The novel stars one of Matt’s most popular recurring characters – Luff Imbry (Old Earth’s foremost thief).

Luff has been around for a while, and Matt has written a whole bunch of great short stories starring this quite brilliant character, and to celebrate the novel’s shortlisting, Matt has given us some stories to make available in our eBook store.

There are 7 of Matt’s Luff Imbry short stories there, plus stories by many of our other authors. (Click on “Short Fiction” on the left-hand menu, or search for an author).

They’re only 59p each (or approximately US$0.79), but if you buy 10, you get them for just £3.49! (Approximately US$4.65) What a great deal!

What are you still doing here? Go, browse, download!

As is traditional, we’ve listed below all the works we have published that are eligible for consideration. If you have read any of them, and if you consider those that you have read to be Hugo-worthy, the instructions for nominating can be found here.

Eligible Novels:

• Zoo City by Lauren Beukes*
• Death’s Disciples by J. Robert King
• Point by Thomas Blackthorne (John Meaney)
• Amortals by Matt Forbeck*
• Vegas Knights by Matt Forbeck
• City of Hope and Despair by Ian Whates
• Embedded by Dan Abnett
• Camera Obscura by Lavie Tidhar
• The Damned Busters by Matthew Hughes
• Vampire Warlords by Andy Remic
• Dead Streets by Tim Waggoner*
• Dark War by Tim Waggoner
• Walking the Tree by Kaaron Warren*
• Mistification by Kaaron Warren
• The World House by Guy Adams*
• The World House: Restoration by Guy Adams
• Hard Spell by Justin Gustainis
• Reality 36 by Guy Haley
• The Crown of the Conqueror by Gav Thorpe*
• Pretty Little Dead Things by Gary McMahon*
• Dead Bad Things by Gary McMahon
• Roil by Trent Jamieson
• Debris by Jo Anderton
• Darkness Falling by Peter Crowther
• Harbinger of the Storm by Aliette de Bodard
• Master of the House of Darts by Aliette de Bodard
• King’s Justice by Maurice Broaddus
• King’s War by Maurice Broaddus

The full longlist contains titles nominated by librarians worldwide and includes a wide range of literary styles and genres. SF/F/H is well-represented, not only by Lauren (go, Lauren!) but also by the likes of Paolo Bacigalupi, Guy Gavriel Kay, Ian McDonald, China Miéville and 2011 World Fantasy Award winner Nnedi Okorafor.

The shortlist will be made public on 12th April 2012 and the Lord Mayor of Dublin will announce the winner on 13th June.

Also: Publishers Weekly has announced the Best Books of 2011 and once again Zoo City makes an appearance, in the sf, fantasy and horror category. Genreville blogger Rose Fox said:I have been waiting to list this for something like a year and a half, since it was originally slated to come out in the U.S. in October 2010. It has continued to astonish and delight me since then.”

John Berlyne (second from right) collected Marc's award on his behalf

Congratulations also, to the mighty Lauren Beukes whose Zoo City was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. As you might remember, Zoo City one the Arthur C Clarke Award earlier this year (with the biggest prize in genre awards) and to be shortlisted for the world’s biggest fantasy award in the same year is an amazing achievement! Congratulations, Lauren!

Anyone visiting us at the Angry Robot office tomorrow can grab a glass of something fizzy with us. If you’re early enough it’ll be champagne, otherwise we have some carbonated water in the fridge. (Please come later).

The Angry Robot is appeased somewhat. Normal anger will resume tomorrow.

If you were unable to attend the awards, you can find footage of the entire ceremony, below. Marc’s award is introduced at 32.10 (and it’s worth listening to it for his great acceptance speech).

The convention’s Author Guest of Honour is none other than the inscrutable K W Jeter, making a rare personal appearance. He’ll be speaking on panels and generally available for questions and chat, so do catch up with him about those tasty Infernal Devices and Morlock Night reissues, and his future plans.

Also represented, albeit in spirit rather than physical form, will be the Bookman himself, Lavie Tidhar. His novel Camera Obscura has made it onto the shortlist for best novel in the Steamcon Airship Awards. Three cheers and a rousing huzzah! Attendees and supporting members have until September 30th to vote for their favourite… not that we’d want to sway you, but, you know, we’re always happy to win stuff.

Steamcon runs October 14-16th, at the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue, Washington, USA.

Best novel – Among the strong shortlist, a certain ZOO CITY by the irrepressible Lauren Beukes (coff*Arthur C Clarke Award*coff)

Best artist – Nominations for Robot pals Vincent Chong (Matt Richter series, Darkness Falling cover) and John Picacio (US Zoo City cover)

Special Award, Non-Professional – Our very own Lavie Tidhar, for his acclaimed World SF blog

Special Award, Professional – Modesty almost but not quite prevents me from mentioning that on the shortlist of very esteemed editors and publishers is… Marc Gascoigne “for Angry Robot”.

Thanks to everyone who had a hand in this. Best of luck to all of the above, and congrats to absolutely everyone who made it onto a very strong set of shortlists this year. We are humbled to be counted alongside such great company. And as always, fantasy fiction is the real winner. Pop-fizz-clink-schlurp!

You can read a sample, below, and pick up a copy from all good bookshops.

In other news, Zinzi December, the troubled protagonist in the Arthur C Clarke Award-winning Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, has been named by SFX Magazine as one of The 20 Greatest Heroes of SF Literature. You can also read an extract from Zoo City, below.

Sample chapters (click for full screen):

We are absolutely delighted, nay, thrilled, nay, ecstatic to announce that Zoo City by the incomparable Lauren Beukes, has won the 25th Arthur C Clarke Award.

At a star-studded ceremony at the Apollo in central London, Lauren picked up the award. As this post is being published while Lauren is still on stage, it’s a bit early to get her initial reactions and post photos, but you can hear an interview with her, and hear her read a snippet from the book at EscapePod (if it’s not there yet, check back in half an hour or so). There will also be an interview at io9.com going online, soon, as well as features at My Favourite Books and Floor to Ceiling Books and the World SF Blog.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to be going – that champagne isn’t going to drink itself, you know…

Update with some more groovy links…
• The Guardian have film of Lauren’s big moment.
• And Sam jordison followed up with an enthusiastic paen to Lauren and Zoo City on the Guardian website.
• UK publishing bible The Bookseller did us proud.
• Strange Horizons’ Niall Harrison had some thoughtful comments.
• SFX Magazine coverage.
• SciFi Now coverage.
• Here’s New Scientist‘s take.
• And the British Library are including Zoo City in this summer’s massive exhibition, Out of This World.

Aliette de Bodard (left) is nominated for a Best Novelette Hugo for The Jaguar House, In Shadow (Asimov’s), Lauren Beukes (right) picks up a nomination for Best New Writer in the John W Campbell Award and John Picacio picks up yet another nomination for the Best Professional Artist Hugo (John produced the exceptional cover to the US edition of Zoo City, below).

Congratulations to all the nominees. A full list can be found at the Renovation (WorldCon) website, here. The winners will be announced during a ceremony at Renovation in Reno (August).

And don’t forget, while we’re in Award Mode, Zoo City has also been shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in London this Wednesday.

Congratulations also, to Lauren Beukes. Though Zoo City didn’t win the BSFA Award for Best Novel, it was voted onto the shortlist, making it one of the best 5 SF novels of last year.

And congratulations to our own Aliette de Bodard, who won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Short Story (For The Shipmaker, published by Interzone).