The first part of the second phase of the long-promised expansion of sfadb — that is, expansion beyond the award listings themselves — has now been posted. These are ‘citations’, which is to say references to books in critical works, all-time polls, and reading guides. The ultimate project of sfadb, which may be renamed sfa⁺db, is to identify the key works of sf/f/h over the entire history of these genres. Some 28 citation sources have now been posted; another 30 or so (mostly larger, including extensive sources such as Neil Barron’s Anatomy of Wonder, James Gunn’s “Basic Science Fiction Library”, and John Clute’s Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia) are yet to go.

1330 new and updated pages, including the citation source description pages.

This is the second phase of sfadb; there are two more phases, or maybe three, after that. Stay tuned.

http://www.sfadb.com/Prometheus_Awards_2013

43 new and updated pages.

Works can be nominated in this award’s “Hall of Fame” category year after year as long as they haven’t won. This is the fifth time Bujold’s Falling Free has been nominated; the fourth time for Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin…”, and the eighth time for Kipling’s “As Easy as A.B.C.”.

http://www.sfadb.com/Ditmar_Awards_2013

The record number of appearances by any one person on any one year’s award ballot — i.e., not counting poll results of various sorts — is Tansy Rayner Roberts, whose name appeared 8 times on the 2012 Ditmar ballot. She appears just 5 times on this year’s ballot, as do Alisa Krasnostein and Margo Lanagan.

116 new and updated pages.

http://www.sfadb.com/Arthur_C_Clarke_Award_2013

44 new and updated pages. Robinson’s 2312 has now been nominated or shortlisted for five different awards.

This year’s Hugo ballot presented an unprecedented challenge, in that two of the nominations [by which I mean a work or individual that is nominated in some category] claimed more than five nominees [by which I mean a person who would claim the award should their nomination win in its category]. This has never happened before, not in the 35,000+ records for over 100 different awards compiled the past 10 or 12 years, since the first version of the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards, the predecessor to sfadb, was launched. (I should clarify that dramatic presentation nominations, in the Hugo Awards, do not indicate every producer, director, and writer, as a nominee; that is, whichever presentation wins, only a single trophy is handed out. Thus, sfadb compiles their credits as comments, not indexed as nominees. But if a semiprozine, say, claims three editors, sfadb indexes all three as nominees, and the Hugo committees provide three trophies.)

This year, the Hugo ballot indicates six nominees for fancast nomination SF Squeecast, and *nine* nominees for semiprozine nomination Strange Horizons.

I’m commenting about this because the databases underlying sfadb have allowed, until now, for up to five nominees per nomination, only. When I posted the Hugo Awards page for 2013 last Saturday, I elided the issue by mentioning the more than five nominees as a comment. Today, I have re-engineered my several databases (one to compile the awards records, one to assemble them, building linked bylines and whatnot, a third to build php pages) to allow for up to nine nominees, and have updated the Hugo pages and created additional Name pages for the plus 5 nominees.

http://www.sfadb.com/Hugo_Awards_2013

46 new and updated pages.

Aside from technical issues, I would note that the Academy Awards, the Oscars, have had a rule for some time allowing only some number — four? five? not sure — producers for a given Best Picture nomination. Not that they get individual trophies if they win; but if they win they can claim credit.

Will the Hugo committee produce six, or nine, Hugo trophies if one of these nominated works wins? Curious.

Anyway, the technical issue has been addressed. Sfadb can handle as many nominees as want to claim credit for any single nomination.