Nebula Final Ballot

The final ballot for the 2008 Nebula Awards was released by SFWA earlier this week; winners will be announced during the annual Nebula Awards Weekend, held this year April 24-26 in Los Angeles. This is also the last year of the old "rolling eligibility" ballot; next year's will be a hybrid, with some older works still eligible, and then the Nebulas will return to a comprehensible calendar-year system, like nearly all other awards, with the 2010 award year.

And, as usual, the list is more a catalog of the various interest groups and log-rolling communities within SFWA than it is a list of the best works of the year; let's hope that also changes with the new eligibility rules.

Novels:

• Little Brother, Cory Doctorow (Tor)
• Powers, Ursula K. Le Guin (Harcourt)
• Cauldron, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
• Brasyl, Ian McDonald (Pyr)
• Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Harper)
• Superpowers, David J. Schwartz (Three Rivers).

I've read three of these (Little Brother, Making Money, and Superpowers), and none of them lept out at me as being obvious Nebula front-runners. The lit-SF crowd will be happy if Brasyl wins, and the "good ol' fashioned adventure" folks will if Cauldron does.

Novellas:

• "The Spacetime Pool", Catherine Asaro (Analog 3/08)
• "Dark Heaven", Gregory Benford (Alien Crimes)
• Dangerous Space, Kelley Eskridge (Dangerous Space)
• "The Political Prisoner", Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF 8/08)
• The Duke in His Castle, Vera Nazarian (Norilana)

I don't read much short fiction these days, so I have no informed opinion here. So let me just say "Yay!" for "Dark Heaven," which is certainly the last time that anything from my era at the SFBC will be eligible for an award.

Novelettes:

• "If Angels Fight", Richard Bowes (F&SF 2/08)
• "Dark Rooms", Lisa Goldstein (Asimov’s 10-11/07)
• "Pride and Prometheus", John Kessel (F&SF 1/08)
• "Night Wind", Mary Rosenblum (Lace and Blade)
• "Baby Doll", Johanna Sinisalo, David Hackston, trans. (The SFWA European Hall of Fame)
• "Kaleidoscope", K.D. Wentworth (F&SF 5/07)
• “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story”, James Alan Gardner (Asimov’s, Feb08)

More stories I don't know much about; I don't even get to the "Best of the Year" books these days.

Stories:

• "The Button Bin", Mike Allen (Helix 10/07)
• "The Dreaming Wind", Jeffrey Ford (The Coyote Road)
• "Trophy Wives", Nina Kiriki Hoffman (Fellowship Fantastic)
• "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss", Kij Johnson (Asimov’s 7/08)
• "The Tomb Wife", Gwyneth Jones (F&SF 8/07)
• "Don’t Stop", James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s 6/07)
• “Mars: A Traveler’s Guide”, Ruth Nestvold (F&SF, Jan08)

I won't be at the Nebs this year, so it would be cruel and frivolous for me to hope that "The Button Bin" wins and that William Saunders is the designated acceptor.

Scripts:

• The Dark Knight, Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer (Warner Bros.)
• "The Shrine", Brad Wright (Stargate Atlantis)
• WALL-E, Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Peter Docter (Pixar)

And thank god this award is finally dead, as it limps into its last year with a pipsqueak list of nominees.

Andre Norton Award:

• Graceling, Kristin Cashore (Harcourt)
• Lamplighter, D.M. Cornish
• Savvy, Ingrid Law (Dial)
• The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Mary E. Pearson (Holt)
• Flora's Dare, Ysabeau S. Wilce (Harcourt)

I haven't read any of these books, either -- though the list did remind me that I need to get to Flora's Dare -- but I'm greatly surprised that the best-reviewed YA book (in the field and outside it), Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Game, is conspicuous by its absence.

Edit: One novelette and one short story added in, per SFWA's oops announcement.