Voting for the 2009 Ursa Major Awards starts today, and the nominee list has been officially released (though many of you already saw the leaked list yesterday). The entire nomination list can be seen on the Ursa Major website. I’m not going over everything, just being snarky about a few of them.

This is actually a pretty big year for the awards, in the sense that someone as important as me is actually familiar with most of the nominees.

In the Best Motion Picture category I’m really curious to see if people will pick the best film on the list (which is Up by the way, don’t fucking kid yourself), or if Avatar or even The Fantastic Mr Fox takes it.

I’m pleased to see that two of the novels I listed in my Year in Review feature are nominated for Best Novel. Out of Position is a definite front runner, but David Benedictus’ revival of Winnie the Pooh in Return to the Hundred Acre Woods is a great story (though I’m not sure it’s even near 40,000 words). Also of note is Cheetah’s Win by Phil Geusz, which I read as part of Roar Volume 2 a little while back. Oh and who stuck a Patricia Briggs novel in there? I know that a hot were-coyote mechanic chick marrying the alpha werewolf and fighting a vampire queen sounds awesome– wait, no it doesn’t!

The Short Fiction category is stuffed full of great entries, all of which deserve the award. I really enjoyed “Moonthief” by Not Tube, it was one of my favorite entries in X.

I’m going to glaze over these next few categories (Housepets! is cute though).

Best Magazine is another category full of great entries. I wish I had read all five, but Anthro, Heat, and New Fables are all great magazines.

Best Published Illustration really needs to have the damn illustrations on display. Here, let me fix that for you:
“Gaia’s Strange Seedlike Brood (Homage to Lynn Margulis)” by Patrick Farley
”It’s Beautiful” by Jailbird
”Jazmyn” by Sara Palmer
”New Coyote” by Kenket
”Out of Position” by Blotch

I think the winner is pretty obvious.

How is it that only one of the video games on my Year in Review feature got nominated for Best Game? And why the fuck is G-Force on there? I swear to god, furries, you would probably vote Settlers of Catan as best game every damn year if they let you.

Now remember kids. Nobody wins unless you get out there and vote. And for those of you that think your vote won’t count, remember that the Ursa Majors have an abysmally low amount of participation, so just a few Livejournal entries and you too might one day tie Stan Sakai’s record for most awards.