Fnord Awards 2011

[Scott Alexander]

Welcome to the FNORDS, the awards ceremony with the silly name that inspires a peculiar mix of pride and embarrassment in the winners. Although we meet in somber mood after the recent devastating news of Marshal Radchenko's death, I hope this joyous occasion will serve to bring some light back to this dark time.

...but seriously, this year was a particularly poor showing, with a few categories limited to one or two nominees and some that we couldn't award at all. On the other hand, there were signs of hope in that for the first time we were able to consider some MicroWiki people for awards, demonstrating that the long hoped partial integration of our two sectors, and the associated potential for growth, is finally a reality.

Without further ado, let's talk winners.

The Liam con Toketi Award for Best New Micronationalist goes to Illuminarch Nicholas, master of many a shiny and exciting project like Caprica, Zephyr, and of course his flagship Illuminarchy (not to mention his contribution to Archipelago). Although it was too late to count in this year's judging and I haven't even gotten a chance to read it fully yet, Nicholas has just started a new micronational organization, Concordia. And if he's been in the hobby a little bit more than a year, well, judging by the award's namesake we can afford to be forgiving.

And speaking of MicroWiki, one of the pioneers of Micras/MicroWiki integration wins our Iain Jacobson Award for Journalism. The A1 News Service has not only kept us updated about events in A1, but been many people's source of up-to-date information on the entire Microwiki sector (not to mention the Australian weather). Well-designed, informative, and regularly-updated, A1NS was a no-brainer for this year's Journalism FNORD.

One of the driving forces of economic development has always been competition between different companies, but this has been conspicuously absent in micronationalism, where we are usually lucky to have any company providing a product at all. That's why it's so exciting that this year's Andreas the Wise Award for Economics goes to two competitors who have spurred each other on to great things: Aster's Port Side Industries, and Ardashir's collection of Babkhan defense contractors centered in the Sinister Military-Industrial Complex. Both have raised the standard for micronational military design, inspired militarization in other countries, and brought the rivalry between Babkha and Ashkenatza to an entirely new level. Congratulations to both.

The other judges have forced me against my will to award the Joshua Coales Award for Best New Idea to myself for Archipelago. I'd like to use this opportunity to thank everyone else without whom Archipelago could not have gotten off the ground, including prolific participants like Aryeztur, Harvey, Nicholas, and Shyriath, and our beloved former Speaker, Alicorn. I would also like to acknowledge runner-up Hesam Jahandar and his big idea of shifting some micronational activities to Minecraft, where he and his team of Mondesian slaves continue to build their 3D navigable version of Kamalshahr. I expect that by next year's FNORDs a whole lot more people will be familiar with what he's doing and he'll be nominated for a whole lot more stuff.

The Bill Dusch Award for Cultural Development goes to Nick Turner for his work in Normark and the Silver Yak Horde. Although the latter has been winding down lately, it was loads of fun while it lasted. And in excellent timing, Nick revived Normark yesterday as a one-man nation dedicated to the sort of cultural development which made it famous - something which fits nicely with my own vision of a future of small, culturally focused micro-states. We look forward to seeing much more out of the Union, and perhaps the Yaks could celebrate Nick's good fortune with a nice traditional assassination.

The Rebecca Panks Award for the Graphic Artz goes to Max, for his maps and other works published during the Bastion Expo '11. Max has spent years and years working on city maps, railroad maps, et cetera, and I guess it wasn't until they were all posted in one place that we all just said "Whooaaaaaaaa." I'm a particular fan of his rail network because of the level of realism and detail - and his MCS-based atlas, but it would be ridiculous not to mention his masterpiece, the map of Kolmenitzkiy. This FNORD is at serious risk of being renamed the Moshe Goltz Award in future ceremonies.

The Alfred Bellamy/Jeremy Dunholm Award for Literature was hotly contested this year, but in the end we rejected a lot of the usual suspects in favor of some literature from an unexpected source: Craitman's marriage to Queen Annika. The story marked the usually straight-laced Craitland/Victoria realistic sector of micronationalism's entry into literature, and did it in style, making us feel like we were really there and providing fodder for micronational tabloids for years to come.

And this year's Odlum Award for Overall Achievement goes to someone who I kind of just figured had won an Odlum Award before and didn't need another. But it turns out that Harvey Steffke's recognition is just long, long overdue. Harvey's career began in 2000, when he founded the massively influential Flying Islands of Jasonia. During the past twelve years, he's been instrumental in happenings from the collapse of Tymaria to the rebellion in Menelmacar to the civil wars in Shireroth to the founding of Nelaga. Last year we honored him for his role in the creation of the Bastion Union, but now that we know the Bastion is more than just an idea that looks good on paper, it seemed fitting to expand that recognition - and combine it with recognition for his many other accomplishments - by granting him micronationalism's most prestigious award. I'd like to add something Andreas said in the Judges Forum:

Harvey Steffke has done some seriously awesome stuff this year. He worked fairly tirelessly for the first couple months to keep the Bastion Union going strong - that it still exists and is without too much tension, despite the variety of nations and micronationalists sharing a forum, is a testament to his important work. Harvey has also worked hard for the rest of the year on The Favoured, easily one of the most active and developed statelets within Archipelago. That forum shows you some of his work (you will have already started reading The Diary of Preturnatural for the Literature nomination), but he's also been active in most of the contests and there's some significant statelet development there. He also put a lot of work into making the Control of Destiny minigames a stand alone thing - unfortunately various computer errors prevented this project from coming to full fruition.

Congratulations also to all the other nominees for this award, including Ari, myself, Edgard, and Nick. We'll duke it out next year

I regret that there were a number of awards we couldn't give out this year, either because we weren't able to come to a consensus, because no one met the requirements, or because we didn't think anyone really embodied the spirit of the award. This isn't to insult any of the nominees, just to say that their impact was more limited, or not very well captured by an awards category. These included the Charles Beard Award for Conflict Resolution, the Liam Sinclair Award for History, and the Best New Micronation award. We look forward to finding worthy candidates for those prizes in 2012.

Congratulations to all nominees and winners, thanks to all the judges, and a happy Emperor Norton Day!

[Brian Barry]

Congratulations to all! And on behalf of the A1NS Staff, thank you very much for the award bestowed on the A1 News Service We will display it with pride!

EDIT: Oh, and as a self-referential link: http://www.fra1.net/news/2012/01/09/201 ... announced/

[Craitman]

Congratulations to all winners! Thank you to my fellow judges for my votes for the Literature award; I didn't expect to get that much support considering who I was up against! Commiserations to all of you nominated who didn't win your respective awards, but given the quality of all the nominations, I can assure you that deciding the winners of the majority of these was a very difficult task!

Once again, thank you so much for my award!

[Aster]

Congrats to all! Especially to you Nick - you more than deserve it and I hope we will see the Silver Yak horde pick up again!

[Gerk ronAnaglea]

Rats, foiled again.
I'll win that literature award yet!

Too bad I'm running out of ideas for stories...

Congratulations to all the winners, though, they were indeed well deserved.

[SaiKar]

And it's at roughly this point that, finally done-ish with my relocation for a new job and feeling vaguely settled in, that I check up on some of my things that I've sadly had to put on hold and find that I've been granted our little section of the hobby's most prestigious award. And none of you could track me down and tell me, even!

I'm honored. Thank you all, and congratulations to the other winners, as well as the saps they beat out, for another fun year of micronational niftiness. May there be many more.

[Parker I]

You don't think me worthy of most promising new micronation? No just kidding, I knew I probably didn't meet the requirements. Congratulations to all those awarded!

[Craitman]

Well, you could have always nominated yourself. Saying that, you definitely meet the requirements more than the only nominee due to the fact you're actually new

[Nick]

Ja, I'm a bit old. And despite the sentiments of our more chivalric council comrade, self-nominations are as valid as any.

[Craitman]

Ja, I'm a bit old.

The only nomination for New Micronation was the closer-to-two-years-old-than-one Safiria actually

[Nick]

I seem to recall the Silver Yak-Horde winning the best new micronation thing or whatever. Though in all honesty this is the first time I've actually paid close attention to any of the FNORD business this year. Actually the truth is I'm quite lost and inebriated, I'll be on my way now!

[Craitman]

You got Cultural Development for your joint-efforts over Normark and the Horde. I'm not as inebriated as usual, so I can tell you that