The Theaker’s Quarterly Awards 2018 were recently announced with Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA garnering the prize on the books category.

As announced in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #62, these are the winners of the Theaker’s Quarterly Awards 2018. Voting was open to the public from February 11 to 25, and people could vote for as many items as they wanted in each category. Items were eligible if they had appeared in or were reviewed in the previous four issues of the magazine. Here are the results!

Books

• 1st PIRATE UTOPIA, by Bruce Sterling (Tachyon Publications)
• 2nd I Am Providence, by Nick Mamatas (Night Shade Books)
• 3rd Metronome, by Oliver Langmead (Unsung Stories)

Roy Christopher’s annual summer book reading list compiled from diverse hands includes Peter Lunenfeld’s recommendation.

Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA (Tachyon, 2016) also interrogates culture’s tortured relationship with power, but from a deiselpunk perspective, creating an alternative past in which the Futurists take over the Regency of Carnaro to wreck havoc on their enemies. It was a nominee for the 2016 Sidewise Award, Best Short-Form Alternate History. In my alternate history, it won.

At LANGUAGE LOG, Mark Liberman’s discussion about Melania Trump’s jacket choices includes this unexpected update.

Update — I should add that a semi-true history of Fiume/Carnaro/Rijeka in the period after WWI can be found Bruce Sterling’s novel PIRATE UTOPIA.

For more info on PIRATE UTOPIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and illustration by John Coulthart