Comments: 1970 was an amazing year for the Nebula Awards. There are very few award cycles in which I find ever winner to be completely deserving of their honors. The 1970 Nebula Awards is one of those cases. Ursula K. Le Guin won the Best Novel Award for her brilliant examination of gender in The Left Hand of Darkness. Harlan Ellison won the Best Novella Award for his brilliant story A Boy and His Dog, which was later made into a movie starring Don Johnson, Samuel R. Delany won for his deconstruction of the economics of crime in Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones, and Robert Silverberg's deeply creepy Passengers won the Best Short Story Award.
My love for the slate of winners of the 1970 Nebula Awards does not mean that I don't think that many of the other nominees were also brilliant stories. Almost all of them clearly were. And the depth of quality that is found in the Nebula Award nominees is, in my opinion, a testament to the high quality that the Nebula Awards achieved.
Best Novel
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Other Nominees:
Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny
The Jagged Orbit by John Brunner
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Up the Line by Robert Silverberg
Best Novella
A Boy and His Dog by Harlan Ellison
Other Nominees:
Dramatic Mission by Anne McCaffrey
Probable Cause by Charles L. Harness
Ship of Shadows by Fritz Leiber (found in The Hugo Winners, Volume 3, Book 1)
To Jorslem by Robert SilverbergBest Novelette
Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones by Samuel R. Delany (reviewed in More Stories from the Hugo Winners, Volume II)
Other Nominees:
The Big Flash by Norman Spinrad
Deeper than the Darkness by Gregory Benford
Nine Lives by Ursula K. Le Guin
Best Short Story
Passengers by Robert Silverberg
Other Nominees:
The Last Flight of Dr. Ain by James Tiptree, Jr.
The Man Who Learned Loving by Theodore Sturgeon
Not Long Before the End by Larry Niven
Shattered Like a Glass Goblin by Harlan Ellison
Go to previous year's nominees: 1969
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1971
Book Award Reviews Home
