Locus Wars
July 1st, 2004Apparently Locus Magazine let Cory Doctorow leak the news that his Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom won the Locus Award for Best First Novel on Boing Boing.
This is how Locus Online, the Web site associated with the magazine, announced the news.
Cory Doctorow wins Locus Award for best first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. You heard it there first.
“You heard it there first.” Mark R. Kelly, Locus Online’s editor, was not particularly happy about this. I mean, if Locus Magazine is going to let someone break news about the Award on the Web, shouldn’t they give the Web site with their own name first dibs?
On his blog, Mark expressed his frustration at some of the administrative difficulties of working with a parent publication that treats the Web site as a competitor instead of a brand extension. Unfortunately, the reasoned and heartfelt post was removed some time yesterday (before I could grab a quote).
Anyway, the Locus site still does great stuff, even if it has very little to do with the magazine. Don’t be fooled by the word “Blinks” — there’s a tiny blog crawling up the left-hand side of the site. It’s the place to go to get your head around recent and upcoming releases. It has become a bibliographic treasure, and nowhere is this more apparent than the grand LOCUS Index to Science Fiction Awards.