77 thoughts on “2016 Nebula Nominations”

1. Congratulations to the nominees!

2. Woo! I’ve read 4 of the novels already.

   As for the rest…I’ve got some reading to do.

3. Mike, the entry for The Martian is smushed into the back of the entry for Fury Road.

   Also: Yay! Three of my favorite books made the list.

   And look at Fran Wilde. She got both Best Novel and the Andre Norton Award noms.

4. Updraft is nominated for the best novel Nebula and the Andre Norton Award? Does that usually happen?

   I have read…erm…none of the best novel nominees. I have Barsk out from the library, and Uprooted and Ancillary Mercy are on hold. (I am looking forward to reading AM! It’s been on order for an awfully long time…)

   Am I the only person who didn’t really care for “Binti”? It felt so…pat. It’s hard to put into words and I must make delicious waffles so possibly more later if anyone wants to discuss.

   Congratulations to the nominees!

5. @Dawn. The Norton is only 10 years old. But I think this is the first time a novel has gotten nominations for both

6. Looks like a good ballot. I’ve actually read a fair amount of it.

7. Meh

8. Congratulations to the nominees! 🙂

9. As a minor note, I filled out my Hugo ballot before this came out, and it included:

   3 of the above novel nominees, plus an additional 1 novel from the Norton list; 4 of the above novella nominees; 2 of the above novelette nominees; 2 of the above short story nominees; and 5 of the above Bradbury nominees.

   So, I’d say that, to my mind, this is a pretty good list. 🙂

10. Without detracting from my warm congratulations, of the nominees I’ve actually read here, this shortlist is far, far, off my taste own taste.

    Thinking of opening a bar, where those of us who want to commiserate without being downers can go drink and trade off-the-record rants. I’ll call it the “Am I The Only One Who–” 😛

    That being said, I’ve seen so much love for those pieces, I’d say these nominations are unquestionably well-earned 🙂

11. @Standback:

    Thinking of opening a bar, where those of us who want to commiserate without being downers can go drink and trade off-the-record rants. I’ll call it the “Am I The Only One Who–”

    Yes!! (You are certainly not the only one. For example, the novelette category contains two stories I actively disliked and three that were very “meh”.)

    @Dawn Incognito: You are also not the only one to have that opinion of Binti. The plot events and the heroine’s unsuspected magic powers were awfully convenient weren’t they?

    Anyhow, congrats to the nominees!

12. [Side note: Reading down the short story list and thinking it was largely chosen for sentiment and warmth, the last item came as a shock. Glad there are enough nominators with divergent tastes to get that bit of variation in.]

13. I offer my hearty congratulations to all the nominees.

14. @Standback @Vasha

    I had read all but three (two novellas and one novelette). Although there are stories there that surprise me, each category has at least two or three stories I thought were good enough to recommend–with novelette being the weakest category.

    There were a few stories that I didn’t personally care for but which others raved about, so it doesn’t surprise me to see them here. What does puzzle me is a couple of stories I thought were genuinely bad and which no one else seems to have recommended.

    Still, it’s a lot more sensible than I fear the Hugo’s list will be . . .

15. @Greg I am sadly certain that the glory (at least to me; tastes clearly vary) of this Nebula List is not going to be reflected in the Hugo nomination list

16. @Greg Hullender

    I had read all but three (two novellas and one novelette).

    Speaking only of the short fiction. I’m missing two of the novels, and I didn’t look closely at the other categories.

17. To those who have read Updraft? What about it makes you classify it as YA or Adult? I’ve seen it described as both and I’m trying to decide if it belongs better in our adult or teen departments. I guess I should probably read it, anyway, but I’m curious about what others think.

18. So how do you choose from the Bradbury nominees? I don’t think I have a problem with any of these. There are other movie/shows that could have been nominated, but this is a fairly strong list. Star Wars might be the weakest nominee depending on your tastes.

    Truly we liven in the Golden Age.

19. @K8, the protagonist is an adolescent, as are many of the other characters. I thought it was well written but the most notable flaw for me was the lack of believable context for some of the choices made by the characters. If it’s YA, otherwise nonsensical choices are, at least for me, less likely to break my suspension of disbelief (even if it all adds up to less than award worthy for me), so that’s where I’d put it, even without considering the age of the protagonist.

20. Greg Hullender – to me, novelette was clearly the strongest category.

21. @Greg: Due in part to using the SFWA longlist as a guide, I’ve read every one of the short works. There are certainly at least one I’m enthusiastic about in each category, but overall disappointing. But I think that the only one that comes truly way out of left field, not having gotten previous recommendations, is Wings of Sorrow and Bone.

22. Congratulations to the nominees.

    Thanks to Filer discussions/recommendations, I’ve read a fair number of these, except the Andre Norton list which I’ve read zero of! I’ve started Barsk, but had stopped all reading due to my RL issues. Hopefully I can get back to ‘work’ on Hugo before nominations close.*

    My novelette and short story nomination lists aren’t very congruent with these, but I wouldn’t be irritated if any of these Nebula nominees, that I’ve read, also ended up on the Hugo finalist lists.

    @Dawn Incognito
    If you can fit it in, I also highly recommend The Fifth Season from this list.

    RE: the commiserating bar – I bounced off Binti, too, and intend to try it again, but probably not before nominations close. My problem was just not liking/understanding the main character. DNF.

    I think Cat Pictures, Please is clever and cute, but not outstanding, but diff’rent strokes and all that.

    * I still haven’t received a working PIN!!!! I’m one of the “never got an email, had to enquire, first PIN didn’t work, got notified I’d been issued more than one PIN and they’d get back to me” group! It’s been almost a week since that last email…no PIN. Guess I’ll give them a few more days before poking them again, gently, as I know they’re buried and trying hard to fix things.

23. @Lois Tilton

    Greg Hullender – to me, novelette was clearly the strongest category.

    Interesting. I’d love to hear your reasoning, if you’re willing to share it. It looks like the only thing on the Nebula list (short-fiction) that you actually recommended was the novella, The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn, by Usman Malik.

    I generally thought your recommendations were pretty good, so I was surprised not to see more of them on the list.

24. I’m particularly happy to see ‘‘The Bone Swans of Amandale’’ by C.S.E. Cooney on the list, because while it’s a wonderful and clever story it’s also from a small press collection which you’d might not expect to get on to enough people’s radar, and it only became available on the web quite recently. Clearly the buzz for it has been effective.

    A total contrast in style is the inclusion of ‘‘And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead’’ by Brooke Bolander which is a brash, sweary, fun cyberpunk story that I really liked but hadn’t seen many mentions of, so its inclusion here is a pleasant surprise.

25. Greg Hullender – I strongly recommended the Pinsker, as well.

26. @Greg: Here’s my breakdown of the novelette category, I don’t know if it matches Lois’s.

    * ‘‘Rattlesnakes and Men’’, Michael Bishop. Message fiction that’s heavy-handed as all get-out, and I say that as someone with similar opinions.
    * ‘‘And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead’’, Brooke Bolander. An action piece with a high body count and a four-letter vocabulary but not much memorable.
    * ‘‘Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds’’, Rose Lemberg. The author set out to create a fantasy world with societies that have different ideas about gender, and variously-gendered and neurodiverse characters. In execution, it’s surprisingly dull, populated with flattish figures. Falls into the trap of focusing a story about a trans character through a cis protagonist’s difficulty in adjusting to them.
    * ‘‘The Ladies’ Aquatic Gardening Society’’, Henry Lien. Over-the-top satire in faux-nineteenth-century diction, fun if you like that sort of thing, but relying for its finale on a thoroughly improbable plot twist.
    * ‘‘The Deepwater Bride’’, Tamsyn Muir. The narrator is a sulky, disaffected teenager who, on seeing portents of doom indicating that an Ancient One is going to arrive and claim a bride, goes around dispassionately documenting them with another girl who she thinks is the only worthwhile person there is. Rather an interesting concept and final twist, but who’d want to spend 8,500 words in the company of the protagonist?
    * ‘‘Our Lady of the Open Road’’, Sarah Pinsker. Ah, finally a story I can enthuse about! Great narrator, a disillusioned punk musician who travels in severe poverty from town to town doing live shows in a future world of isolation. Vividly depicted, with perfect choice of details, and thoughtful.

27. You know, I no longer make any pretense of keeping up with the genre – so, for much of my life, I’ve relied on the “nominations’ lists for the major awards to point me toward SF that I should be reading. When the nominations come out, I add them to my “Books to Watch Out For” list, and try to track them down. (E.g., I’ve just ordered two of the novels on today’s new Nebula list, simply because they’ve been Nebula-nominated.)

    After doing this for decades, I now own almost all book-length titles that have been nominated for a major award in the field.

    Last year, the Puppies broke this process, broke it to the point where I find myself wondering if I should be putting everyything published by Baen on my “Must To Avoid” list: because I have enough to read without giving money to assholes.

    (I don’t know Gannon – I haven’t yet run across his 2014 nominated work, either – so I probably WILL wind up picking up his Nebula-nominated books at some point – but after last year’s hijinks, there’s about zero chance that I’m going to rush out to buy them new.)

    So, Thanks! Torgersen and Beale, for saving me money. (And apologies to Charles E. Gannon, who may very well be be an innocent bystander in all of this.)

28. @Lois Tilton

    Greg Hullender – I strongly recommended the Pinsker, as well.

    Not this one though: http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2015/04/lois-tilton-reviews-short-fiction-mid-april-5/

    Although you did have nice things to say about it, you didn’t actually give it your RECOMMENDED mark.

29. Vasha,
    I felt the same way about ‘Rattlesnakes and Men’’. Thought it was message fiction that was heavy-handed, and I am typing this as someone who thinks that firearms should be well-regulated.

    I loved the Pinsker too, and rated the Lien highly. Haven’t read the others. My overlap with the Nebula nominees is small, partly because I don’t read as much as I’d like & partly because my tastes and what end up as Nebula finalists is typically a small intersection. But the same is also true for the Hugos most years. In this I have much in common with the nominators: there’s always something with the suite of finalists to grumble about.

30. A few years ago, someone observed that highly praised books skewed toward male protagonists, even among those written by women; I’ve seen that effect myself. I’m therefore surprised to see the opposite among these nominees in the prose categories: a majority of female protagonists, even quite a few among stories written by men.

    Authors: M 10, F 15
    Main characters: M 6, F 16, non-gendered AIs 3

31. @Cheryl Thanks! It’s been an odd one to figure out (without reading it) because it was reviewed in the review journals as an adult book, and it’s put out by Tor (and not Tor Teen), but I keep hearing people discuss it as YA and there it is on the Norton list. Character age isn’t always a determining factor – coming of age stories are prevalent in fiction for adults, obviously – but it can confuse matters. Since it is the first in a series, I wonder if the characters are intended to age up into adulthood. Hmmmm….

32. Dawn Incognito: Am I the only person who didn’t really care for “Binti”? It felt so…pat.

    I liked it well enough… but thought that the ending was rushed, and, as you say, too “pat”. It really needs to be developed into a novel so that the concepts which lead to the ending can be developed fully and seem less “convenient”.

    I am really glad to see “Damage” on the list — I’m not necessarily keen on that sort of story, and I found it fantastic. I continue to be bemused by all the love for “The New Mother”; I thought it had a lot of promise, but that the ending failed quite badly.

    I’ve read only about a fourth of the fiction nominees, and am looking forward to reading the rest. I haven’t read any of the Norton nominees; Updraft is probably the only one I’m going to read before Hugo nominations close.

33. I didn’t prefer it as strongly as the previous Pinsker, true.

    Anyone interested in my thoughts on potentially award-worthy stories for 2015 can look here. http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2015/12/lois-tiltons-2015-reviews-in-review/

34. ‘As You Know’ Bob: I don’t know Gannon – I haven’t yet run across his 2014 nominated work, either – so I probably WILL wind up picking up his Nebula-nominated books at some point – but after last year’s hijinks, there’s about zero chance that I’m going to rush out to buy them new.

    The Gannon trilogy is an intelligent and interesting first-contact adventure story. Not necessarily what I’d consider nomination-quality, but I don’t find its presence on the list bizarre, either.

35. JJ – good to know, thanks.

    As I said, I probably WILL pick up Gannon’s nominated works at some point – but after last year’s hijinks, the entire category of ‘associated with Baen’ has me reluctant to throw money in an author’s direction. I have plenty to read already.

    (Yes, I know, I know: Bujold, Flint, etc., are completely unassociated with the slaters – but Baen did nothing to try to discourage the attack on the Hugo awards.)

36. I’ve read 5 of the 7 novels. But most won’t be on my shortlist.

    I’m in the minority here. Binti was my favorite novella of 2015. Also the darkest of the ones I think will be on my Hugo shortlist.

    No comment on the rest.

37. @Vasha @Standback @Dawn Incognito:

    You are also not the only one to have that opinion of Binti. The plot events and the heroine’s unsuspected magic powers were awfully convenient weren’t they?

    I just read Binti today, and I was surprised how bad it was. It’s not just the magical science, although that by itself would be enough to warn people away from the story; the dialog and behavior of the characters, especially at the end, defies all rational belief.

    I’m reading “Wings of Sorrow and Bone” next. Given that Vasha recommended it so highly, I’m optimistic.

38. @Vasha

    Here’s my breakdown of the novelette category, I don’t know if it matches Lois’s

    .
    Well, given that she thought it was the strongest category and you thought they all sucked but for one, I hope her breakdown doesn’t match yours! 🙂

    I largely agree with you, but I recommended ‘‘Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds’’ and ‘‘The Deepwater Bride’’ because they had interesting plots, even though the characters could be a little hard to identify with. Definitely “Our Lady of the Open Road” was the only one that actually deserved to be in that list.

39. @Tasha :

    I’m reading “Wings of Sorrow and Bone” next. Given that Vasha recommended it so highly, I’m optimistic.

    Uh, what? I actually thought it thoroughly ordinary (3-star review on my blog).

40. My assessment is much like Greg Hullender’s – the Pinsker is good, the Lemberg and Muir have some merit. This puts the category above the rest of the nominations [excepting the novel, on which I have no opinion].

    But none of these would have been on my own list. There were just better stories.

41. @Vasha

    There are certainly at least one I’m enthusiastic about in each category, but overall disappointing. But I think that the only one that comes truly way out of left field, not having gotten previous recommendations, is Wings of Sorrow and Bone.

    Oops. I guess I interpreted that as an endorsement. Oh well. I’m planning to read it regardless.

42. By the way, Eric created an Annotated 2015 Nebula Award Nominees post that makes it really easy to see who recommended which story, as well as all the usual links to stories/stores/libraries for people trying to find them.

43. FYI for anyone lazy like me, SF Signal’s post on the Nebulas has links to the short fiction that’s free online.

    @Mike Glyer: I hope you don’t mind me linking to a, er, uh, “competing” post down here in the comments. I still love you best! 😉

    ETA: Award terminology’s confusing. Mike says “2016 Nebula Nominations” and SF Signal says “2015 Nebula Awards” and SFWA says “2015 Nebula Awards (presented 2016).” I frequently get confused when people talk about the Hugos, like “wait by 2015 do they mean the ones we gave out in 2015 or the ones for work from 2015 or…(head explosion).”

44. Kendall: FYI for anyone lazy like me, SF Signal’s post on the Nebulas has links to the short fiction that’s free online.

    Thanks! They’re missing “The Bone Swans of Amandale”.

45. @Lois Tilton: I agree. Meh. There are some things on there that are actively terrible (like “The New Mother”, which I would have thrown across the room if I’d read it in paper). l liked “Cat Pictures, Please” and “Damage” a lot, though. But I don’t have any of their novelette choices on my ballot.

    @Dawn, Vasha, et al: YES. Binti was bad. Started off so promisingly and then I was all “Wait, wut? Well, wasn’t that conveeeeenient?”

    But I only disliked one of the novels, LOL.

46. @Tasha Turner:

    I’m in the minority here. Binti was my favorite novella of 2015.

    Can I ask why you loved it? Considering I got the snark train rolling, it seems only fair 😉

47. Has anyone else read Cheryl Morgan’s “Writing Better Trans Characters”? Helped me identify a problem with “Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds”.

48. I’ve read three of the shoet stories and found them all kind of boring. Forgettable really. So at least that category was a “meh” for me too.

49. Very strong ballot this year, especially in Dramatic Presentation. It’s a good time to be a fan.

    I would have gone with a different episode than “Smile” for Jessica Jones, but well, as the endcap of the series, I suppose it’s logical.

50. @Kendall:

    Award terminology’s confusing. Mike says “2016 Nebula Nominations” and SF Signal says “2015 Nebula Awards” and SFWA says “2015 Nebula Awards (presented 2016).” I frequently get confused when people talk about the Hugos, like “wait by 2015 do they mean the ones we gave out in 2015 or the ones for work from 2015 or…(head explosion).”

    Here in 3118, we solve that by the simple measure of repeating every year twice.

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