Online Science Fiction gets its own 'Oscars' … but they're made of wood!

Do you run a science fiction or fantasy web site? Then you could be a winner in the first Wooden Rocket awards. At long last it's an award like the Oscars, but only for online SFF!

For a long time, the last nine years in fact, online science fiction and fantasy has existed in a strange limbo that can only be described as poorly valued ... shortchanged by almost every metric you'd care to bring to bear on the genre.

Take advertising for instance. Advertisers will happily pay many thousands of dollars for a glossy advert in a science fiction magazine printed on dead tree - yet offer them the opportunity to reach an audience base many times larger on the web, and their eyes glaze over.

The rule seems to be unless you can touch it, roll it about your fingers, then it doesn't exist ... or at least its existence is condemned to some poorly understood ghostly cyberspace half-life, the internet equivalent of the Phantom Zone where criminals from Krypton were exiled in the Superman comics.

If science fiction is published on dead tree, its purity is assured. Put it online, and the very same material is transmuted into eye-candy trash ... from advertising to fiction to film reviews, online SFF just don't get no respect.

Crikes alive, the World SF Convention only gave web sites their own voting category in 2002 - and then, grudgingly, as a disposable one-off under the ruling con's constitution for 2002, with no guarantee of a repeat showing in 2003.

Well, that's all about to change, as a new annual award was announced this week, the Wooden Rocket 2003. It's intention is to reward excellence solely in the universe of online science fiction and fantasy, with multiple categories for sites to enter, such as best movie trailer site, best e-book, best publisher site, best author site, best online magazine and the like.

Wooden Rocket Awards Director Mark Lewis had this to say about the awards:

"Given that nearly 9% of Google's searches in 2002 were related to science fiction and fantasy films, books, art, comics, merchandise, authors and movie stars, it seems an opportune time to launch an award whose sole aim is to recognize the immense amount of hard work that goes into supporting and maintaining a SFF web site."

He went on to say: "In the spirit of the internet, the awards will be voted for by the Internet's science fiction & fantasy fans themselves."

The winners of the awards will be announced in June 2003 on a date yet to be set, and the Wooden Rocket Awards has now opened for nominations.

For full details of the new award and the categories of entry for 2003, surf on over to their web site at www.WoodenRocket.com

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