With 2010 almost upon us we are starting to get news of works that are likely to be eligible for the first year’s awards. One possibility is Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky which is due out in the UK from Gollancz in February. See World SF News for more details. It isn’t clear whether this is the first English language publication, but it is the first from a major English language publisher.
You may also have seen the announcement that Pyr will be producing a US edition of Pierre Pevel’s novel, The Cardinal’s Blades. This isn’t a first English language publication, because the book was published by Gollancz in the UK this year. However, the award rules do allow the jury to look back up to two years if they are short of potential candidates, provided that works in question have not been considered by a previous jury. As 2010 will be our first year, the jury effectively has three years to look at if it wishes to do so.
On the subject of eligibility, it has been brought to our attention that some authors (for example Zoran Živković) self-publish English language editions of their work in order to have something to send to English language publishers. These publications tend to be very short print runs, and it is not our intention that they should disqualify a work from consideration should it later be picked up later by a major publisher.