This Year's Nebula Award Nominees
01/05/2005 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
Some of this may be old new to most of our readers, but we have a lot of new readers who are not aware of the basic lore of science fiction, says Mark. The Science Fiction Writers Of America will award the Nebula Awards the last weekend of this month. Like the Hugos the Nebulas are awarded annually but unlike the Hugos, an item is eligible for two years, not one. The Awards will be announced at the 2005 Nebula Awards Weekend this year in Chicago, Illinois from Thursday, April 28 - Sunday, May 1. For those unfamiliar with the awards see.
The Nebula Award itself is a block of plastic or glass with a picture of a nebula embedded in it. (I always wondered how they did that.) This is the 41th year of the Nebula awards. In 1965 the first Nebula for a novel was awarded to Frank Herbert for some story he wrote about some desert planet. I am sure it was quickly forgotten. In any case--OK, I have not checked all the cases so I cannot be sure that is strictly true--In most cases anyway (or some ways) the nominations this year are:
Novels
PALADIN OF SOULS, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Eos, Oct 2003)
DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM, by Cory Doctorow (Tor, Feb 2003)
OMEGA, by Jack McDevitt (Ace, Nov 2003)
CLOUD ATLAS: A NOVEL, by David Mitchell (Sceptre, Jan 2004)
PERFECT CIRCLE, by Sean Stewart (Small Beer Press, Jun 2004)
THE KNIGHT, by Gene Wolfe (Tor, Jan 2004)
Novellas
"Walk in Silence," by Catherine Asaro (Analog, Apr 2003)
"The Tangled Strings of the Marionettes," by Adam-Troy Castro (F&SF, Jul 2003)
"The Cookie Monster," by Vernor Vinge (Analog, Oct 2003)
"The Green Leopard Plague," by Walter Jon Williams (Asimov's, Oct/Nov 2003)
"Just Like the Ones We Used to Know," by Connie Willis (Asimov's, Dec 2003)
Novelettes
"Zora and the Zombie", by Andy Duncan (SCI FICTION, Feb 4, 2004)
"Basement Magic," by Ellen Klages (F&SF, May 2003)
"The Voluntary State," by Christopher Rowe (SCI FICTION, May 2004)
"Dry Bones," by William Sanders (Asimov's, May 2003)
"The Gladiator's War: A Dialogue," by Lois Tilton (Asimov's, Jun 2004)
Short Stories
"Coming to Terms," by Eileen Gunn (Stable Strategies and Others, Sep 2004)
"The Strange Redemption of Sister Mary Anne," by Mike Moscoe (Analog, Nov 2004)
"Travels With my Cats," by Mike Resnick (Asimov's, Feb 2004)
"Embracing-The-New," by Benjamin Rosenbaum (Asimov's, Jan 2004)
"In the Late December," by Greg van Eekhout (Strange Horizons, Dec 22, 2003)
"Aloha," by Ken Wharton (Analog, Jun 2003)
Scripts
THE INCREDIBLES, by Brad Bird (Pixar, Nov 2004)
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT, by J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress (New Line Cinema, Jan 2004)
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, by Charlie Kaufman & Michel Gondry (Anonymus Content/Focus Features, Mar 2004)
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING, by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien (New Line Cinema, Dec 2003)
You have to hurry if you want to get even second class Nebula fandom. Long-timers will know that I have defined classes of fandom, though I usually refer to Hugos. As a refresher:
First class fandom goes to people who read the Hugo-winning novel before it was even nominated.
Second class fandom goes to people who have read the Hugo-winning novel after it was nominated but before it won.
Third class fandom goes to people who have read the Hugo-winning novel after it won but before the end of the year.
Fourth class fandom, awarded retroactively, goes to people who have read the Hugo-winning novel after the year it won.
Fifth class fandom goes to someone who can give the name of someone, real or fictional, associated with the Star Wars films or books.
Sixth class goes to people like your great-aunt Tilly and anyone else who is not in a higher class. (I suppose there are distinctions like greater and lesser Aunt Tillies.)
I usually define it in terms of the Hugo novel, but I guess we can split it up as having a Hugo Class of Fandom and a Nebula Class of Fandom.
Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 2005 Mark R. Leeper
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