2024 Nebula nominees!

[psocoptera]

Here, or below with my comments!

Nebula Award for Novel

The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
The Water Outlaws, S.L. Huang (Tordotcom; Solaris UK)
Translation State, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Terraformers, Annalee Newitz (Tor; Orbit UK)
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi (DAW, Gollancz)
Witch King, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

Excited to see Saint of Bright Doors on here! I haven't read the Talabi novel, and had major issues with Terraformers, which it is interesting to see SFWA didn't share.

Nebula Award for Novella

The Crane Husband, Kelly Barnhill (Tordotcom)
“Linghun”, Ai Jiang (Linghun)
Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK)
Untethered Sky, Fonda Lee (Tordotcom)
The Mimicking of Known Successes, Malka Older (Tordotcom)
Mammoths at the Gates, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)

Disappointed not to see Last Dragoners. I haven't read Crane Husband or Linghun.

Nebula Award for Novelette

“A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair“, Renan Bernardo (Samovar 2/23)
I Am AI, Ai Jiang (Shortwave)
“The Year Without Sunshine“, Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny 11-12/23)
“Imagine: Purple-Haired Girl Shooting Down The Moon“, Angela Liu (Clarkesworld 6/23)
“Saturday’s Song“, Wole Talabi (Lightspeed 5/23)
“Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge“, Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 9-10/23)

Well, despite my very limited short fiction reading this year, I've read two of these. Not terrible.

Nebula Award for Short Story

“Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont“, P.A. Cornell (Fantasy 10/23)
“Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200“, R.S.A Garcia (Uncanny 7-8/23)
“Window Boy“, Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 8/23)
“The Sound of Children Screaming”, Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare 10/23)
“Better Living Through Algorithms”, Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld 5/23)
“Bad Doors”, John Wiswell (Uncanny 1-2/23)

And I've read one of these.

Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, Moniquill Blackgoose (Del Rey)
The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern, J. Dianne Dotson (Android)
Liberty’s Daughter, Naomi Kritzer (Fairwood)
The Ghost Job, Greg van Eekhout (Harper)

I would like to read at least two of these.

Nebula Award for Game Writing

The Bread Must Rise, Stewart C Baker, James Beamon (Choice of Games)
Alan Wake II, Sam Lake, Clay Murphy, Tyler Burton Smith, Sinikka Annala (Remedy Entertainment, Epic Games Publishing)
Ninefox Gambit: Machineries of Empire Roleplaying Game, Yoon Ha Lee, Marie Brennan(Android)
Dredge, Joel Mason (Black Salt Games, Team 17)
Chants of Sennaar, Julien Moya, Thomas Panuel (Rundisc, Focus Entertainment)
Baldur’s Gate 3, Adam Smith, Adrienne Law, Baudelaire Welch, Chrystal Ding, Ella McConnell, Ine Van Hamme, Jan Van Dosselaer, John Corocran, Kevin VanOrd, Lawrence Schick, Martin Docherty, Rachel Quirke, Ruairí Moore, Sarah Baylus, Stephen Rooney, Swen Vincke (Larian Studios)

Sure.

Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

Nimona, Robert L. Baird, Lloyd Taylor, Pamela Ribon, Marc Haimes, Nick Bruno, Troy Quane, Keith Bunin, Nate Stevenson (Annapurna Animation, Annapurna Pictures)
The Last of Us: “Long, Long Time”, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin (HBOMax)
Barbie, Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach (Warner Bros., Heyday Films, LuckyChap Entertainment)
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Michael Gilio, Chris McKay (Paramount Pictures, Entertainment One, Allspark Pictures)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Dave Callaham (Columbia Pictures, Marvel Entertainment, Avi Arad Productions)
The Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli, Toho Company)

Aw, no Scavengers Reign?

"Author Martha Wells graciously declined her nomination as a novel finalist this year for System Collapse published by Tordotcom. In 2022, Wells also declined a nomination for novella and felt that the Murderbot Diaries series has already received incredible praise from her industry peers and wanted to open the floor to highlight other works within the community."

Yeah, and also she's already on there for Witch King and you might as well not run against yourself?

Also!! This apparently got announced a bit ago and I missed it like I always do, but this year's Grandmaster (living author) goes to Susan Cooper, and the Infinity (dead author) to Tanith Lee. Sure! Susan Cooper seems very much in keeping with the "filling in the women" project, and is super widely known and beloved, and also 88 so I can see why they might have wanted to move her to the front of the line.

(My usual suspects list, of people who I think are likely or possible eventual candidates: Vernor Vinge (1944), Kim Stanley Robinson (1952), Neil Gaiman (1960), Ted Chiang (1967), NK Jemisin (1972), Orson Scott Card (1951, but I would still guess they'll wait until he's dead and give him the Infinity sometime), David Brin (1950, maybe also a wait for Infinity?), Nancy Kress (1948), Ursula Vernon (1977), Seanan McGuire (1978), John Varley (1947), John Scalzi (1969), Greg Egan (1961). (I don't think they will ever give it to Egan, but if I got to pick I probably would at some point.))

Meanwhile, I don't know Tanith Lee's work at all. I feel like I must have read *something* - a short story somewhere? - but I'm not coming up with anything definite. I would have put money on Diana Wynne Jones. I wonder if Susan Cooper being a children's/YA author made them want to pick someone who wrote adult for the Infinity. (Infinity suspects: still and always Diana Wynne Jones. Terry Pratchett. Zelazny, Joanna Russ, Philip K Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, Iain M Banks.)

Comments

[glynhogen]

I was a little surprised Dragoners didn't make the cut, and I thought there was an extremely outside chance for Pluralities, but I'm not surprised to see any of the works/names that did make the list. (Except the Older, which I'd somehow thought was 2022, because time is hard.)

[psocoptera]

Hm, this is Pluralities by Avi Silver, as per the Locus list? I hadn't heard of that at all but it does sound good, adding to my reading list :)

[glynhogen]

Yes, that's the one. (I didn't like all the things it did, but I liked a bunch of the things it did.)

[elysdir]

My favorite Tanith Lee story is a Snow White story called “Red as Blood.”

Ever since I first read that, long ago, I’ve been hoping to love other stories of hers, but so far most of her work hasn’t done a lot for me. (There’ve been a couple of others that I liked reasonably well, but nothing else that I’ve loved, not even the other stories in the collection that “Red as Blood” lends its title to.)

My notes on a couple of her stories say two things that I think I often find to be true of her work: “The language here is intermittently lovely” and “there’s some power in this, but it’s also pretty dark.”

Anyway, regardless of my personal tastes, I think their giving her the Infinity is reasonable, given the level of respect that she received over the course of her nearly-fifty-year career. But yeah, I agree that your candidates seem like strong candidates.

Looking at the Grand Master list, it looks to me like they’re intentionally trying to make up for the decades of white men—18 out of the first 19 Grand Masters, from 1975 through 2001, were white men, and 38 out of the total of 40 Grand Masters have been white. So I suspect that they’ll be avoiding giving either the GM or the Infinity to white men for a while yet, but I could be totally wrong about that.

Setting that aside, here are some other possible candidates for GM or Infinity (all of these are white, most of them are also dead and men):

Anthony Boucher, CL Moore, Cordwainer Smith, CS Lewis, Frank Herbert, Henry Kuttner, James Tiptree, John Crowley, JRR Tolkien, Spider Robinson, Vernor Vinge, Zenna Henderson.

[glynhogen]

The first story I read was "Venus Rising on Water" in Asimov's and I loved the delightful creepiness. When K was a baby, I read some of the Flat Earth books. I should read some more--I agree about the language, but I'm very open to dark. (And S&S/dying-earth type things, not written by dudes, is always nice to come upon.)

[psocoptera]

Very interesting list. I think somehow I had assumed they would only give the Infinity to people they might have given the GM but didn't... people who were still alive when they started awarding GMs (so, like, Tolkien just misses, CS Lewis and Cordwainer Smith miss by somewhat more). I'm not sure now why I thought that, I don't think they've announced any such criterion... it just somehow feels like the project is about picking up the Butlers, who got missed, rather than going back to acknowledge the ancestors? (I mean, why stop at Tolkien, if you were going backwards. Lewis Carroll. Mary Shelley. Homer?)

[elysdir]

Heh. Fair points, and yeah, now that you say that, I agree that it seems likely that the Infinity is primarily for people who got missed by the Grand Master process.

[psocoptera]

Well, Vinge died five days after I posted this, so move him to the Infinity list. He apparently had Parkinsons (fuck Parkinsons) and I think they like to give the Grandmaster to someone who will be able to come receive it or at least make a nice video or write a letter about it, which if his Parkinsons was much like my grandfather's, he may not have been for the last couple years. (Seriously, fuck Parkinsons.)