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Rail Wars!, Irregular at magic high school Novels; Gundam Factory Yokohama Nominated for Seiun Sci-Fi Awards

The 60th Japan Science Fiction Convention (Nihon SF Taikai) revealed the list of nominees for the 52nd Seiun Awards on April 24.

The nominees of the Japanese novel category include:

• Seikai Izumo no Heitan (The Logistics of Star System Izumo) by Jyouji Hayashi
• One More Nuke by Taiyō Fujii
• Rail Wars! by Takumi Toyoda
• Kanki no Uta: Hakubutsukan Wakusei III (Ode to Joy: Museum Planet III) by Hiroe Suga
• Titan by Mado Nozaki (Babylon)
• Sono Hate wo Shirazu (Without Knowing That End) by Taku Mayumura (Psychic School Wars)
• Shuri no Uma (A Horse from Shuri) by Haneko Takayama
• Jinkōchinō de 10-oku Get-suru Kanzen Hanzai Manual (The Perfect Crime Manual to Getting 1 Billion Yen via AI) by Jinzō Takeda
• The Irregular at Magic High School by Tsutomu Satou

Additionally, Aritsune Toyota's Nihon Anime Tanjõ (The Birth of Japanese Anime) book and Yukiko Tomiyama's Shōjo Manga no Busaiku Joshikō (The Reports of a Plain Woman on Shōjo Manga) book were both nominated for the Nonfiction category.

The "Free" category also nominated the Gundam Factory Yokohama complex with the moving Gundam statue, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. Other entries in the Free category include the SpaceX Crew Dragon launch, the return of the Hayabusa 2 asteroid probe sample capsule, and the mythical Amabie creature whose image wards off illness, which went viral in 2020 due to the pandemic.

The awards this year are again separated into nine categories: Japanese Novel, Japanese Short Story, Translated Novel, Translated Short Story, Media, Comic, Art, Nonfiction, and a "Free" category. Each category has between 6-10 nominees. The nominees were chosen among works that were released between January 1 and December 31, 2020.

Those who registered for the 60th Japan Science Fiction Convention can vote online for the winners between April 24 and June 15. The winners will be announced at the event in Takamatsu on August 21-22.

"Seiun Shō" literally translates to "nebula awards," but the Japan SF Con's Seiun Awards are more akin to the Hugo Awards, in that the attendees of each respective convention vote on the winners. There is another set of awards, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan's Nihon SF Taishō honors, that are the rough Japanese equivalent of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Nebula Awards. Like the Hugo Awards, the Seiun Awards honor all forms of speculative fiction — including but not limited to science fiction — and related materials.

Previous winners of the Seiun Awards include Kemono Friends, And Yet the Town Moves, Shin Godzilla, Kochikame, Girls und Panzer, Knights of Sidonia, The World of Narue, Bodacious Space Pirates, Range Murata, Masamune Shirow, Makoto Shinkai, Fullmetal Alchemist, Gundam: The Origin, 20th Century Boys, Summer Wars, Card Captor Sakura, Madoka Magica, Pacific Rim, Space Battleship Yamato 2199, Moyashimon, and more.

Last year, the Astra Lost in Space anime won the Media category, and Dowman Sayman's How Many Light-Years to Babylon? manga and Masato Hisa's Batman Ninja manga both won the "Best Comic" award.

Source: Japan Science Fiction Convention via Locus