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British Fantasy Awards
British Fantasy Award The British Weird Fantasy Society began in 1971 as an off-shoot of the British Science Fiction Association. The "Weird" was soon dropped and the BFS was born. Dedicated to the promotion of all that is best in the Fantasy and Horror genres, the BFS won the Special Award: Non-Professional at the World Fantasy Awards in 2000. The membership of the BFS votes for the annual British Fantasy Awards.

Below you'll find an overview of the winners, with cover/title links to the SF Site reviews (where applicable) along with synopses of those titles yet to be reviewed (cover images are linked to larger images, when available).

British Fantasy Award for Best Novel (August Derleth Award)

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   1990
Carrion Comfort Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
Stoker Award-winning epic vampire horror novel about two warring groups who roam around taking control of other's minds. Following a group of four feuding vampires, one man tries to bring an end to their reign of terror.

   1989
The Influence The Influence by Ramsey Campbell
"With the death of an unpleasant old woman named Queenie, her niece Alison inherits the house. But it is Rowan, Alison's daughter -- and Queenie's "favorite" -- who is the most affected by her death. Alison's sister, Hermione dies at Queenie's grave, believing that Queenie isn't all the way dead."

   1988
The Hungry Moon The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell
"Moonwell is a small bleak town in Northern England. It is edged by moors pitted with treacherous mineshafts. To the town comes the preacher Godwin Mann, whose particularly intolerant brand of fundamentalism appeals to the inhabitants. They rally almost as one behind him and ostracize and persecute the few independent souls who do not. Mann descends into the pit in which the ancient malignant being worshipped by the Druids millenia past is said to dwell. Intending to exorcise the demon and claim the land for God, he is instead overwhelmed. What emerges from the pit is the monstrous creature, clothed now in the flesh of Mann, and it is only the town's pariahs who can see that something is radically wrong."

   1987
It It by Stephen King
"It was the children who saw -- and felt -- what made the town so horribly different. In the storm drains and sewers It lurked, taking the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. As the children grow up and move away, the horror of It is buried deep -- until they are called home."

   1986
The Ceremonies The Ceremonies by T.E.D. Klein
"Jeremy Freirs is a graduate student and teacher who decides to spend his summer preparing for the class he will be teaching in the fall on Gothic Literature. He thinks he has found the perfect place in Gilead, New Jersey, the home of a strict religious sect with extremely puritan ideas. Meanwhile, in New York, Carol Conklin goes about trying to survive in the big city on a small income from her job at a library. She meets Jeremy in New York just before he leaves for the summer, and a connection is made which will find the couple developing a romantic relationship on somewhat strange terms. What Jeremy and Carol do not know is that this relationship is the work of a strange, little old man known as Mr. Rosebottom. Rosie is actually the Old One working to bring his master back after a very long absence."

   1985
Incarnate Incarnate by Ramsey Campbell
"The story centers on five people brought together for an experiment in precognative dreaming. During the course of the experiment, they share a common, horrifying vision. The story then skips ahead eleven years to find all five of the subjects are beginning to dream the future again after years of suppressing their visions."

   1984
Floating Dragon Floating Dragon by Peter Straub
"Dead birds, murders, fires, hallucinations, and other horrors befell the little town of Hampstead, Connecticut, in 1980. Some of this disaster may be explained as the result of an accident at the nearby Telpro chemical plant, where a deadly cloud of poisonous gas was released into the atmosphere over the town and the surrounding area. But another force, potentially even more deadly, was at work in the community: a dragon of evil that had reared its ugly head at various times in Hampstead's past, each time manifesting itself in bizarre and hideous ways."

   1983
The Sword of the Lictor The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe
reviewed by A.L. Sirois
Severian and his beloved companion, Dorcas, whom he has unwittingly brought back to life in the first book of The Book of the New Sun, are temporarily established in the northern city of Thrax. He is still seeking the Pelerines, the religious order to whom he must return the Claw of the Conciliator, the mysterious gem with which he has restored Dorcas's life. Once again, however, Severian's nature gets the better of him and he lets a client escape her fate. For this, he knows he will be killed because the ruler of Thrax himself had been the one to order the woman's death.

   1982
Cujo Cujo by Stephen King
"Cujo, a huge St Bernard, is bitten by a rabid bat and changes from a lovable pet into a ferocious man-eating monster. He slaughters his garage-owning master and, as madness eats at his brain, focuses his deranged attention on Donna Trenton and her five-year-old son, who are trapped in their car."

   1981
To Wake the Dead To Wake the Dead by Ramsey Campbell
"Rose Tierney thought she had no contact with the occult. Until she begins to have weird out of body experiences years after using a oujiboard. " The novel, renamed The Parasite, was published a month later in the USA with a somewhat different ending.

   1980
Death's Master Death's Master by Tanith Lee
"In those days the world was flat and demons dwelled beneath the cities and kingdoms of the surface with powers and mischiefs to please themselves. Among those demons there were two who were mighty above all others. One was Azhrarn, Night's Master, and the other was the lord of darkness whose name was Uhlume, Death's Master. It is the story of two boys who became men under the stresses of witcheries and wonders that surpass even that of the fables It, too, is the story of queens and witches, of kings and commoners."

   1979
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever is composed of Lord Foul's Bane, The Illearth War and The Power that Preserves. "Thomas Covenant is a man burdened with a terrible stigma that has deprived him of his wife, friends, almost all human contact, perhaps even his sanity. In this state of moral isolation, he is suddenly shunted to a mysterious world known simply as 'the Land' -- a place of magical potency, acutely beautiful wherever it has recovered from the ravages of age-old, recurring wars. For the Land has an immortal enemy -- Lord Foul the Despiser -- whose unceasing intent is to lay it waste. He has been defeated in the past by the Council of Lords, servants of the Land and protectors of its arcane lore; but now the power of the Council has been reduced, and Lord Foul has found his perfect, unwitting tool -- Thomas Covenant, the man who thinks the Land is a dream; who cannot accept its life-restoring powers for fear of confronting the terrible dilemma of his own existence; Covenant, the Unbeliever."

   1978
A Spell for Chameleon A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony
"This is the first novel in the Xanth series. The book's young hero, Bink is without magical powers in a world ruled entirely by magic. Worse still, if he doesn't discover his own magical talent soon, he will be forever banished from his homeland. It takes an epic quest for Bink to learn what his unique talent truly is and perhaps to win the girl of his dreams."

   1977
The Dragon and the George The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson
"Through no fault of his own, the once-human Jim Eckert had become a dragon. Unfortunately, his beloved Angie had remained human. To make matter worse, Angie had been taken prisoner by an evil dragon and was held captive in the impenetrable Loathly Tower. So in this land where humans were edible and beasts were magical -- where spells worked and logic didn't -- Jim Eckert had a big, strange problem."

   1976
The Hollow Lands (Dancers at the End of Time #2) The Hollow Lands (Dancers at the End of Time #2) by Michael Moorcock
reviewed by Robert Francis
Jherek Carnelian is one of the last humans alive on Earth. He lives at the End of Time, and the people of his world have the power to instantly fulfill their every whim, thanks to millennia-old technologies. So why does Mrs. Amelia Underwood, reluctant time traveler and model citizen of Victorian England, stubbornly refuse to fall in love with him?

   1975
The Sword and the Stallion The Sword and the Stallion (The Books of Corum #6) by Michael Moorcock
"Continuing his apparently hopeless struggle against the Fhoi Mhore, Corum needs new supernatural allies before the humans he is helping are destroyed. Captured in an illusion by betrayal, he is rescued by the arrival of an enemy, the evil wizard Calatin. Then he discovers that in the months that have passed in the outside world, Calatin has created a double of Corum, who has fought against his friends, convincing them that he has become a traitor."

   1974
Hrolf Kraki's Saga Hrolf Kraki's Saga by Poul Anderson
"His father had been slain in a ambush; his grandfather, in an act of brotherly murder. His blood was of the Skjoldungs and even the most unremarkable of seers knew his life would be as sweeping as it was savage. rolf Kraki's magnificent saga is the story of an age of runes and ravishments, of blades and omens and of a man who ruled and was ruled by an inescapable destiny."

   1973
The King of the Swords The King of the Swords (The Books of Corum #3) by Michael Moorcock
"The old races, the Vadhagh and the Nadhagh, had decayed. Only the Vadhagh Prince Corum had been able to strike a blow for the forces of Light. And he, only because of his fateful legacies, the Hand of Kwll and the Eye of Rhynn. But constraint had been placed upon the Hero. To him, and to his companions, the Margravine Rhalina and enigmatic companion-to-heroes Jhary, had fallen the almost impossible task of entering the legendary city to Tamelorn. There they would confront their fates, and there the age-old struggle would be resolved. But in Tamelorn was the Lost God Kwll Himself."

   1972
The Knight of the Swords The Knight of the Swords (The Books of Corum #1) by Michael Moorcock
"Vadhagh Prince Corum, driven mad for revenge by the callous slaughter of his family and race, and by his own grotesque mutilation at the hands of the Mabden, agreed to accept, from the treacherous sorcerer Shool, the Eye of Rhynn and the Hand of Kwll in exchange for a lien on his soul. Thus armed he set out upon a person crusade against the Sword Rulers, Lords of Chaos. And first of these was the loathsome Arioch, Knight of the Swords, master of five of the fifteen planes of reality. From Arioch, Price Corum required his heart."

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