The 2017 Dragon Award Nominations Are Open!

So, remember those Dragon Awards last year?

No? Yes? Maybe?

The Dragon Awards are DragonCon's answer to the glut of award competitions that are facing issues and difficulties, usually because they limit those who would nominate to select groups, thereby causing no end of problems. Which is to be expected when you're restricting in some manner your selection of who is allowed to nominate and vote for the "best" of anything.

The Dragon Award's solution? Anyone can nominate! Drop in your name and e-mail address, and you can nominate whatever you want for the awards! Likewise, that same e-mail will get a notice reminding of when it's time to vote—which again, anyone can participate in.

Some groups, of course, have decried this system as being woefully inaccurate or not representative of what "the people" want or like ... but given that those same cries come from awards who choose to limit their nominations to those who have donated to the cause and are fairly hostile to outsiders (and in some cases, that's putting it lightly), I'm inclined to ignore them.

Anyway, last year, 2016, was the first year for the Dragon Awards, and they were a pretty big splash. Not the biggest of splashes, but a good-sized on nonetheless.

Imagine my surprise when nominations for the 2017 Dragon Awards opened up a week or so ago, only a few months after the conclusion of the 2016 awards.

At first I was surprised. Why so early? 2017 hadn't even reared it's head, but yet nominations were open?

But ... the more I thought and read about it, the more it made sense. Why not let people nominate as they go through the year, build out their list through the year rather than scramble at the end trying to remember if they liked X book better than Y months after having read both of them? Allowing people to make nominations throughout the year could take away the risk that a wonderful title comes out right after awards are announced and is completely forgotten in favor of a more recent, but lessor title?

Or maybe DragonCon just wanted to get started early. I don't know.

What I do know, however, is that you can start building your 2017 Dragon Award Nominations list here. There are fifteen categories, from best Science-Fiction novel to Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy board game. If you're already sure what you want to nominate (daring, that), you could hit submit now ... or you could bookmark this page and keep your list up to date throughout the year, noting what books, games, movies, etc, you think deserve to be nominated.

EDIT ADDENDUM: A helpful commentator pointed out that I was a little unclear about keeping a list. Once you hit submit, that's it. Your submission is locked and nominated, and you cannot go back and change it later. You will not be able to keep your list of nominations on the Dragon Awards site until you "lock in." Rather, go there to get the categories and make a note for yourself somewhere of what they are (document on your desktop, note on your phone, etc) or ones that you want to nominate for, then keep track of your submissions there. It'd be nice if the Dragon Awards site did this in a loose form manner, but hey, improvements for 2018, right?

You've got the link, so the call is now yours. No fees, no cliques. Just nominate what you think is best.