Nebula Award Nominees Online

Embedded Geek writes "The SFWA has announced the preliminary ballot for the 2003 Nebula awards. As has become standard over the past few years, the various magazines with short fiction nominees have placed the stories online to order to increase their exposure to voters (here and here for example). This year, the SFWA has helpfully linked all the online versions (as well as Amazon links for the novels and movies) on their ballot page. Those that aren't directly posted are available for free PDA download at fictionwise. Worth checking out, even if you aren't going to the banquet."

Comments

no mention of sco's law suit

[stonebeat.org]

they didn't mention sco's law suit in the science fiction section. must not be a good repository. ;)

SWEET! 0wnz0red is up for best novellette...

[Behrooz]

Sweet... 0wnz0r3d is up for best novelette.

Highly cool, Cory Doctorow is bloody brilliant. If you haven't read 0wnz0red yet, go do it.

Phew.

[Dukael_Mikakis]

Forget the Oscars, Peter Jackson must be sighing relief that he got a Nebula "Premilinary Nomination".

Where's Lord of the Rings?

[-kertrats-]

I'm insulted that LOTR didnt get a nod this year. That book was a great work of fiction. I know it came out two years ago with Fellowship, but it didnt win that year either [wasnt even nominated! as if the thing had come out 46 years ago!]. Truely insulting to the fantasy genre.

Re:Where's Lord of the Rings?

[srmalloy]

I'm insulted that LOTR didnt get a nod this year.

Then you either didn't read down far enough, or didn't read closely enough. "Lord of the Rings:The Two Towers" is under 'Scripts' at the bottom of the page.

Connie Willis

[Beolach]

Connie Willis is one of my favorite SciFi authors. IIRC she has won more Nebula awards than any other author. Or maybe it was some other award. Anyway, she's really good. Excellent short stories in Impossible Things , many of which won the Nebula award, as did Doomsday Book . She has several other excellent SciFi books. Highly recommended.

Re:Connie Willis

[scotch]

I agree, her stuff is really engaging, even for non-science-fiction fans. The latest book of hers I read, Passage, while basically a good story and very touching, was way to long for the material. Willis communicates urgency, frustration, and dispair better than just about anyone, but it just went on a little too long in Passage.

Re:Connie Willis

[tbmaddux]

IIRC she has won more Nebula awards than any other author. Or maybe it was some other award.

Past winners are here for your reference. Connie Willis has won 6: best novellette for "Fire Watch" and best short story for "A Letter from the Clearys" in 1983. She won best novella for "The Last of the Winnebagos" in 1988 and best novellette for "At the Rialto" the following year. In 1992 she won best novel for "Doomsday Book," and best short story for "Even the Queen." It's worth pointing out at this point that both of those also won their respective Hugo awards.

Other big winners of Nebula awards are Ursula K. Leguin (with 5, with 3 for best novel), Greg Bear (with 5, 2 for best novel), Joe Haldeman (with 4, 2 for best novel), Samuel R. Delany (with 4, 2 for best novel).

Interesting film script options

[Coryoth]

I thought the "Scripts" section at the end was rather interesting. Nominees included:

- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
- Spirited Away

So, the question is - which of those is the most worthy?

Hmm, I wonder if we can have an anime fans vs. Tolkien fans flamewar? That might be fun :-)

Jedidiah

Re:Interesting film script options

[Darken_Everseek]

In terms of script; Spirited Away. TTT made a far better book than movie.

Re:Interesting film script options

[Coryoth]

In general I agree. I appreciate the difficulties of adapting a book like LoTR to screen, but in general, as a raw script, I feel Spirited Away was probably superior. On screen, LoTR was just more grand and breathtaking.

But what are you doing giving sensible reasoned replies? This is still Slashdot isn't it?

Jedidiah.

Re:Interesting film script options

[Coryoth]

I appreciate the difficulties of adapting a book like LoTR to screen

Codewords for "It sucked, but I am too much of a geek for my brain to be able to comprehend the fact."

Not really. What I was trying to say was that while the Lord of the Rings script was easier in the sense that it wasn't original material (and it was the originality and creativity of Spirited Away that made it stand out), it had its own difficulties in managing to adapt such a well loved book to screen - generally you'll either offend purists, or ordinary move goers, or both. I felt the script writers did an excellent job of treading that very difficult line, and it was an exceptional achievement.

In the end, on raw papaer, Spirited Away, with its near endless imagination, wins out though.

Jedidiah.

Re:Interesting film script options

[CAIMLAS]

If they're judging screenplays, it's one thing. A completed film is something else entirely.

Not only do you have the script, but you also have the work of the (voice) actors, the editors ( a massive undertaking, and quite undervalued my most people that have never done it), the soundtrack composer, the director (definately a biggie, particularly when considering an auteur director), and a miriad of othre factors thrown in.

Think of what any one of Quentin Tarantino's films would be like if he hadn't directed them; say they were directed by someone like Lucas or . They'd all have been shit, because for the most part, the scripts he uses don't stand out too much on their own. Each element makes up the sum of a film's quality.

Ack...no Ilium?

[Visceral Monkey]

Where's Ilium by Simmons?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0 380978938/ qid=1076123360/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-7360652-94254 22

Lets hope it at least gets nominated for a Hugo. Best book I've read in a long time.

On the other hand, I had no Idea that Resnick did a sequel to Santiago. Time to pick it up.

Fictionwise link is worthless

[fucksl4shd0t]

I tried the fictionwise link looking for the free downloads, but there weren't any. What a worthless link. I registered even, and tried adding the book to my shopping cart. Bastards.

Or did I miss something? :)

Re:Fictionwise link is worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

You are half right. The link doesn't show any free ebooks on that page, but there are free books if you scroll down and look for "Free eBooks" in the "Browse" section of the menu on the left side.

Re:Fictionwise link is worthless

[fucksl4shd0t]

Thank you! ACs aren't completely worthless after all. :)

Here it is for the rest of you lot.

Oryx and Crake

[alphaseven]

I'm surprised Oryx and Crake didn't make the list, Atwood had been nominated for the Nebula before and the novel did make the Booker shortlist. One of my favourite novels of last year.

Slashdot | Oryx and Crake

Tape delay?

[LostCluster]

Just how long will the Nebula Awards broadcast be delayed by the network just to make sure nothing untoward gets broadcast?

To Say Nothing Of The Dog

[devphil]

is absolutely incredible. Sci-fi, comedy, mystery, even a touch of romance thrown in there just to round things out. Mostly comedy, though. Very well written.

I voted for...

[banzai75]

404 error - Object Not found. That book changed my life

Re:SWEET! 0wnz0red is up for best novellette...

[int18]

*Bloody brilliant*? It's like early crap Bruce Sterling (if you thought Involution Ocean had a coherent plot, you're free to disagree), written by a script kiddie whose entire interaction with the entire world is via Slashdot.

Where's Quicksilver?

[zoward]

I was a little surprised not to see Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver on the list, a book I've heard many people (including one of the authors up for a Nebula in the Novel category) describe as a shoe-in for both the Hugo and Nebula. Did it not qualify due to time contraints or something?

I wish it was a parody

[Anonymous Coward]

A tech writer. Why not just break his goddamned fingers and poke his eyes out? Never write another line of code, never make the machine buck and hum and make his will real in the abstract beauty of silicon? Tech writers were coders' janitors, documenting the plainly self-evident logic of APIs and code-structures, niggling over punctuation and grammar and frigging stylebooks, like any of it mattered -- human beings could parse English, even if it wasn't well-formed, even if you had a comma-splice or a dangling participle.

hmm, the grammar is slightly better than most posts on slashdot, other than that, I'd give it a 2 out of 10. With a title like that I should have known. Any author that tells you writing doesn't matter on his first page is to be avoided. The story is dull, the subsidiary characters soft, and the obsession with extraneous detail (why is he telling me about a "his multi-tiered Swedish Disposable Moderne desque", it's really neither ironic nor even convincing as a parody of consumerism) is a bit tiring. And his choice of vocabulary, I mean really, how many times have I heard of machines bucking and humming, and abstract silicone. It reads like a poorly executed parody.

As for the dialog, I leave you with this quote:

"Dee-licious and noo-tritious,"

Junk food for the mind.