Screenplay
Eligibility: a screenplay for TV, Film or Electronic Broadcast released in the English language in any part of the world during the relevant year.
Just a note about this one - a motion was passed near unanimously at the 2009 AGM to say that television programmes should only be eligible from the year they were legally available in the UK (i.e. broadcast here, available on DVD, available to import on DVD, available to buy on iTunes, etc).
The idea was to avoid a situation where we were giving nominations to programmes that people could only have watched in the year of eligibility via torrenting. A lot of people strongly felt that the BFS shouldn't be seen to endorse illegal filesharing.
I was one of the few who voted against it (we have US members, after all), but this was a really hot potato at the time, so you might want to consider keeping that rule.
Also, this wording excludes foreign-language TV and film. So no Spanish/Mexican ghost stories, no intense French horrors, no Studio Ghibli animations etc?
Case in point. The original Danish
The Killing (
Forbrydelsen) was one of the TV events of the year for me. (Okay, it's crime rather than fantasy or horror, but bear with me.) But it was originally broadcast in 2007, so not eligible? It hadn't been shown in any English-speaking territories until 2010 (when Australian TV showed it), so not eligible? And even when you accept that it wasn't available in the UK until 2011 (TV broadcast and DVD release) is it still not eligible because it's in Danish with English subtitles?
Also, why has the wordcount boundary between short stories and novellas been changed to 15,000 words from 10,000 words? When the novella category was introduced, we deliberately used the same boundaries (10,000 words, 40,000 words between novella and novel) as the World Fantasy Award does, and I don't see a good reason for changing it.
Naming a YA award after Diana Wynne Jones is fine by me. Though I'd also like YA and children's work to be eligible for Best Novel or Best Novella as well. (E.g. Patrick Ness's
A Monster Calls, which is 33,000 words, would qualify as a novella if it made next year's shortlist.)
I don't like having separate horror and fantasy novel awards. Where does science fiction go? What about non-genre novels with fantasy, magic-realist, and other non-mimetic elements?
I do intend to be at the EGM, by the way.