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Nebula Award Winners

Posted by timothy on from the quick-they're-handing-out-nebulae dept.

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."

12 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Little things by GraZZ · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was looking at a Nebula last night, unfortunatly the Quantum Roses were too small to see (and whenever I tried looking for them, this punk Heisenberg told me I wouldn't be able to find them....)

    I didn't even bother looking for the Hidden Dragon.

    Karma, karma, everywhere, so let's all have a drink!

  2. I'd just like to say.... by mblase · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...that in light of the current climate for authors, musicians, etc. trying to protect their copyrights online to unnecessary extremes, it's very nice to see that two of the five Nebula winners (Novella, "The Ultimate Earth", and Short Story, "The Cure for Everything") are freely available online, along with many of the non-winning nominees as well.

    It's nice to know that professional literature can still be free, even if professional music often can't.

    1. Re:I'd just like to say.... by foobar104 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have nothing personal against mblase. I don't even necessarily disagree with what he/she/whatever said here.

      But I have to just butt in and say that I long for the days before every single story that got posted to Slashdot had one or more highly moderated comments like this one.

      Some people prefer to download music rather than buying CDs. Some people prefer to download movies rather than attending them or buying DVDs. Some people prefer to download books rather than buying them or borrowing them from their local library. There are evidently people out there-- although I don't mean to imply that mblase is one of them-- who believe they're entitled to free music, movies, books, and software.

      I prefer to believe that these people are in the minority. I prefer to think that the vast majority of people out there believe in working for a living. I prefer to think that most people take pride in their hard work, and reject the ethics of entitlement.

      But you wouldn't know it from reading Slashdot. Every damn day we see comments like this one: "It's nice to know that professional literature can still be free."

      How about we rephrase this comment. Will all due respect to mblase, I think what you really meant to say was: It's nice to know that these authors have been so generous and cool to release their stories for free on the Internet. They did not have to do this, but they were cool enough to do it anyway. Everybody go download them, and if you like them, buy the author's book.

  3. science fiction? by tps12 · · Score: 3, Funny
    I think we are at the beginning of a great increase in the popularity of science fiction.

    Never before has technology (the lingua franca of sci-fi) played such a role as it currently does, IMO. Meanwhile, the Sci-Fi Channel (could Jules Verne even have imagined such a thing in his wildest fantasies?) is among the fastest-growing cable channels on television, according to ratings.

    I'm thinking, maybe this stuff isn't just for antisocial nerds any more. Perhaps science fiction finally matters.

    It won't be long now before the Nebula awards are as popular, as talked about, as the Emmies or the Clios!

    Any thoughts?

    --

    Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
    1. Re:science fiction? by Nehemiah+S. · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Never before has technology (the lingua franca of sci-fi) played such a role as it currently does, IMO.

      Robert Heinlein wrote an editorial to John Campbell@Astounding/Analog to this effect circa 1956. It's pretty much been the staple belief of SF fans and writers everywhere, for as long as SF has been published -- with the publication of this series/book/etc, SF will be taken seriously. Next year, people will notice us.

      Unfortunately, it hasn't happened, for reasons which probably say more about the people that DON'T take it seriously than it says about anything intrinsic to the genre. There is such an incredible canvas of ideas available to the SF writer, so many ways to interpret or define the human experience that simply are not available to the standard ho-hum fictioneer; I think the general publics ignorance of SF is one of the great tragedies of our age.

      Well, maybe next year.

      Then again, the fact that the SFWA gave tripe like "Crouching Tiger" a major award makes me a bit ashamed to think these things...

      Rev. Neh

      --
      ... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
      where the eye of his telescope has already been
    2. Re:science fiction? by kubrick · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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. :)

      --
      deus does not exist but if he does
  4. The Cure for Everything by CmdrSanity · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

  5. In other awards... by Corporate+Drone · · Score: 5, Funny
    the Microsoft legal team wins in this year's "best technical fiction" category for their work on the remedy phase of the monopoly trial...

    --
    mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
  6. Re:Crouching Tiger? by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Informative

    As a SFWAn (i.e., a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) I'll answer this:

    SFWA, the organization which awards the Nebulas (and does lots of other stuff as well -- check out the Web site) is an organization for writers of both science fiction and fantasy, as the name implies. And yes, it was originally the Science Fiction Writers of America -- and then, briefly, SFFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, before we decided that changing a well-known acronym like SFWA (prounounced "sif-wa") was pointless, and held a vote to make the acronym SFWA regradless of what the actual name was -- and yes, the Nebulas have generally been dominated by science fiction at the expense of fantasy, but a) fantasy has gained a lot of ground over the last couple of decades, both critically and commercially, and it would be silly to ignore that, and b) the dramatic Nebulas (when we've awarded them -- we haven't always) have generally been a bit broader-based that the literary Nebulas, in recognition of the fact that Hollywood often turns out some really good SF/F while avoiding those labels for marketing reasons.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  7. Jack Williamson by Some+Pig! · · Score: 4, Informative

    Jack Williamson, one of the winners, is 94 years old today. Warmest congratulations!

  8. Drat... by belgin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --

    B. Elgin
    "Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
  9. Re:"Quantum Rose" is a really cheesy title by Broccolist · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If you had seen the ghastly cover you would've liked it even less.

    And egads! That excerpt!

    Unease prickled Kamoj. She treaded water, her hair floating in swirls around her body, wrapping her slender waist and then letting go. Her reflection showed a young woman with black curls framing a heart-shaped face. She had dark eyes, as did most people in Argali, though hers were larger than usual, with long lashes that at the moment sparkled with drops of water.

    Ugh! Augh! This stuff won an award? It's so bad it makes me wince.

    I couldn't have done worse if I had made a special effort to be cliche. Describing someone with a reflection? "Heart-shaped face?" And that "at the moment," as though intentionally placed to break rhythm. I hadn't realized the Nebula people were so tasteless.