The Nebula Awards annually recognize the best works of science fiction or fantasy published in the United States. The awards are organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a nonprofit association of professional science fiction and fantasy writers.[1]
(Some might argue the Hugo Awards are the more prestigious awards in science fiction, as they are international awards. But, voting for a Hugo only requires membership in the World Science Fiction Society, which anyone can join. The 2017 Hugos will be presented at the 75th Worldcon, Worldcon 75, in Helsinki, Finland, on August 12, 2017.)
The SFWA just announced this year's Nebula awards, honoring works published in 2016. This year's winners are:
Best Novel: All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders
Best Novella: Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire
Best Novelette: "The Long Fall Up", by William Ledbetter
Best Short Story: "Seasons of Glass and Iron", by Amal El-Mohtar
Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Arrival, Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Screenplay by Eric Heisserer
Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy: Arabella of Mars, by David D. Levine
The nominees for these awards are listed at the above SFWA link.
[1] Wikipedia.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @05:42AM
My nutsack is oscillating in your pants!
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Friday May 26 2017, @05:58AM (15 children)
I have seen ghost-towns before. Tumbleweeds and 14-year-olds posting teenage attempts at porn. The mine has run out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @06:18AM (10 children)
Ain't nobody here but Runaway1956, aristarchus, and us
chickenscowards.(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday May 26 2017, @06:26AM (9 children)
If only someone would have to courage to, you know, comment on the FA, in an insightful and interesting way, without any racist alt-right crap, perhaps SoylentNews could be saved. But I grow pessimistic. The inability to censor the truly bad posters, the deplorable expendables, has doomed a bastion of free speech. Oh, what SoylentNews could have been! It was a bare idea, (fuck beta), a whisper, and now it is gone.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday May 26 2017, @07:39AM (5 children)
Will a cynical comment do?
I've heard the Hugo has been compromised by ballot box stuffing, and has lost a lot of credibility. They couldn't queer the Nebula Award with the same tactics, but recall hearing that it is suspect too, possibly been swung by pressuring and/or bribing committee members.
Oh well, I've been out of the SF/Fantasy scene long enough that I no longer know what's current there. Most of the authors I used to read are dead or retired.
Plus, I wonder if storytelling needs a makeover. Writing is such a stodgy way of telling a story. Am glad to hear that the graphic novel has gained respectability. Movies have their points, but in those cases where a story is available in both book and movie forms, in most cases the book is better. They tried "choose your own adventure" books, and they were kind of neat but just too limited. Role playing is more flexible. Most MMORPGs missed, badly. Too easy to go the power gamer route in those, grind away trying to gain levels and loot. Seems the computer ought to be able to tell stories in ways more compelling than any printed book can, if only we can figure out how.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday May 26 2017, @07:52AM (1 child)
> Oh well, I've been out of the SF/Fantasy scene long enough that I no longer know what's current there. Most of the authors I used to read are dead or retired.
Last year I picked up 5 or 6 novels just because they were shortlisted for some SF/Fantasy award (cant remember if it was Nebula or Hugo or something else). It was a pretty good way to find interesting books. I only regretted reading one of them. A couple I really liked.
> Seems the computer ought to be able to tell stories in ways more compelling than any printed book can, if only we can figure out how.
They were getting there with games like Deus Ex. I have tried one or two more recent ones like Witcher but it tends to be a bit of a slog. I wonder if they can do a truly "non-linear" RPG. Not "non-linear" as in you can do the quests/missions/whatever in any order (which is not really a big step up from linear); more like - you have to accumulate sufficient evidence to convict a suspect, and there are lots of bits of evidence around, probably implicating multiple suspects.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday May 28 2017, @04:52PM
The Humble Book Bundle: Super Nebula Author Showcase [sfwa.org]
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @08:30AM
It is entirely because funding requires a massive ROI to be considered successful, which means catering to the lowest common denominator. That is why pretty much every successful game has turned into a neverending grind where just as you get ahead there is something new to attain.
I say this in contrast to 'somewhere new to explore', because quite a few games could have (and some smaller ones do!) get by not on the new skill/experience levels you can obtain from a new release (often with a mediocre storyline) but by opening up new paths through the world, placing story elements that tie together into them, then leaving it for the players to work out the rest. This is similiar to how the best novels leave the important bits to the mind of the reader rather than spelling it out in no uncertain terms. Also why some authors are so hated if people actually know their politics/religious/sexual leanings, in comparison to people's mistaken assumptions based on the inferences they themselves made off the well crafted fiction of the author. (Earlier Scott Card Works, C.S. Lewis, Heinlen, etc.)
The problem is, as is often the case, when financial considerations outweigh creativity, doing something new, or exploring a hotly contested topic that normal people have been emotionally rather than objectively exploring.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday May 28 2017, @04:49PM (1 child)
I've heard the Hugo has been compromised by ballot box stuffing
Yes, and it's easy to do, albeit expensive. You can buy as many memberships as you want, and each one gets a vote. Not the Nebulas.
Plus, I wonder if storytelling needs a makeover. Writing is such a stodgy way of telling a story.
Your youth is showing. The magic of the written word is that a movie or comic book (calling them "graphic novels" doesn't change their childishness; I gave them up when I was seven after Batman taught me to read) is when you watch a movie, everyone in the theater hears the same voices and sees exactly the same thing; everyone sees the same story. With a book, no two people read the same story!
in those cases where a story is available in both book and movie forms, in most cases the book is better
That's been my observation, although the books We Were Soldiers, and Young and True Grit were terrible. The first was a dry scholarly tome, dryer than a government report, and the latter was just poorly written, but the movies were excellent.
Of course, if you have dyslexia or some other reading disability the movie is always better.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday May 29 2017, @08:13AM
> Your youth is showing.
Better than my age showing? Batman, yeah. Superhero stories are in many ways childish fantasies. They require a whole lot of suspension of disbelief, often too much. But why should that ruin the format? I thought Art Spiegelman's Maus was excellent. I also enjoyed Knights of the Dinner Table.
I feel Hollywood underemphasizes the storytelling, and could do so much better at that part, if they wanted to. They are awesome at the visuals. Able to recreate the look and feel of just about any era in history, make up completely fantastic science fiction or fantasy settings, spend gobs of money on explosions and amazing stunts, and so forth. They didn't used to be so fussily thorough about it. Like many of the 1960s Star Trek sets and scenes look cheap and fake compared to later series, and the 60's Batman TV series, with fight scenes covered over with comic art words such as "pow", is really weak. But they're a lot better now. If only they'd devote as much effort to the stories. Terminator 2, for instance, is a terrible story, with a lot of just plain stupid plot elements. Seems the audience was supposed to be so jazzed by the special effects they wouldn't notice. By today's standards, the special effects are nothing special, which makes the crap story inescapably obvious.
Anyway, it's not the fault of the format that so many of the stories are butchered, that's Hollywood's fault. But movie making is becoming more and more possible for anyone to do, and I believe that is a good thing. Competition will push them to improve.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by SixGunMojo on Friday May 26 2017, @11:51AM (2 children)
The inability to censor the truly bad posters, the deplorable expendables, has doomed a bastion of free speech.
Oh, the fucking irony.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @03:14PM (1 child)
There is no irony. There is just an obvious lesson that you've failed to learn.
Shittiness begets more shittiness.
Take a shit in a cistern and pretty soon the entire container is teeming with bacteria.
Tarchus is a creature grown in the uncontrolled pollution fed by those posters.
Clean up the shit and guys like tarchus go away too.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday June 01 2017, @09:48PM
Stupid, hateful, ignorant, uneducated, Republican, racist, denying, and sexually twisted posts drive out good posts. No one wants to read that. It is like finding a place where there is shit all over the sidewalks. Better to just avoid the neighborhood.
Some of the best of us no longer post. It is just not worth all the stupidity and ignorance, and of course, fear and loathing. Soon, there will be no need of censorship, because all the people who are worth listening to will be dead on a train at the hands of a shit poster advocating "free speech" for vile stupid ideas.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday May 26 2017, @09:33AM (1 child)
I have seen ghost-towns before. Tumbleweeds and 14-year-olds posting teenage attempts at porn. The mine has run out.
I assume you're talking about the SFWA?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday May 28 2017, @04:55PM
No, he isn't. The SFWA's comments are moderated. There are few posted. The site itself is geared to writers, of course, and they update it two or three times a week. Most articles there wouldn't appeal to anyone who doesn't write, with the occasional exception.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday May 26 2017, @01:45PM (1 child)
The mine is too full.
I consider myself a scifi fan and have read tons of sci fi and enjoy it, but the only book in the entire "competition" I've read is about a quarter of "Ninefox gambit" which it certainly creative as heck and enjoyable so far, but it didn't win.
There's almost no one who can say anything useful about any of the topic. There was a previous discussion which was interesting but all thats happened since is I've read a couple non-sci fi books and gotten a start on ninefox which is pretty good so far. There's really nothing to say about the winners being announced.
If anyone wants to talk about ninefox
1) The hard story elements are pretty intriguing. There's enough content to make a pathfinder paper and pencil RPG source book out of ninefox. Sort of a variant sorcerer. Its almost a new genre.
2) The soft story elements are completely unimpressive. With respect to the above comment about paper and pencil RPGs I'm not talking an adventure path, I've seen better story from noob tween gamemasters. Given the "lite" nature of the competition this probably doesn't help.
3) I can't imagine a book less well suited to Hollywood. Then again Hollywood has abandoned everything but sequels and remakes. I think its interesting that giving up on Hollywood frees authors to try new things. Lack of creativity in one field leading to creativity in another field. Aside from Hollywood sucking, even if it didn't suck, this kind of warfare does not appear translatable to film.
Part of the trouble is theres a couple thousand here, a fraction are into sci fi, a fraction read modern stuff regularly, the marketplace is so huge that the odds of a collision where two of us can talk about a book while others watch on, are low. We're talking like single digits of people here have read ninefox and can talk about it, and much fewer have "read it all".
mcgrews story is nicely formatted, its a topic I like, everything appears factually correct, there's just almost nothing we can say about it. Some of the cooler academic science stories are like that. As a meta comment, something in the feed resulting in "hey thats interesting and cool and I'm glad someone researched and submitted the story" but not resulting in commenting is not necessarily a failure nor is it unwanted. In fact it would be missed were it not there. I like this story submission, theres just not a heck of a lot to say or discuss.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday May 28 2017, @05:05PM
Science fiction has changed drastically in the last fifty years. Most of it is dystopian enough to make 1984 look like a happy book by comparison. A couple of exceptions are Stephen King's 11/22/63 and Andy Weir's The Martian, both good old-fashioned SF yarns. Both deserved Hugos and Nebulas, neither got one (although Wier got "Best New Writer" at last year's Hugo convention, four years after he published The Martian).
Give credit to the editor, who greatly improved my submission.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @07:07AM (3 children)
Only three ways to say "not a large book"? Surely there are more.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday May 26 2017, @07:50AM
-- https://letterpile.com/writing/Difference-Between-A-Short-Story-Novelette-Novella-And-A-Novel [letterpile.com]
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday May 26 2017, @12:45PM
Yes, there are very many ways.
Hovercraft, mongoose, embryo, traffic warden, God, navy, Tuesday, eel, bohemian earspoon. These things are also not a large book. I could go on.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday May 28 2017, @05:08PM
They have specific meanings. A story over 40,000 words is a novel, from there to 17,500 is a novella, there to 7500 is a novelette, under that is a short story. Flash Fiction is generally anything under 1000 words, although F&FS magazine considers anything under 2000 words to be flash.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by aim on Friday May 26 2017, @01:48PM (12 children)
I don't have much use for fantasy, even if I did like LOTR or Earthsea.
Most of these are fantasy, one steampunk. Only "Arrival" qualifies for science fiction, but it's been a great movie for me. We'll see what the Hugos bring.
Any recommendations for recent SF, preferrably hard SF?
(Score: 1) by morrowwm on Friday May 26 2017, @02:16PM
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday May 26 2017, @03:11PM (7 children)
Any recommendations for recent SF, preferrably hard SF?
Sure! Stick with stuff that's decades old. SF is dead now, along with every other form of entertainment: movies, music, etc. There's a few gems these days, but they're very rare. Game of Thrones is a good example here, but of course that too is fantasy. SF is pretty much gone now, so just collect older stuff and re-watch or re-read that. Same goes for most other media and genres.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @06:49PM
Science Fiction isn't dead. Just look at stories like "The Martian."
I'll agree that it's less common than in the past, though. It's just like how the "Mystery" genre has evolved away from having... you know... mysteries in them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by butthurt on Friday May 26 2017, @10:19PM (2 children)
Someone (I forget who) remarked that we tend to forget the dreck of the distant past, while noticing current dreck. Besides that, we probably tend to preserve the best works of the past and discard the dreck.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday May 27 2017, @01:25AM (1 child)
Yeah, that''s the ol' "95% of everything is crap" thing. The problem is, there is a such thing as a "heyday", or "golden era". So, for instance, let's look at "hair metal" or "glam metal", in case you like that sort of thing. It only really existed in the 1980s, with bands like Motley Crue, Poison, RATT, Bon Jovi, etc. It hadn't yet evolved before the early 80s (KISS was probably the forerunner, going back to the mid 70s), and it died out in the early 90s. There are no such bands any more, except maybe a few of those same bands trying to milk the nostalgia factor for a continued living. There's certainly no such new bands now.
For sci-fi books, maybe I'm out of touch but I don't think so based on these awards in the last decade or so: you just don't see stuff like Heinlein, Pohl, Clarke, Herbert, etc. any more. Sure, there was dreck back then too, I'm not disputing that, but there were some real shining stars too. Where's the shining stars today? They don't exist.
This isn't to say that everything is bad these days. Fantasy movies/TV are a lot better than the 80s and before, for instance. We have Game of Thrones now which is a huge hit, in the last decade we had LotR movies. What did we have like that decades ago? Probably the closest was Conan, and a few other rather silly movies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @03:24PM
> Where's the shining stars today? They don't exist.
China Miéville
Paolo Bacigalupi
Lois McMaster Bujold
Neal Stephenson
N. K. Jemisin
> So, for instance, let's look at "hair metal"
Its crazy funny that you would make an analogy to music. Literally the most stereotypical form of entertainment where old people bemoan the lack of quality in the new generation. If you don't watch yourself, pretty soon you'll be yelling at the kids to get off your lawn.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday May 28 2017, @05:17PM (2 children)
Ah, the "golden age". Kids today seem to be in love with fantasy and dystopia. As to old books, there are so many that have been written that it would be physically impossible to read all of them; there are over 50,000 at Gutenberg alone. Asimov wrote over 500 on his own, although a number of them are nonfiction.
Also, I remember reading some real clunkers back in the day (like "1984", although I enjoyed "Animal House").
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 30 2017, @02:49AM (1 child)
The kids are into dystopia, yes: you can see that with the movies that clearly cater to young people, like Hunger Games and Divergent.
However, if by "fantasy" you're referring to Game of Thrones, that's not something catering to kids at all, that's a phenomenon that cuts across age groups, and if anything seems to be clearly for adults (25+). Most of the people I know who I would talk to about such things love GoT, and they're all 30+ and even over 50. I can't even count all the women I saw on online dating sites listing GoT as one of their current interests, and these were all in their 30s-40s. GoT is definitely not for teenagers; its actors aren't that young (a few are, but not that many), and the themes and plot aren't simplistic enough for teens by a long shot.
I think the preoccupation with dystopia is apt, though: it shows what that generation sees in the future, and it isn't pretty. It's probably not that accurate though: those dystopian stories still show a functioning society of sorts, with technology. I think the future is going to look a lot more like "The Walking Dead" or "28 Days Later" or maybe that TV show "Jeremiah" or perhaps "Mad Max".
1984 wasn't a clunker. It might seem a bit clunky from a modern point-of-view because it clearly failed in predicting technologies, and it was overly pessimistic with its timeline (just like optimistic sci-fi like "2001" predicted good developments happening 50-100 years too early, "1984" predicted bad developments happening at least several decades too early). But 1984 made some good points, such as how controlling language can control people's thinking, and the whole bit about manufactured wars and a constant state of war.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday May 30 2017, @02:02PM
I never watched Game of Thrones, as I'm not into fantasy, but I did take a photo of my daughter sitting on the throne. It was the 1960s when I read 1984, and what turned me off was the dystopia itself.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday May 26 2017, @03:30PM
Recently read Startide Rising on an airplane. Was interesting to see what sentient Dolphins in space would be like. I think it's from late 80's though.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Saturday May 27 2017, @04:58AM
Greg Egan is great for hard SF. I recently read Permutation City, and I loved the amazing ideas it contained and got me thinking about.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday May 28 2017, @05:12PM
Same here, with the exception of Tolkien and Pratchett; Pratchett's books are hilarious. However, I'v found that the SF stories in F&FS magazine are far better (in my opinion) than the pure SF magazines.
The two best SF books I've read in the last few years ar "11/22/63" and "The Martian". And my own, of course ;)
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org