Nebula Award winners announced

Below are the winners and the finalists in the various categories of the Nebula Awards, which were awarded Saturday night.  In a couple of cases, I might give some brief thoughts on the categories.  Interesting to see that the SFWA voters, despite the turnover of the past decade, still seem to have the knack of selecting a winner that I view as being among the most mediocre of the Novel finalists.  Some things really never do change, do they?

Best Novel

• Winner: Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (Marian Wood)
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman (Morrow; Headline Review)
• Fire with Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
• Hild, Nicola Griffith (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• The Red: First Light, Linda Nagata (Mythic Island)
• A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer)
• The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker (Harper)

 I've read five out of the eight finalists.  Out of those five, I would have ranked them in this order:  1) Fowler, 2) Wecker, 3) Samatar, 4) (and some distance from the first three) Gaiman, and 5) Leckie.  At this point, I'm resigned to Leckie being the latest Gaiman, someone who wins multiple genre awards in a given year despite not having written anything that truly will be memorable a decade from now.  Then again, the list of truly original works winning any sort of literary/genre award is very small compared to the pleasingly comfortable re-treads with shiny tires and spinners, so take my comments with multiple grains of salt.

Best Novella

• Winner: ‘‘The Weight of the Sunrise,’’ Vylar Kaftan (Asimov’s 2/13)
• ‘‘Wakulla Springs,’’ Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages (Tor.com 10/2/13)
• ‘‘Annabel Lee,” Nancy Kress (New Under the Sun)
• ‘‘Burning Girls,’’ Veronica Schanoes (Tor.com 6/19/13)
• ‘‘Trial of the Century,’’ Lawrence M. Schoen (lawrencemschoen.com, 8/13; World Jumping)
• Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean)

Best Novelette

• Winner: ‘‘The Waiting Stars,’’ Aliette de Bodard (The Other Half of the Sky)
• ‘‘Paranormal Romance,’’ Christopher Barzak (Lightspeed 6/13)
• ‘‘They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass,’’ Alaya Dawn Johnson (Asimov’s 1/13)
• ‘‘Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters,’’ Henry Lien (Asimov’s 12/13)
• ‘‘The Litigation Master and the Monkey King,’’ Ken Liu (Lightspeed8/13)
• ‘‘In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind,’’ Sarah Pinsker (Strange Horizons 7/1 – 7/8/13)

Best Short Story

• Winner: ‘‘If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,’’ Rachel Swirsky (Apex 3/13)
• ‘‘The Sounds of Old Earth,’’ Matthew Kressel (Lightspeed 1/13)
• ‘‘Selkie Stories Are for Losers,’’ Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons1/7/13)
• ‘‘Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer,’’ Kenneth Schneyer (Clockwork Phoenix4)
• ‘‘Alive, Alive Oh,’’ Sylvia Spruck Wrigley (Lightspeed 6/13)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

• Winner: Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, director; Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón, writers) (Warner Bros.)
• Doctor Who: ‘‘The Day of the Doctor’’ (Nick Hurran, director; Steven Moffat, writer) (BBC Wales)
• Europa Report (Sebastián Cordero, director; Philip Gelatt, writer) (Start Motion Pictures)
• Her (Spike Jonze, director; Spike Jonze, writer) (Warner Bros.)
• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence, director; Simon Beaufoy & Michael Arndt as Michael deBruyn, writers) (Lionsgate)
• Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro, director; Travis Beacham & Guillermo del Toro, writers) (Warner Bros.)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

• Winner: Sister Mine, Nalo Hopkinson (Grand Central)
• The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo)
• When We Wake, Karen Healey (Allen & Unwin; Little, Brown)
• The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
• Hero, Alethea Kontis (Harcourt)
• September Girls, Bennett Madison (Harper Teen)
• A Corner of White, Jaclyn Moriarty (Levine)

I've only read the Hopkinson and Johnson and out of those, I would select Hopkinson's work.  A good, solid work, although not my favorite novel, adult or YA alike, by her.

Service to SFWA Award was given to Michael J. Armstrong.

Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award was given to Samuel R. Delany.

Thoughts on the Nebula Award nominees

After a few years of feeling mostly apathy toward the Nebula Awards, mainly due to a few names that kept appearing on the shortlists despite churning out near-dreck for years, I will admit that the recently-announced shortlists for this year's prizes do appeal to me more than they have in recent years.  This is not to say that it is a "perfect" shortlist or that there are not works on there that did not appeal to me, but it certainly is a promising sign to see more books that possess multiple audiences getting nominations (plus two of the novelist finalists I got to meet briefly at the 2013 Southern Festival of Books, so there is some bias here).  Now for my brief thoughts on the finalists (bolded titles mean that I have read them):

Novel:

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (Marian Wood)
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman (Morrow; Headline Review)
Fire with Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
Hild, Nicola Griffith (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Red: First Light, Linda Nagata (Mythic Island)
A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer)
The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker (Harper) 

A nice variety here.  The Fowler and Wecker in particular I thought were excellent – I believe both made my year-end Top 25 – and both certainly have reached a large audience outside of SF community circles.  The Gaiman and Samatar I also liked and the latter I want to re-read, as I think it would benefit more from a re-read.  The Leckie I thought was mediocre.

Novella:

‘‘Wakulla Springs,’’ Andy Duncan & Ellen Klages (Tor.com 10/2/13)
‘‘The Weight of the Sunrise,’’ Vylar Kaftan (Asimov’s 2/13)
‘‘Annabel Lee,” Nancy Kress (New Under the Sun, Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick)
‘‘Burning Girls,’’ Veronica Schanoes (Tor.com 6/19/13)
‘‘Trial of the Century,’’ Lawrence M. Schoen (lawrencemschoen.com, 8/13; World Jumping)
Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean)

I guess I just haven't really read any SF/F novellas in the past year.

Novelette:

 ‘‘Paranormal Romance,’’ Christopher Barzak (Lightspeed 6/13)
‘‘The Waiting Stars,’’ Aliette de Bodard (The Other Half of the Sky)
‘‘They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass,’’ Alaya Dawn Johnson (Asimov’s 1/13)
‘‘Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters,’’ Henry Lien (Asimov’s 12/13)
‘‘The Litigation Master and the Monkey King,’’ Ken Liu (Lightspeed 8/13)
‘‘In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind,’’ Sarah Pinsker (Strange Horizons 7/1 – 7/8/13)

Same goes for novelettes, it seems.

Short Story:

‘‘The Sounds of Old Earth,’’ Matthew Kressel (Lightspeed 1/13)
‘‘Selkie Stories Are for Losers,’’ Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons 1/7/13)
‘‘Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer,’’ Kenneth Schneyer (Clockwork Phoenix 4)
‘‘If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,’’ Rachel Swirsky (Apex 3/13)
‘‘Alive, Alive Oh,’’ Sylvia Spruck Wrigley (Lightspeed 6/13)

 I liked the Schneyer story; haven't read any of the others.

Ray Bradbury Award for Best Dramatic Presentation:

Doctor Who: ‘‘The Day of the Doctor’’ (Nick Hurran, director; Steven Moffat, writer) (BBC Wales)
Europa Report (Sebastián Cordero, director; Philip Gelatt, writer) (Start Motion Pictures)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, director; Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón, writers) (Warner Bros.)
Her (Spike Jonze, director; Spike Jonze, writer) (Warner Bros.)
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence, director; Simon Beaufoy & Michael deBruyn, writers) (Lionsgate)
Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro, director; Travis Beacham & Guillermo del Toro, writers) (Warner Bros.)

Haven't seen a single one of these and have no plans to change that.

Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy:

 The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black (Little, Brown; Indigo)
When We Wake, Karen Healey (Allen & Unwin; Little, Brown)
Sister Mine, Nalo Hopkinson (Grand Central)
The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
Hero, Alethea Kontis (Harcourt)
September Girls, Bennett Madison (Harper Teen)
A Corner of White, Jaclyn Moriarty (Levine)

Out of the two I read, I liked the Hopkinson more than the Johnson, as I had problems with the characterization and setting with the latter.

Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312

In a landscape so rumpled the light can suddenly jump the eastern horizon and leap west to strike some distant prominence.  Everyone walking the land has to attend to this possibility, know when and where the longest sunreaches occur – and where they can run for shade if they happen to be caught out.

Or if they stay on purpose.  Because many of them pause in their walkabouts on certain cliffs and crater rims, at places marked by stupas, cairns, petroglyphs, inuksuit, mirrors, walls, goldsworthies.  The sunwalkers stand by these, facing east, waiting.

The horizon they watch is black space over black rock.  The superthin neon-argon atmosphere, created by sunlight smashing rock, holds only the faintest predawn glow.  But the sunwalkers know the time, so they wait and watch – until – 

   a flick of orange fire dolphins over the horizon

   and their blood leaps inside them.  More brief banners follow, flicking up, arcing in loops, breaking off and floating free in the sky.  Star oh star, about to break on them!  Already their faceplates have darkened and polarized to protect their eyes. (Prologue, p. 3 e-book edition)

Nature, whether it be found on Earth or elsewhere, can be so beautifully enticing precisely because of its perilous qualities.  The loping of a wolf, the grin of a great cat, the tremendous thunder claps that follow in the wake of devastating lightning – yes, nature is something that we humans may try to tame and understand, yet it is the sheer beauty of its ultimately incomprehensible awe-inspiring wonders that suck us in.  Often one might encounter science fiction fans rhapsodize over this "sense of wonder," but too frequently whatever marvels that might be present in those tales are muted by pedestrian prose or tinny PoVs.  So in reading this opening section to Kim Stanley Robinson's 2012 Nebula, Hugo, and Clarke Award-nominated 2312, I was struck by just how well he captures this dual beautiful/perilous quality of an alien landscape (Mercury in this particular case, although similarly evocative prose is used later to describe other solar landscapes).

2312 is an extremely ambitious novel and at times some of its ambitions are thwarted or at least reduced in power due largely to its own complex narrative structure.  It certainly is not a novel that can be summed up with a few pithy sentences.  Some readers may find 2312's core to be its two main human characters, Swan Er Hong (a sort of futuristic renaissance woman who is equally an artist, a biosphere designer, and a quasi-provocateur) and diplomat Fitz Wahram, and their unraveling of a series of terroristic events that threaten the fragile stability of the various human communities spread throughout most of the solar system.  Others may find themselves more fascinated by the snippets of the novel's invented past and the commentaries embedded within them on ecology, human belief systems, gender/sex issues, and political forms of government.  Still others may find themselves most enjoying the descriptions of various terraforming activities that take place throughout the novel.  Yet 2312 aims to be more than the sum of its many fascinating parts but ultimately fails to achieve this, leaving behind a flawed work whose components merely serve as glimmers of greatness, as if they were shards of a large and perfectly cut gem whose shattering has dimmed its interior light.

By themselves, each component part tells a gripping story.  In particular, Swan and Fitz's relationship, which is filled with peaks and valleys of love and frustration with each other, is a perfectly fine story, one that benefits from Robinson's excellent prose.  Yet their story is stretched too thinly in places, as the two move from extraterrestrial locale to terrestrial locale and back again, with the sense that the story's momentum, like a pinball pinging against multiple walls and flippers, is uneven and subject to entropy.  The Extracts and associated lists, which serve to make deeper thematic commentaries on a possible path that humanity may be on here in the early 21st century, are perhaps too interesting, as they had the effect of making me pause to think of issues that Robinson didn't necessarily intend to address, even in passing, in 2312.  Some great stories work because the setting is so realized and predominant that the characters work to reinforce the tensions present within the setting itself.  Other stories succeed because the characterizations are so well-drawn that the setting and local color blend in with the characterizations and the narrative themes to create an excellent work.  2312 suffers at times because the setting, intriguing as it is, and the characterizations, which are gripping in their own right, do not mesh together seamlessly.  At times, there is a dissonance between the two, as though Robinson were dithering between which should be the central focus of the tale, with the result being a narrative that flies (and crashes) like Icarus.

This is not to say that 2312 is a "poor" novel.  It is far from that.  Most of its individual elements (leaving aside questionable extrapolations of human societal evolution that may leave this work feeling dated within a decade) on their own realize their potential.  Certainly 2312 has some thematic "heft" to it, as the questions it raises about our own contemporary socio-economic and political inclinations are thought provoking.  Yet these disparate elements frequently fail to achieve full cohesion; the narrative weld spots are often visible.  The result is a flawed yet ambitious work of literary SF in which the frustrations do not undercut the novel's successes as much as they reveal the limits to the literary scope that Robinson employs.  As a semi-"failure," 2312 still is one of SF/F's better novels of the past year and it is easy to understand why it has made three recent genre (industry, fan, juried) shortlists.  Even its "weaknesses," minor as they may be when considered in isolation, serve to create a spectacle-filled novel whose likes are increasingly rare in SF/F novels these days.  If only more "failures" could "fail" in this fashion.

I was considering reviewing all of the shortlisted Nebula Award for Best Novel, but...

I forgot to post this list for the Nebula Awards for Best Novel (I had considered briefly covering the other shortlisted titles, then realized that with my current reviewing schedule, I wouldn't have time), but seeing that the winner will be announced around May 19-20, I thought I might as well start acquiring the books that I haven't yet read (bold for the ones I've already read):

    Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)

    Embassytown, China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey; Subterranean Press)

    Firebird, Jack McDevitt (Ace Books)

    God’s War, Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)

    Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine (Prime Books)

    The Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

Based on the authors that I've read, it's not a bad list...with one notable exception.  I see that yet once again, a Jack McDevitt novel appears on the shortlist.  For the past decade, one could hardly go a year without something by him appearing on a Nebula shortlist.  Sure, it's SF and it seems he has a devoted fanbase, but I become quite skeptical about this, ever since I sampled one of his novels (I believe it was Chindi) several years ago and found it to be competent but far from very good.

Now I have heard rumors that McDevitt was one of several SFWA authors who would solicit votes much more vigorous than just a simple "hey, something of mine is eligible" post somewhere and while I do not know how valid those rumors are (after all, I likely will never be a SFWA member), there is that contrarian streak in me that does not want to promote with a review a work that may have been placed on a shortlist more due to personal ties than to quality of work.  True, the possibility of others appearing here due to "popularity" issues rather than story quality is at least plausible, but my experiences with their works has been better than my fleeting encounter with an older McDevitt work.

So I plan on reading the Walton and Jemisin (even though it means I have to read her second novel, The Broken Kingdoms, as well) in addition to re-reading the Hurley and Valentine for review purposes (I gave a mixed review to Miéville's book last year).   I just will not be reading or reviewing one of the finalists for reasons stated above.  It may seem a bit petty, but it is one way to protest the suspected state of affairs, even if many may believe this to be a mistaken policy.