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The preliminary Nebula ballot has been announced. Nothing from SH on it (though we've got a few stories that are getting a fair number of recommendations; a couple of them might yet make next year's ballot), but a bunch of cool stuff.

Novels: I'm sure nobody's surprised to see Le Guin and Swanwick there, and it's similarly unsurprising to see American Gods and Perdido Street Station there. Glad to see Lion's Blood made it; don't know much about the Brin, the Bujold, the McHugh, the McKillip, or the Murphy, but I imagine plenty of people are pleased about those. But what pleases me most is two up-and-coming authors' books: Ken Wharton's Divine Intervention and Vera Nazarian's Dreams of the Compass Rose. Very cool.

And speaking of up-and-coming authors, Charlie Finlay's "The Political Officer" made the novella ballot. "Hell Is the Absence of God" is of course on the novelette ballot, along with three other 2002-Hugo contenders and the widely-praised "Madonna of the Maquiladora." In short stories, we have M. Shayne Bell (with a story from Sci Fiction, which sadly was the only story on the ballot that was published online), Carol Emshwiller, William Shunn, Michael Swanwick, and assorted others—and (the only author on the list who we've published an original story by) Bruce Holland Rogers.

Eighty percent of the short fiction on the ballot appeared in the Big Four print magazines, but that's no surprise.

The scripts on the ballot are Shrek, Fellowship, and Once More with Feeling.

The next step is for all Active members of SFWA to vote; the top five vote-getters in each category go on the final ballot. (Along with up to one additional work in each category added by assorted juries.) Then the members vote on the final ballot to determine which item in each category gets the award.

Various people say that the Nebula is an award recognizing Quality, while the Hugo merely recognizes popularity. Pshaw, I say: the Nebula recognizes popularity among writers, the Hugo among fans, and I don't see any reason to think that authors are better judges of Quality than fans. But then, I don't really believe in objective Quality per se anyway (I didn't get along so well with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), so I suppose that's unsurprising.

I was going to post other news in this entry, but it's gotten long so I'll move on to another one.