Tuesday, February 20, 2018

2018 Nebula Award Nominees

Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Comments: The Nebula Awards are once again upon us, and once again, the members of SFWA have selected an array of novels, stories and dramatic presentations that runs the gamut of speculative fiction works. Granted, the list is a bit heavy on stories set during fictionalized history, and the short fiction list includes a lot of stories from Uncanny, Clarkesworld, and Tor.com, but that's the topics that have engendered the best writing and where a lot of the good short fiction is getting published these days.

One thing that is interesting is that nominees for the Ray Bradbury Award don't include any of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that were released last year, and all three of those movies - Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Thor: Ragnarok - were all among the better Marvel movies that have come out in the series. It is also interesting that The Expanse, The Handmaid's Tale, The Defenders, The Punisher, Stranger Things, American Gods, and several other quite excellent episodic series were completely overlooked as well. On the one hand, this is a good problem as there is no way that all of these excellent speculative fiction shows could have been nominated. On the other hand, it is kind of puzzling that all of these other potential nominees were passed over in favor of some of the actual nominees in the category that were not really as good. Oh well, no award is perfect. This one did pretty well this year even so.

Best Novel

Winner:
The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin

Other Nominees:
Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly
Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
Jade City by Fonda Lee
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss

Best Novella

Winner:
All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Other Nominees:
And Then There Were (N-One) by Sarah Pinsker
Barry’s Deal by Lawrence M. Schoen
The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang
Passing Strange by Ellen Klages
River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

Best Novelette

Winner:
A Human Stain by Kelly Robson

Other Nominees:
Dirty Old Town by Richard Bowes
A Series of Steaks by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time by K.M. Szpara
Weaponized Math by Jonathan P. Brazee
Wind Will Rove by Sarah Pinsker

Best Short Story

Winner:
Welcome to Your Authentic Indian ExperienceTM by Rebecca Roanhorse

Other Nominees:
Carnival Nine by Caroline M. Yoachim
Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand by Fran Wilde
Fandom for Robots by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
The Last Novelist (or A Dead Lizard in the Yard) by Matthew Kressel
Utopia, LOL? by Jamie Wahls

Ray Bradbury Award

Winner:
Get Out

Other Nominees:
The Good Place: Michael’s Gambit
Logan
The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Wonder Woman

Andre Norton Award

Winner:
The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller

Other Nominees:
Exo by Fonda Lee
Weave a Circle Round by Kari Maaren
Want by Cindy Pon

Go to previous year's nominees: 2017
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2019

Book Award Reviews     Home

2 comments:

  1. Sigh! I have never even HEARD of any of these let alone read them. But in the end, the Nebulas are about writers voting for colleagues. Is the Hugo list out yet?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Sue: The Hugo finalists will be announced some time in early April. Right now people who are eligible to cast votes may submit nominations for the award. The nominating period ends on March 16th.

      Delete