2014 Nebula Award Winners

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announced the winners of the 2014 Nebula Awards at a ceremony in Chicago on June 6.

Novel

  • Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals; Fourth Estate; Harper Collins Canada)

Novella

  • Yesterday’s Kin, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)

Novelette

  • “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” Alaya Dawn Johnson (F&SF 7-8/14)

Short Story

  • “Jackalope Wives”by Ursula Vernon (Apex 1/7/14)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

  • Guardians of the Galaxy, Written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

  • Love Is the Drug, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)

Other SFWA Awards presented:

2015 Damon Knight Grand Master Award

  • Larry Niven

Solstice Award

  • Joanna Russ (posthumous), Stanley Schmidt

Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service Award

  • Jeffry Dwight

 

24 thoughts on “2014 Nebula Award Winners

  1. Congratulations to Jeff Vandermeer! Annihilation was a fabulously disturbing and beautiful piece of writing.

  2. ::wrassum frassum:: adds Annihilation to the to-read pile/ mountain.

    Congrats all!

  3. So glad Annihilation won! It was my favorite among the nominees, glad to see it getting some award love.

    And a double win for Alaya Dawn Johnson! I liked “Love is the Drug” quite a bit, although I actually think “The Summer Prince” is the better of her books (but that went up against Nalo Hopkinson last year, so I can certainly see why that would have been a tough fight.)

    Glad to see Joanna Russ honored. However, on that note … while I absolutely agree that Larry Niven deserves to be an SFWA Grand Master, and offer sincere congratulations to him, it would be REALLY nice if at some point the number of Grand Masters who are women rose a bit higher than ~13%.

  4. (Women who are SFF writers at least 66 years old — the youngest age at which a Grand Master Award has yet been given to someone — who have not yet been honored include, among many others, C. J. Cherryh, Kate Wilhelm, Joan D. Vinge, Vonda McIntyre, Nancy Kress, Jane Yolen …)

  5. Receiving the SFWA Grand Master Award ought to mean a lot more than just showing up with politically acceptable chromosomes, Kyra; and thus the notion of weighting the award in favor of women just because they’re women seems to me to be highly disrespectful to all concerned – particularly to any writers who might receive it as a response to “gender parity”, and it would certainly be a slap in the face to the entire idea that the quality of a writer’s work is what a writer should be judged by. THAT BEING SAID, the list you’ve made in your posting suggests some very fine writers indeed, at least some of whom should certainly be recognized with the field’s highest awards in the fullness of time. Particularly notable on your list is Kate Wilhelm; one of the finest writers the SF field has ever seen. Her “Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang” – a Nebula Award winner – is a Masterpiece by anyone’s standards and is probably the work she’ll always be remembered for, but there is so much more to her portfolio than that. Her short story “The Mile-Long Spaceship” and her nearly forgotten early novel “The Killer Thing” are well worth searching out, as is just about anything she’s written. But again, my point is that Kate Wilhelm certainly deserves the recognition of a high award *not* because she is a woman, but because she is one of the best writers SF has ever known. I write this fully expecting the “gender-parity” firestorm that’s surely heading my way now, but a sense of justice compels me to speak up when a writer’s gender is held up to be *more* important than the quality of their work. I think that idea is far more insulting to the writers in question than it would be if they never received any award recognition at all.

  6. For the record, there are writers I’d to Kyra’s list, such as Sherri Tepper; a very fine writer who only keeps getting better. And there are more. There are also more *male* writers who should be on a similar list. Now, can we stop worrying about the percentages of men vs. women who’ve won awards and focus on the quality of the work itself? Please?

  7. I did not see Kyra say that an author’s gender was more important than the quality of her work.

    I did see a mild pointing out that the percentage of women authors among the grand Masters is very low.

  8. I thought Annihilation was the best part of the three Area X novels. I thought TGE was a better novel (as I said on an episode of The Incomparable we recorded just Friday) but Annihilation was high on my list.

  9. What I saw, “Peace Is My Middle Name” (am I the only person in Fandom who still writes under their actual full name? I don’t have a clue who anyone posting on this topic actually is and yet I’ve told you all who I am. If I meet any of you at the next convention and act like I don’t know you, that’s probably why, so I hope you’ll introduce yourselves…) what I saw was that Kyra wrote a very nice congratulation to Larry Niven, but then immediately detracted from that congratulation by calling for the award to be given to more women. Niven doesn’t deserve a back-handed compliment like that. I imagine that Kyra didn’t mean for her comment to be taken in quite that way, but she said both things *in the same sentence*, for crying out loud. I suggest that this is not the best way to make that particular point. Instead of making a comment that detracts from Niven’s award – even as casually as this does – why not simply promote other deserving writers on their own merit instead of bringing gender into it? That’s what I did with my comments about Kate Wilhelm. The quality of her work doesn’t have anything at all to do with her gender. The *style* of her work might have something to do with her gender – I think that would be for Wilhelm to say if anything needs to be said about it, but never it’s quality. Did Alice Sheldon not teach us anything that lasted?

  10. I intended no disrespect to Larry Niven, and am sorry if it was viewed that way. On the highly unlikely off-chance that he ever reads my comments, I will state for the record: Larry Niven is a great author, well deserving of being an SFWA Grand Master, I have read and enjoyed many of his books, and The Integral Trees has traveled with me for many moves and sits in a place of honor in the limited space on my bookshelves.

    My personal belief, unrelated to that, is not that authors should be judged on chromosomes rather than quality, but rather that they are *currently* being judged on chromosomes rather than quality, and I would like to see that change, so that they are not. Currently roughly 7 men are picked for the honor for every 1 woman who is. Since I do not believe that there are 7 times as many men deserving of the honor as there are women, I believe that if the award were handed out fairly according to merit and *without* regard to gender, there would be far more women on the list.

  11. (To be clear, I absolutely do not mean to imply that any individual recipient of the honor is undeserving. I am trying to say that I believe that when winners have been selected from a pool of equally deserving candidates, there has been what I see as a bias in selection.)

  12. I agree with Kyra, who said

    while I absolutely agree that Larry Niven deserves to be an SFWA Grand Master, and offer sincere congratulations to him, it would be REALLY nice if at some point the number of Grand Masters who are women rose a bit higher than ~13%.

    I agree that it would be really nice!
    What part of Kyra’s statement do people find controversial or problematic?

    Also I have to say that Annihiliation was one of the books I was hoping would not win the Nebula (my money was on The Three-Body Problem or Ancillary Sword) because I read it so quickly “skimming” barely does the activity “read” justice, as I tried to find the there there. Didn’t happen for me, clearly your mileage may vary and I’m aware there’s a lot of people (like the SFWA, apparently) who disagree with me about the merits of Annihilation.

  13. From what I’ve read this seems an excellent list of winners and nominees. Nebulas have been pretty strong lately.

    Russ getting this award is nice, still a real shame she never got the grand Master though.

  14. Very pleased with Annihilation‘s win. Also squeeing happily over “Jackalope Wives.”

    Kyra, I think anyone engaging honestly with your post understands it perfectly. Your interlocutor appears to be of a feather with those who “don’t see gender, just good stories!” and accuses of sexism anyone who notices that their list of “good stories” seems to disproportionately favor men. Because noticing institutional sexism/racism/homophobia is the real sexism/racism/homophobia, right? [/sarcasm]

  15. So, I got to thinking, after I posted … am I being fair?

    I am, after all, stating that I *believe* there to be a bias in the Grand Master awards, based on no real evidence except gut instinct. Something I have recently protested as being a bad thing to do.

    And the Grand Master awards go to the established greats of SFF. As I have said before, they have never gone to anyone younger than 66. So, current awards are likely going to people who started their writing careers no later than the late 70’s, and often considerably before. It is entirely reasonable to raise the possibility that fewer women than men were writing SFF then, so the award may reflect the difficulties women faced entering the market 40-50 years ago, rather than any biases of today. In which case, I can still hope that the numbers will get closer to parity as time marches on, but I’d have been wrong to claim bias.

    So, I decided to check, as best I could.

    I went through the whole of the current public SFWA membership list, and tried to make a list of anyone I considered a reasonable candidate for a Grand Master Award. My qualifications were: 1) born before 1950, 2) someone I instantly recognized as “oh, the famous writer ‘blah’ who wrote the famous book/story ‘blee.'”

    Obvious problem 1: Not everyone is on the public SFWA list, even they belong to the SFWA. I did note that there was only one current living SFWA Grand Master not on the public list, though, so it seems likely to be a reasonable list of SFWA “big names”.

    Obvious problem 2: Someone else making such a list would no doubt have a somewhat different set of “famous writer ‘blah’/famous book ‘blee'”. I did try not to let my personal tastes intervene, and listed people who are well-regarded even if I do not personally like their stuff, but it’s simply reasonable to believe that others would consider some writers I included not-so-famous and some I skipped very-famous.

    I hope that in both cases, things “canceled out” and I still got a list that at least reasonably approximates the real percentages of Grand Master candidates.

    List and a little analysis to follow in shortly.

  16. Here is my list of current SFWA members born before 1950 who I thought could reasonably by considered “Big Names” in the field:

    Brian Aldiss (Grand Master), Eleanor Arnason, Gregory Benford, Ben Bova, Terry Brooks, Jeffrey Carver, Suzy McKee Charnas, C. J. Cherryh, Gardner Dozois, Harlan Ellison (Grand Master), Alan Dean Foster, David Gerrold, James Gunn (Grand Master), Joe Haldeman (Grand Master), Donald Kingsbury, Nancy Kress, Katherine Kurtz, Ursula K. LeGuin (Grand Master), Barry B. Longyear, Elizabeth Lynn, George R. R. Martin, Jack McDevitt, Vonda McIntyre, Patricia McKillip, Elizabeth Moon, Michael Moorcock (Grand Master), James Morrow, Larry Niven (Grand Master), Jerry Pournelle, Mike Resnick, Pamela Sargent, Robert Silverberg (Grand Master), Norman Spinrad, Harry Turtledove, Joan D. Vinge, Vernor Vinge, Connie Willis (Grand Master), Gene Wolfe (Grand Master), Jane Yolen

    Question 1: Are there more men than women?

    Men: 25
    Women: 14

    Yes. There could be almost twice as many male recipients as female recipients drawing from the current pool of “eligible” candidates, with it reflecting the biases of many decades past rather than a current bias today.

    Question 2: Do the awards reflect that pattern?

    Men given the award since 2000 (the longest time ago an award was given to a member of the current pool above): 14
    Women given the award since 2000: 2

    Answer: No. We would expect to see that number be more like 10/6 if they were being drawn from the pool without bias. Even considering the disproportionate number of men among SFF writers over the age of 65, there still appears to be a bias against women.

    Note: 2000 is a somewhat arbitrary year to choose, true. However, there is literally no year you can pick to make the numbers proportionate. The best you could get if you cherry-picked the best possible year to start counting from (2003 or 2012) is still only 25% women.

    Question 3: What if we look at the percentages of Grand Masters on this list? How do women do?

    Men on the above list who are Grand Masters: 8 (32% of the men)
    Women on the above list who are Grand Masters: 2 (14% of the women)

    Answer: If Grand Masters are being drawn out of this pool, a disproportionately high proportion of men are being picked compared to women.

    MY CONCLUSION: Unless my list is extremely poor in some way (which is admittedly possible), then even considering the greater number of men in the field for the age cohort the award is being given to, the award is still being given to men in highly disproportionate numbers. I would hypothesize, based on this, that gender is indeed currently being used as a means of judging this award to some degree, with men being favored over women.

  17. CORRECTION: *3* women have been given the award since 2000, not 2. However, since we would expect the number to be 6, this really doesn’t change anything above.

  18. Aaack I don’t know what happened with my counting, let me rewrite question 2:

    Question 2: Do the awards reflect that pattern?

    Men given the award since 2000 (the longest time ago an award was given to a member of the current pool above): 11
    Women given the award since 2000: 3

    Answer: No. We would expect to see that number be more like 9/5 if they were being drawn from the pool without bias. Even considering the disproportionate number of men among SFF writers over the age of 65, there still appears to be a bias against women.

    Note: 2000 is a somewhat arbitrary year to choose, true. However, there is literally no year you can pick to make the numbers proportionate. The best you could get if you cherry-picked the best possible year to start counting from (2003 or 2012) is still only 25% women.

    VERY sorry about that, all.

  19. Squee! Ursula Vernon has a Nebula to go with her Hugo!

    And having expressed appropriate joy in the appropriate place I shall return to the hell known as Microsoft and try to get the Hugo Packet to produce something that I can actually read.

  20. Having watched the video stream of the Nebulas and attended many, many Hugo ceremonies, if I could give one suggestion to David Gerrold and whoever will be stage-managing the Sasquan presentation, it would be to somehow minimize the “dead air” between hosts/presenters/winners taking the podium. All I have, though, is “walk faster, people!”

  21. @Bob Roehm – Possibly they could read a very short bio while the winner walks up? Often it takes time because there’s aisles to thread.

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