Nebula nominations
This year’s Nebula finalists (now integrated into the Locus Index to SF Awards) include first-time nominations for Mike Allen, Gwenyth Jones, and Ruth Nestvold (nominated this year in the short story category), Mary Rosenblum and Johanna Sinisalo (novelette), and David J. Schwartz (novel).
Other novel nominees this year include 5-time Nebula winner Ursula Le Guin, who’s previously won for The Left Hand of Darkness (published 1969), The Dispossessed (1974), and Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (1990), and Jack McDevitt, who won two years ago in this category for Seeker (2005). Terry Pratchett was a finalist once before, for Going Postal in 2006 (published 2004), and Cory Doctorow was a finalist in 2005 for Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (published 2003). This is Ian McDonald’s first nomination in the novel category; his only other prior nomination was for novelette "Unfinished Portrait of the King of Pain by Van Gogh" in 1989.
In the 20 years since the Nebula Awards’ "rolling eligibility" has been in effect — which allowed nominations to accumulate for novels and stories, that had not already been placed on a final ballot, that were published in the previous two calendar years prior to the date of the award ceremony — only 7 novels that had been published in the year just prior to the award year won the Nebula. (See Major Novel Winners, which lists the publication year when it is not the year immediately prior to the award year). That is, in most cases, the award went to a novel that had not accumulated sufficient nominations to appear on the next year’s ballot, but which managed to do so by the following year’s ballot, and which subsequently won. Of winners in the past 10 years, only once (Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union) has a novel from the year prior to the award won the Nebula.
Source: Locus SF&F News
Posted: March 4th, 2009
Author: Floresiensis
Categories: Ursula Le Guin
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Book of the Month
Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill
Some doors are better left closed . . . In Barrington House, an upmarket block in London, there is an empty apartment. No one goes in, no one comes out. And it’s been that way for fifty years. Until the night watchman hears a disturbance after midnight and investigates. What he experiences is enough to change his life forever.
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