Comments: The 1977 Nebula Awards turned out to be a mostly negative affair. The most obvious negative took place in the Dramatic Presentation category, where "No Award" won out over Logan's Run, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Harlan Ellison's recording of himself reading some of his works. For "No Award" to win out even over Harlan Ellison is a major upset, and an indication that something was definitely awry in the voting this year.
The second negative event associated with this year's Nebula Awards took place in the Best Novelette category when Ursula K. Le Guin withdrew The Diary of the Rose from consideration to protest the withdrawal of an offer of membership that the SFWA had made to Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem. Apparently some SFWA members had earlier protested the offer, on the grounds that Lem had been highly critical of American science fiction authors, and Le Guin was dismayed that mere personal animosity would be given that sort of power. I tend to agree with Le Guin. Lem may have been a curmudgeon who thought that American science fiction was juvenile and jingoistic, but that's no reason not to offer a science fiction writer with his clearly undeniable talent membership in your science fiction writers' organization.
Best Novel
Man Plus by Frederik Pohl
Other Nominees:
Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Islands by Marta Randall
Shadrach in the Furnace by Robert Silverberg
Triton by Samuel R. Delany
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
Best Novella
Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr.
Other Nominees:
The Eyeflash Miracles by Gene Wolfe
Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Richard Cowper
The Samurai and the Willows by Michael Bishop
Best Novelette
The Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov
Other Nominees:
Custer's Last Jump by Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop
His Hour Upon the Stage by Grant Carrington
In the Bowl by John Varley
Best Short Story
A Crowd of Shadows by Charles L. Grant
Other Nominees:
Back to the Stone Age by Jake Saunders
Breath's a Ware That Will Not Keep by Thomas F. Monteleone
Mary Margaret Road-Grader by Howard Waldrop
Stone Circle by Lisa Tuttle
Tricentennial by Joe Haldeman
Best Dramatic Presentation
No Award
Other Nominees:
Harlan! Harlan Ellison Reads Harlan Ellison (recording) by Harlan Ellison
Logan's Run screenplay by David Zelag Goodman; based on the novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson
The Man Who Fell to Earth screenplay by Paul Mayersberg; based on the novel by Walter Tevis
Go to previous year's nominees: 1976
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1978
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