Nebula Award Winners

jbennetto writes: "The Nebulas are out! The winning novel is A Quantum Rose, a SF/Romance backwater-standalone in a series of six books about an interstellar conflict between human empires. The author, Catherine Asaro, is a physicist. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won best script, and Jack Williamson, Kelly Link, and Severna Park won the short fiction catagories."

Comments

The Cure for Everything

[CmdrSanity]

How how how did this story win? I have a copy of it on my shelf and have read it three times. I think it's an average story but every time I read it, the plot flaws become more glaring. In fact, I once took a science-fiction writing course instructed by Joe Haldeman and we spent about 20 minutes just discussing inadequacies in this story's plot development. So what I want to know, sincerely, is if any of you Slashdotter's have read this short, then what were your impressions and what makes it an award winner? The reason I ask is that after spending time analyzing the techinical flaws of the story, it came as a shock to see it praised so highly. If this piece isn't highly successful on a technical level, what parts compensate and what makes it so enjoyable?

Re:The Cure for Everything

[Anonymous Coward]

You can read it here.

Drat...

[belgin]

I was rather hoping that George R. R. Martin's _A Storm of Swords_ would win. However, I haven't read _A Quantum Rose_, so I can't compare it yet.

Anybody here read both of these books? If so, could you tell me what aspects of _A Quantum Rose_ really distinguished themselves and how it would compare to Martin's character-driven "realism"?

Thanks.

Re:science fiction?

[kubrick]

Yes, but I have always appreciated the 'speculative fiction' attitude that the best SF has. In that vein, once speculation becomes mainstream, SF is obliged to go further afield, looking at more outlandish possibilities or literary forms... SF defines itself by its difference from 'normal' work (as a field, anyway, even if individual authors write stuff that could be classed as, e.g., neo-noir detective fiction (much of cyberpunk)).

Authors like Disch and Vonnegut managed to cross over quite successfully (and others tried and failed, e.g. PKD, although I quite like his 'mainstream' novels -- as if anything he wrote could ever be considered normal :)

(It's too early and pre-coffee in the morning for me to take these ideas any further, or back up any of my assertions, but I would at least try to if I weren't feeling this misanthropic at the moment. Sorry. :)