Science fiction is a forward-thinking genre. It's not spring yet, but the hearts of fans are already turning to love -- and especially to the awards for best SF romance of 1999.
The Sapphire awards are named after an abbreviation of Science Fiction Romance or SFR, a newsletter devoted to the eponymous intersection of the SF and romance genres
Lois McMaster Bujold won this year's Sapphire for best novel, winning overwhelming support for her "comedy of biology and manners,"
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The book, the latest installment in Bujold's popular series of starfaring costumed novels starring the irrepressible diplomat Miles Vorkosigan, focuses on a flurry of romantic misadventures surrounding the wedding of an interplanetary emperor.
Catherine Asaro won the short fiction Sapphire, the first awarded in the program's five-year history, for "Aurora in Four Voices."
Originally published in Analog magazine, the story tells how popular Asaro protagonist Soz met her future husband Jato, fleshing out some of the background of Asaro's deep-space "Skolian Empire" series in the process.
Asaro, who refers to herself as an author of science-fiction romances, was trained as a physicist. Fans have praised her attention both to scientific detail -- her faster-than-light technology is actually mathematically feasible -- and to the cloudier equations of human emotion.
Spaceships and roses
Jennifer Dunne, SFR's editor, describes the genre of SF romance as "the spectrum from science fiction / fantasy where the romance is the main subplot or complication, to romance where a science fiction or fantasy setting is a backdrop."
She noted that while the science fiction elements of such work should be of "roughly equal importance" compared to the romance elements, most SF romance ends up classified as science fiction for publishing purposes.
"You can tell that the romance is more important, because it is the last issue to be resolved," she said. "In one of the vagaries of publishing, many of these books are now coming out labeled science fiction or fantasy, and printed by science fiction and fantasy publishers, rather than being labeled romance and printed by romance publishers."
Subscribers to the newsletter nominate and vote on the awards.
Asaro previously won a Sapphire for her 1996 novel Catch the Lightning. While Bujold's work has won other multiple awards from SF fans and writers alike, the 1999 Sapphire is her first.
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