2017 Tenth Book Competition Finalists
The Tenth Book Prize is given every two years to the author of outstanding Hardiner-themed speculative fiction. In the past, this award has been granted to Zachary Osgood, Jonathan Safran-Foer, and my humbled little self. (No, that book, The Furnace, has still not been printed—Presse le Conseil, which holds the contract, has asked for steady edits that have gone slower without the eye of Dr Patch to offer insight.) This year, I’ve gotten a little clearer view into how the Tenth Book Award is actually awarded—after all, I’m running the show.
That’s right—one of the responsibilities of the newly-formed position of Archivist at the Society of Algiers involves arranging the reading schedules and reviews and recommendations deadlines, procuring copies of usually-unpublished manuscripts, generating a nominations process. Society members had until October 13 to nominate; and now, the Tenth Book Committee can furnish a rather long shortlist for the 2017 prize:
Navelgazing, Evan Cobb
Nowhere But the Best, Lesa Fairollen
My Notes on Harry Hardiner, Emily Faith
End of Eagle, Graham Lister
Harry Haunted, Les Mieve
The Ballad of Johnny Kite, Simon Scrid
A Very Harry Christmas, Loop Singer
Congratulations to all the entrants, and particularly to the finalists of this year’s search. In a rather heartening sign, the past two years have produced reams of work related to Harry Hardiner, and all of it has been fascinating to read—but unfortunately, we had to start making hard decisions almost immediately, and we ended up selecting less than a third of the work nominated. For talent, vulnerability, and sheer audacity of imagination, we’d like to share a few special mentions:
Do Not Trust Maghreb, Trevor Nott
Nott’s defense of Maxence Lawrence is part creative work, part expose of the litigious Trust Maghreb. The story follows Max in his last days, interspersed with the account of a sort of personal crusade for the author in which he flouts as many Trust injunctions as he can muster, only to be met with resounding silence and a final jarring loss that’s mirrored by a hallucinogenic chapter recounting Max’s abduction by Trust agents.
Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders
Don’t get us wrong—this Man Booker Prize winner has it all: headsmashing images, formal plasticity, timely soulsearching, laughs, ghost orgies, and a primary character with eternal priapism. If you haven’t already, go find a copy and pick it up. The audiobook also has its charms, I’ve been told, and is enacted by a full cast including Nick Offerman and David Sedaris. The only thing: waaaaay too tenuous a connection to Harry Hardiner. Many authors have written about Lincoln and the beyond. It’ll win other awards.
Hornblende, Blakely Tartar
This immaculate medieval tale hovers over a castle town called Rosewire. The forest below, Rosewood of course, is being felled by a mysterious blight that the villagers blame on the Duke’s studied daughter, Lystra. She has fallen in love with a visiting bard named Kysal, who wanders into the woods at night in the company of two farmers and doesn’t come back out. What does come out of Rosewood to wind through the halls of Rosewire is deeply unsettling, highly creative, and worth the read to discover. However, like Lincoln, the connection between Hornblende and Harry Hardiner seems to stop short before quite reaching Tenth Book territory.
Boozy Boozy Lucky Lucky, Leford Darrin
“All I really know now is that I found the body.” That’s how Leford Darrin’s “fictive sneeze” (his words) begins, and that pretty much sums up a reader’s mindset once they put the book down. The unnamed… protagonist? Speaker? Drunk? Prophet? Can’t keep his mind on any one thing, and although at first that is as irritating as it would be in real life, in the end, you find yourself flipping back and forth between pages (in my case, taking notes in the margins) and seeing little burrows through the text that hint at some great supernatural trauma too vast to describe in anything but accounts of starbursts or the process of losing a limb. Darrin’s ejecta eventually feels more like having several hundred tabs open on a suicidal Harry Hunter’s web browser than a novel, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
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And, just because it’s my new job, a little history:
After the disappearance of Harry Hardiner, the original members of the Society of Algiers fished around for a proper way to call attention to the situation and almost immediately alighted on the gaping open end of the Rosewire series. Nine books long, and waiting for one more, Rosewire went unfinished (or did it?) after the author’s disappearance; once it became clear that he wasn’t coming back, President Dr Rex Patch declared that one of the goals of the newly vital Society would be the dedication of a new award, originally offered to authors who “finished” Rosewire, and then available to any Hardiner-themed fiction (with the sudden acknowledgement that the Tenth Book Competition winners were collectively finishing the series).
Until the 2009 selection season, eligible entries were few and far between, so the responsibility for disbursing the prize went to the President (Rex), with the job of reading falling to him and whichever Society members volunteered their services, which was more usually most of them than a few. When Zachary Osgood won the 2007 prize with The Graceful Leap, a few rules were formalized (he will remain the last Society member to win the award), and an unhurried process of revision was brought to the contest. By the next award in 2009, ad hoc committees were established as the awarding party, chaired by the Society member who nominated last season’s winner. That means that, from 2009 to this year, that committee has been chaired by Eleia Wosa. (For those keeping score, Chef Wosa nominated both End of Eagle and The Ballad of Johnny Kite—guess we’ll see what happens?)
And now, responsibility has fallen to me. There has been some great work passed through this contest over the years (my own entry obviously excluded), and we can promise that great work is on-hand this year as well. It’s a little daunting, to be honest, even if the award won’t make a huge splash in most people’s bank accounts; for me, the Tenth Book Competition has always felt bigger than the Oscars. A lot of people who write about Harry Hardiner feel that way.
The immortal wisdom of Dr Rex Patch comes to mind: “With something important like a book, always remember that things can go horribly wrong.” Thanks, Dr Patch. We’ll try to remember.
Congratulations again, and good luck, authors of the 2017 Tenth Book Competition shortlist!