The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Nothing to do with comics or SF&F but the Diagram Prize is one of the literary awards in the UK I most look forward to for the simple reason its delightfully daft. Each year the Bookseller’s Horace Bent asks readers and fellow booksellers to send in some of the silliest titles for books published in the last year. These are actual books which made it to print and went on sale (although didn’t necessarily sell!), with previous winners including Living with Crazy Buttocks; last year’s winner was Professor Philip M Parker with The 2009–2014 World Outlook for 60mg Containers of Fromage Frais. No, I’m not making it up. Bent said that this year he was sent in a record number of potential entries, although some proved to be ineligible as they were published before 2009. The stringent eye of Bent has been vigorously applied to the remainder, however, giving us this year’s six shortlist nominees:

* Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter by David Crompton

* The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by Ellen Scherl and Marla Dubinsky

* Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich by James A Yannes

* Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Daina Taimina

* Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots by Ronald C Arkin

* What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua? by Tara Jansen-Meyer

“Selecting a shortlist proved a Herculean task, as many books carried titles that furrowed the brow—not least How YOU™ Are Like Shampoo, and Map-based Comparative Genomics in Legumes. However, the vast sum of submissions has, in my humble opinion, created one of the most competitive shortlists in the 32 years of the prize. And I look forward with incalculable anticipation to the result of the public vote,” organiser Horace Bent.

Forget the Hugos, the Eisners, heck forget the Oscars, this is the important award of the season, folks! The winner will be announced on March 26th. (via the BBC)