Nebula nominees!

Filed under: Awards, Books, Short Stories, Strange Horizons, Writers
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SFWA has announced this year's Nebula nominees, and I'm very pleased with them. Congratulations to all the nominees! (And double congratulations to Sofia and Alaya for each having two pieces on the ballot!)

I think about half of the works that I nominated are on the ballot, though I seem to have failed to keep records of what I nominated. (In the new system, Associate members like me can nominate, but can't vote on the final ballot.) I'm especially pleased to see Ancillary Justice (the only one of the nominated novels that I've read so far) and When We Wake (on the Norton ballot); I still hope to blog about both of those sometime soon, and I'll be nominating both for the Hugo. Sadly, Mary Anne's The Stars Change and Carmen Maria Machado's story “Inventory” (my favorite of the 2013 SH stories I've read so far, though I've only read about half of them) didn't make the ballot.

Speaking of Strange Horizons, I'm delighted to see two SH stories nominated in the same year. This is the first time that's ever happened. The last time there was even one SH story on the Nebula ballot was in 2007, and that was for a story published in 2005. In fact, there have only been a total of three previous SH stories ever nominated: Tim's “Little Gods,” Greg's “In the Late December,” and Dora's “Pip and the Fairies.” So having two stories on the ballot this year is awesome—nice work, editors and authors! (And Sofia's “Selkie Stories Are for Losers” was another of my favorite SH stories from last year. I haven't yet read the other nominated SH story, Sarah Pinsker's ”In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind,” but am looking forward to doing so.)

A few other assorted thoughts:

  • Very surprised that Frozen didn't make the Bradbury ballot.
  • Author gender:
    • Novel: 6/8, 75% women
    • Novella: 4.5/6, 75% women
    • Novelette: 3/6, 50% women
    • Short Story: 3/5, 60% women
    • All Nebula-per-se categories combined: 16.5/25, 66% women
    • Norton: 6/7, 86% women
  • The fact that Chip Delany is getting the Grand Master Award isn't news, but I'm still very happy about it.
  • On a personal note, I know (to varying degrees) something like 15 of the authors on the ballot; my inner teen fanboy still gets all excited about that. People I know! On the Nebula ballot!

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