne Anderton (Bloodstones)
• “Oracle’s Tower”, Faith Mudge (To Spin a Darker Stair)

Best Collected Work

• Through Splintered Walls, Kaaron Warren (Twelfth Planet)

• The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011, Liz Grzyb & Talie Helene, eds. (Ticonderoga)
• Midnight and Moonshine, Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter (Ticonderoga)
• Light Touch Paper Stand Clear, Edwina Harvey & Simon Petrie, eds. (Peggy Bright Books)
• Cracklescape, Margo Lanagan (Twelfth Planet)
• Epilogue, Tehani Wessely, ed. (FableCroft)

Best Artwork

• Cover art, Kathleen Jennings, for Midnight and Moonshine (Ticonderoga)

• Illustrations, Adam Browne, for Pyrotechnicon (Coeur de Lion)
• Cover art and illustrations, Kathleen Jennings, for To Spin a Darker Stair (FableCroft)
• Cover art, Les Petersen, for Light Touch Paper Stand Clear (Peggy Bright Books)
• Cover art, Nick Stathopoulos, for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine 56 (ASIM Collective)

Best Fan Writer

• Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work including reviews in Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth

• Alex Pierce, for body of work including reviews in Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus
• Grant Watson, for body of work including the “Who50” series in The Angriest
• Sean Wright, for body of work including reviews in Adventures of a Bookonaut

Best Fan Artist

• Kathleen Jennings, for body of work including “The Dalek Game” and “The Tamsyn Webb Sketchbook”

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium

• The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond

• Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus, Alisa Krasnostein, Tehani Wessely, et. al.
• Galactic Chat, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Sean Wright
• Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Alex Pierce
• Snapshot 2012, Alisa Krasnostein, Kathryn Linge, David McDonald, Helen Merrick, Ian Mond, Jason Nahrung et. al.
• Antipodean SF, Ion Newcombe
• The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe

Best New Talent

• David McDonald

• Steve Cameron
• Stacey Larner
• Faith Mudge

William Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review

• Tansy Rayner Roberts, for “Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. Let’s Unpack That.” (Tor.com)
  

• Rjurik Davidson, for “An Illusion in the Game for Survival”, a review of Reamde by Neal Stephenson (The Age)
• Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene, for “The Year in Review” (The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2011)
• Alisa Krasnostein, Kathryn Linge, David McDonald, and Tehani Wessely, for review of Mira Grant’s Newsflesh (Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus)
• David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Tehani Wessely, for the “New Who in Conversation” series

Voting for the Ditmar Awards was conducted in accordance with the rules, and was open to members and supporting members of Conflux 9 and to members of Continuum 8 who were eligible to vote in the 2011 Awards.

The winner of the 2013 Arthur C. Clarke Award was announced during a ceremony at the SCI-FI-LONDON Film Festival, May 1, 2013, in London.

• Dark Eden, Chris Beckett (Corvus)

The other nominees were:

• Nod, Adrian Barnes (Bluemoose)
• Angelmaker, Nick Harkaway (William Heinemann)
• The Dog Stars, Peter Heller (Headline)
• Intrusion, Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
• 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

This year’s judges were Juliet E. McKenna and Ruth O’Reilly for the British Science Fiction Association, Nickianne Moody and Liz Williams for the Science Fiction Foundation, and Rob Grant for SF-FI-LONDON. Andrew M. Butler is chair of judges. Tom Hunter is award director. Beckett received £2013 prize and a commemorative engraved bookend.

Writer Andrew Offutt, 78, died April 30, 2013. Offutt wrote and edited more than 75 books, including fantasy, SF, and erotica. He was twice president of SFWA, serving from 1976-78.

Andrew Jefferson Offutt V was born August 16, 1934 in Louisville KY. He often wrote under the byline “andrew j. offutt,” and work also appeared as by Andy Offutt, A.J. Offutt, and assorted pseudonyms and house names. Offutt’s first story was “And Gone Tomorrow” (1954), winner of an If magazine contest, but his professional career began in earnest with “Blacksword” in Galaxy (1959).

He published erotic novels beginning in the late ’60s, but the first SF novel under his own name was Evil is Live Spelled Backwards (1970). He co-wrote the War of the Wizards trilogy with Richard K Lyons (1978-81), and wrote the War of the Gods on Earth trilogy (1979-83). In the ’70s and ’80s he wrote several novels about Robert E. Howard’s characters Conan and Cormac Mac Art, and contributed significantly to the Thieves’ World shared universe in the ’80s and ’90s. He also edited several volumes of the Swords Against Darkness anthology series in the late ’70s. As John Cleve he wrote or co-wrote over 40 erotic novels, many SF.

Offutt married Jodie McCabe in 1957, and they had two daughters and two sons, including author Christopher Offutt. He is also survived by five grandchildren.

For more, see his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. See the June issue of Locus for a complete obituary.

Finalists for the 2013 Prix Aurora Awards, celebrating the best Canadian SF/fantasy work, have been announced.

PROFESSIONAL AWARDS

Best Novel – English

• Destiny’s Fall, Marie Bilodeau (Dragon Moon)
• Food for the Gods, Karen Dudley (Ravenstone)
• Thunder Road, Chadwick Ginther (Ravenstone)
• The Silvered, Tanya Huff (DAW)
• Triggers, Robert J. Sawyer (Penguin Canada)
• Healer’s Sword, Lynda Williams (EDGE)

Best YA Novel – English

• The Calling, Kelley Armstrong (Harper Teen)
• Above, Leah Bobet (Scholastic)
• Under My Skin,  Charles de Lint (Razorbill Canada)
• Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen)
• Dissolve, Neil Godbout (Bundoran)
• Mik Murdoch, Boy Superhero, Michell Plested (Five Rivers)

Best Short Fiction – English

• “Happily Ever After”, Marie Bilodeau (When the Villain Comes Home)
• “Synch Me, Kiss Me, Drop”,  Suzanne Church (Clarkesworld #68)
• “Delta Pi”, Matt Moore (Torn Realities)
• “Knights Exemplar”,  Al Onia (On Spec #90)
• “The Walker of the Shifting Borderland”,  Douglas Smith (On Spec #90)

Best Poem/Song – English

• “Hold Fast”,  Leah Bobet (Strange Horizons 6/11/12)
• “Zombie Descartes Writes a Personal Ad”,  Carolyn Clink (Tesseracts Sixteen)
• “A sea monster tells his story”, David Clink (The Literary Review of Canada 7-8/12)
• “Roc”,  Sandra Kasturi (Come Late to the Love of Birds)
• “The Ghosts of Birds”,  Helen Marshall (Phantom Drift 2: Valuable Estrangements)

Best Graphic Novel – English

• Raygun Gothic, GMB Chomichuk (Alchemical Press)
• Goblins, Tarol Hunt (webcomic)
• West of Bathurst, Kari Maaren (webcomic)
• Weregeek, Alina Pete (webcomic)
• Looking for Group, Ryan Sohmer & Lar DeSouza (webcomic)

Best Related Work – English

• Shanghai Steam, Ace Jordyn, Calvin D. Jim, & Renée Bennett, eds. (EDGE)
• Imaginarium 2012: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing, Sandra Kasturi & Halli Villegas, eds. (ChiZine)
• Hair Side, Flesh Side, Helen Marshall (ChiZine)
• Blood and Water, Hayden Trenholm, ed. (Bundoran)
• On Spec (The Copper Pig Writers’ Society)

Best Artist

• Richard Bartrop
• GMB Chomichuk
• Costi Gurgu
• Michelle Milburn
• Erik Mohr

There were also nominees in fan/volunteer categories. For a complete list, see the Aurora Awards website.

Memberships to the annual Locus Awards Weekend are increasing from $40 to $50 on May 1, 2013. The Locus Awards Weekend includes readings, a kickoff party hosted by Clarion West (the first of their six summer parties honoring 2013 instructors), panels with leading authors, an autograph session, the lunch banquet, and the annual Hawai’ian shirt contest judged by the fabulous Connie Willis, who will MC the ceremony and present the Locus Awards.

This year’s Locus Awards Weekend will be held June 28-30, 2013 in Seattle Washington. For more, or to buy tickets before prices go up, see the Locus Awards Webpage.

Clarion West has received a $10,000 Art Works Grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to support its six-week Summer Writers Workshop, as well as its monthly one-day workshops for Pacific Northwest Writers.  This is part of a plan by the NEA to award $26.3 million in grants to nonprofit national, regional, state, and local organizations nationwide. Thirteen different disciplines are represented by the grants, and Clarion West is listed as the example of the kind of organization they’re looking for in the literature category.

For more, see the announcement on the NEA website.