Comments: After the nomination screw up in 1996 regarding Robert Charles Wilson's novelette The Perseids, the SFWA decided to try to make up for their counting error by renominating the story in the Best Novelette category in 1997. The story wasn't eliminated from the ballot this year, but it didn't win either, which made the renomination somewhat anticlimactic. One has to wonder whether the story would have fared better if it had been voted upon in the proper category in the proper year.
In happier news, Esther M. Friesner won the Nebula for Best Short Story for the second year in a row winning this year with her story A Birthday, and Nicola Griffith won the Nebula for Best Novel for the brilliant Slow River.
Best Novel
Slow River by Nicola Griffith
Other Nominees:
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Expiration Date by Tim Powers
The Silent Strength of Stones by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer
Winter Rose by Patricia A. McKillip
Best Novella
Da Vinci Rising by Jack Dann
Other Nominees:
Blood of the Dragon by George R.R. Martin
The Cost to Be Wise by Maureen F. McHugh
The Death of Captain Future by Allen M. Steele
Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt
A Woman's Liberation by Ursula K. Le Guin
Best Novelette
Lifeboat on a Burning Sea by Bruce Holland Rogers
Other Nominees:
After a Lean Winter by Dave Wolverton
The Chronology Protection Case by Paul Levinson
Erase/Record/Play by John M. Ford
Mirror of Lop Nor by George Guthridge
Must and Shall by Harry Turtledove
The Perseids by Robert Charles Wilson
Best Short Story
A Birthday by Esther M. Friesner
Other Nominees:
Five Fucks by Jonathan Lethem
In the Pound, Near Breaktime by Kent Brewster
In the Shade of the Slowboat Man by Dean Wesley Smith
The String by Kathleen Ann Goonan
These Shoes Strangers Have Died Of by Bruce Holland Rogers
Go to previous year's nominees: 1996
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1998
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