2003 Nebula Awards

seattlenerd writes "The 2003 Nebula Awards were awarded late Saturday night in Seattle (for the first time ever) by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Winners: The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, "The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford, "What I Didn't See" by Karen Joy Fowler (the previous two both published on the SCI FICTION site), and the script for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Noteworthy were comments made by GrandMaster honoree Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison, who introduced Silverberg, along with guest speaker Rick Rashid of Microsoft Research. To say nothing of Cory Doctorow's acceptance speech he didn't get to make, but has made available for "alternate historians."" I was at Penguicon this weekend, along with Neil Gaiman - congrats to him on the win, and to all the others.

Re:Anyone else read that as 'Nebulon'?

[Seth Finklestein]

"Nebulon" is mentioned in this cartoon on the Homestar Runner web page [homestarrunner.com]. Please note that you'll need to have Macromedia Flash installed in order to view it.

Re:Coraline? Pfft

[rtos]

Um... you do know that Coraline [amazon.com] is meant for ages 8 and up, right? It's a kids book... and a damn good one at that. Creepy as hell, but told in classic children's story-book style.

Taken in that context, it's highly enjoyable, quick read for adults too. I thought it was a fun little book.

If you want Gaiman fantasy made more for adults, check out Neverwhere [amazon.com] (1997). It was one of the best books I read last year.

Re:mmm....Ice Cream

[Otter]

FYI, the name is a play on The Emperor of Ice Cream [crocker.com], by Wallace Stevens.

Hmmm, I was unimpressed by it in high school, but with the advantage of maturity -- I still don't like it.

Re:hmmm

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Nebulas are given for works released during the previous year (i.e., the 2003 awards go to 2002 works, etc.) When the work was written doesn't matter -- remember these are primarily literary awards, and it's not uncommon for a book to take several years to be written, and then several more to be published. (I would assume the same is true of scripts, in general, though of course LOTR is kind of a special case.) For those interested in the process, it works like this:

1. At any time, a SFWA member may nominate a work published a year ago or less at the time of nomination.
2. At the end of the year, works with sufficient numbers of nominations are placed on the preliminary Nebula ballot.
3. Early in the following year, SFWA membership votes on the works on the preliminary ballot; in each category, up to a certain maximum number of works -- 5, IIRC, but don't quote me -- are qualified for the final ballot.
4. The membership then votes on the works on the final ballot, and the awards are determined.
5. This being science fiction writing, you'll notice there is no "Profit!!!" step in the list. Er, unless you're Peter Jackson. <1/2 g>

So this is why it takes so long, and why the 2003 awards are given for 2002 works in 2004.

Re:a plea

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Well, you could do worse than to look up Nebula winners of years past. The list is on the SFWA Web site:

Past Winners of SFWA Nebula Awards [sfwa.org]

I have to say, though, that if your opinion of SF is so low that you think only " an elusive sci-fi title (or two)" will make your cut, I'm not terribly optimistic. As someone who reads (and writes) mostly SF but does read a fair amount of other fiction, I'm of the opinion that the crap-to-good-stuff ratio is pretty much equal no matter what section of the bookstore you're browsing. A lot of readers, OTOH, tend to mark down a book simply because it is SF, rather than judging it fairly on its merits. If you're one of them, nothing I or anyone else says is going to help you.

good stuff if old stuff

[mactov]

moviepig.com writes: If there are astute slashDot readers out there who understand my lament, and who know an elusive sci-fi title (or two) that does manage the rare crossover, please identify.

Take a look at some of the books Robert Silverberg wrote in the 1970's; some of them are "Dying Inside," "Son of Man," and "Thorns" -- they are little gems. You have to ignore the dates in SF of that age (the "future" is now, at least chronologically speaking) but there were some interesting people writing interesting stuff back then.

2004 Hugo Award nominations also announced

[Andy_R]

If you follow the nebulas, you might be interested to see the recently announced shortlist for the other big SciFi awards, the Hugos:

http://www.noreascon.org/hugos/nominees.html

The Hugos are voted for by the attendees/supporters of the World Science Fiction Convention, whereas the Nebulas are voted on by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, in case you were wondering what the difference is.

My Nebula report and more on Cory Doctorow

[Jack William Bell]

My Nebula report is here [trufen.net], on the new Slashcode site TruFen.net [trufen.net].

Re:typography...

[seattlenerd]

Book and film titles are normally italicized, but since the whole post is italicized, they're in bold italics. Short-story titles are in quotation marks. AP style, or something like it.