Stan, I will post this to the forum, as soon as my registration comes through (NB, it's not automatic, I guess a living person has to approve it, so there is a delay built in), but I thought I'd drop it here too, first to get it said while it's in my head and fingers, and second because there will certainly be some people who will read this post but not go over to the forum, who might be induced to comment while they're here...

So: in principle, I think it's a fine idea and the right thing to do. Here in Newcastle we've had a couple of fine and beloved writers die in the last couple of years, and established awards in their memory for upcoming writers; it keeps their names & memories fresh, and helps others, and is a good thing all round.

On the other hand(s), two caveats:

1) I won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, back in the late '90s, when it was known as the August Derleth Award. It might still be so, I don't know - and that's my point. Frankly, the name is redundant, because nobody knows what it means. I very soon reverted to saying 'the British Fantasy Award', which everyone can understand. Granted that few people read Derleth any more, while Gemmell is (for the moment) a bestseller; it's still the case that people outside the core society won't understand 'the David Gemmell award' unless it's 'the David Gemmell award for Best Newcomer' or whatever, and shorthand dictates that soon that'll be 'the Best Newcomer award'. We tackled this up here by separating our award for an upcoming novelist from all the other regional awards, so that people talk about the Andrea Badenoch in the same way that established novelists talk about the Booker, they know what it means and what it's for; the award for a poet didn't get that same distinctive treatment, it's presented as one in a raft of annual awards, and very few people would understand what was meant by the Andrew Waterhouse award. Just sayin'.

2) Your suggestion in this post is for 'Best Newcomer in the fantasy fiction field', but this way madness lies. Already the original suggestion on the forum has led to a frankly hysterical debate that goes as far as proposing splitting the BFS, because of some observed dichotomy between fantasy and horror. We can't possibly administrate an award that singles out one aspect of a broad field: first because it's inherently divisive, and second because definitions are impossible to agree and impossible to enforce. Who's qualified to judge what is fantasy, what horror, what slipstream, what mainstream, what magic realism? My own award-winning novel was published as horror in 1998, but would now certainly be called urban fantasy. Would it qualify? Boundaries are fluid, words shift their meanings. People would have to put their preferences and prejudices aside, and be prepared to see the award go to an out-and-out horror novel if that's what the membership voted for. And the committee would have to be prepared to field the inevitable complaints...

The David Gemmell Award.....certainly sounds good, but would he have liked that himself?

I'm no fan of best-fantasy-newcomer-awards, maybe a award for best fantasy story told in one book would be better. David was a real master in that (no I don't like Robert Jordan like series of 10+ books for one story...;-) ).