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The winners of the 2009 Parsec Awards, given out yearly at Dragon*Con

This past Labor Day, the Third annual Parsec Awards were given out at Dragon*Con, which is the largest multi-media pop culture convention in the US. Dragon*Con, like many pop culture conventions, focuses on the worlds of science fiction, fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film. It has always had a large interest in new media and multi-media, and thus became the perfect home for That Parsec Awards. These awards are “dedicated to rewarding excellence in various aspects of Speculative Fiction Podcasting, Sci-fi & Fantasy Original Content, Podiobooks and a variety of other categories dealing with the new frontiers of Portable Media.”

In 2006 Mur Lafferty, Tracy Hickman and Michael R. Mennenga created the Parsecs after noticing that most other podcast awards underrepresented fiction podcasts.

“Basically I started the Parsecs because other podcast awards had started to emerge, but none of them seemed to consider any fiction or any nods to SF,” said Mur.  “So since there wasn’t one, I started talking to Mike Mennenga and Tracy Hickman and we came up with one. We didn’t want it to simply be a popularity contest, we wanted the awards to also be a way people could discover quality scifi programming that they perhaps hadn’t heard of.”

Over the past few years the Parsecs have given awards to writers who would go on to become New York Times bestsellers. This year the awards were given out to an eclectic and well deserving group of podcasters.

Best Speculative Fiction Story (Short Form)
• Under The Bed by Michael Natale, Variant Frequencies

Best Speculative Fiction Story (Novella Form)
• Eusocial Networking by Scott Sigler

Best Speculative Fiction Story (Novel)
• FETIDUS – The Foundation for the Ethical Treatment of the Innocently Damned, Undead and Supernatural by James Durham

Best Speculative Fiction Audio Drama (Short Form including Independents)
• The Radio Adventures Of Dr. Floyd

Best Speculative Fiction Audio Drama (Long Form including Independents)
• Metamor City: Making the Cut

Best Speculative Fiction Video Podcast
• Stranger Things

Best Speculative Fiction Magazine or Anthology Podcast
• Pseudopod

Best Speculative Fiction Comedy/Parody Podcast
• Bell’s in the Batfry

Best Speculative Fiction Fan Podcast
• The ScapeCast

Best Speculative Fiction News Podcast
• (Cool) Shite on the Tube

Best Writing-related Podcast
• Writing Excuses

Best “Infotainment” Cast
• The 365 Days of Astronomy, the daily podcast of the International Year of Astronomy 2009

Best Gaming Podcast
• Brilliant Gameologists

Best Anime Podcast
• Anime World Order

Best New Speculative Fiction Podcaster/Team
• FETIDUS – The Foundation for the Ethical Treatment of the Innocently Damned, Undead and Supernatural

Best Speculative Fiction Music Podcast
• The FuMP

So, if you were wondering what podcast to check out, here are some award winners! Dragon*Con will take place September 3 - September 6, 2010 in Atlanta, GA, so make sure you nominate your favorite podcast before then!