Nominees for the 2007 Hugo Awards, honoring sci-fi's best, have been announced. To find out the winners, though, you have to go to Yokohama, site of this year's 65th World Science Fiction Convention, popularly known (if sci-fi fans can be said to be popular) as WorldCon.

I haven't written about the Morning News' Tournament of Books since it was announced. Truth to tell, I haven't read most of the books competing. But as the brackets dwindle down to the finals today, there's some fun snarking worth a mention.Yesterday's match-up was Gary Shteyngart's postSoviet farce Absurdistan and the one novel on the … Continue reading Let the (March) Madness End

Haruki Murakami's collection of short stories Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman has won this year's Kiriyama Book Prize for fiction. The $30,000 prize is given annually "to recognize outstanding books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia." While I doubt Murakami needs the money, anything that brings attention to this great writer is OK by me. … Continue reading Murakami Takes the Prize