The Nebulas

So the Hugo award winning novels are done (I'm still reading the short stories and non-fiction as well as watching the dramatic presentation winners), but there's two more major awards for fantastic fiction that I think are worth noting: the Nebulas and the World Fantasy Award. I'll talk about the World Fantasy Award (which is similar to the Hugo only specifically for fantasy) later but my next project is reading through the Nebula winners.

The Nebulas are handed out by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (or SFWA) with their members voting on the results. In theory this would lead to more artistic choices than the populist Hugos and in some cases it has. Unfortunately the SFWA has a history of being one of the most argumentative groups in history (any time you put a few hundred nerds together and you'll see the same result). The consequence of that is the Nebula awards tend to be even more prone to being affected by politics than the more open Hugos are.

The Nebulas overlap with the Hugos for the majority of their first twenty years but then a break occurs between it and fandom at large and the two awards rarely coincide after that. I won't be covering the Nebula winners that I've already reviewed which will shorten the list of books to be read dramatically.

Here's the current list of winners for best novel:

2006 - Seeker by Jack McDevitt
2005 - Camouflage by Joe Haldeman
2004 - Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold 1
2003 - The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
2002 - American Gods by Neil Gaiman1
2001 - The Quantum Rose by Catherine Asaro
2000 - Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
1999 - Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
1998 - Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman1
1997 - The Moon and the Sun by Vonda McIntyre
1996 - Slow River by Nicola Griffith
1995 - The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer
1994 - Moving Mars by Greg Bear
1993 - Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
1992 - Doomsday Book by Connie Willis1
1991 - Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick
1990 - Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
1989 - The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
1988 - Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold
1987 - The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy
1986 - Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
1985 - Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
1984 - Neuromancer by William Gibson
1983 - Startide Rising by David Brin
1982 - No Enemy But Time by Michael Bishop
1981 - The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe
1980 - Timescape by Gregory Benford
1979 - The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
1978 - Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre
1977 - Gateway by Frederik Pohl
1976 - Man Plus by Frederik Pohl
1975 - The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
1974 - The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
1973 - Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
1972 - The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
1971 - A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg
1970 - Ringworld by Larry Niven
1969 - The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
1968 - Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin
1967 - The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany
1966 - Tie between Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany and Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
1965 - Dune by Frank Herbert