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2003 Nebula Awards
seattlenerd writes "The 2003 Nebula Awards were awarded late Saturday night in Seattle (for the first time ever) by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Winners: The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, "The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford, "What I Didn't See" by Karen Joy Fowler (the previous two both published on the SCI FICTION site), and the script for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Noteworthy were comments made by GrandMaster honoree Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison, who introduced Silverberg, along with guest speaker Rick Rashid of Microsoft Research. To say nothing of Cory Doctorow's acceptance speech he didn't get to make, but has made available for "alternate historians."" I was at Penguicon this weekend, along with Neil Gaiman - congrats to him on the win, and to all the others.
I picked up this book, expecting an original and exciting story. Instead I got a patronising modern-day Alice in Wonderland with a simplistic and unchallenging story, two dimensional charicatures for characters and a boringly predictable plot. It had no point. Try Darren Shan, Anthony Horowitz or Frank Cotteral Boyce instead.
I read Coraline for the first time this weekend. The book says it's for ages 8 and up, but this would have freaked the hell out of me when I was that young. It is definitely worth picking up if you like Gaiman's other stuff.
Congratulations to not only a great author, but also a great person.
:)
If you don't beleive me, read his journal at:
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp
Keep up the good work with your journal Mr Gaiman, in these dire times of terror attacks and economic instability, your journal gives us poor lost souls an interesting and inspiring reading and above all, hope.
For those who hasn't done so already, please consider reading American Gods and the Sandman stories they are great
I have an alternate angle on that. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but didn't the screenplay for The Two Towers totally fucking mangle the story? It might get a Nebula, but as far as I'm concerned you can flush it down the nearest Black Hole.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And in person, it's a very friendly arrogance. Quite a lot of successful F&SF writers have gone a long way on friendly arrogance. :)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Remember, this trilogy includes an Oscar under its belt for best editing. Read that again: the (complete) film is twelve and a half hours long. And it apparently was the best edited film in 2003. Does this make any sense? What was it before they edited it, twelve and a half days long?
I understand it's taken a certain amount of the popular imagination, and introduced children who would have just got the book and never ventured into a cinema to the magic of not reading, but this is absurd.
Still, I have no problems awarding it the Squiggy (2000) for "Best Open Source Application". An award, I'm sure you'll agree, is well deserved, it is, after all, a great trilogy, and a lot of people watched it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Can somebody tell me why some titles are in boldface whereas the others are double-quoted?
Oh, and naturally Gaiman is terrific a writer as well.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
The audio cd is phenomenal. Look for it used. If you don't want to pay full price. The author reads it really, really well. There is some spooky haunting music that accompanies it. Very nice and worth the effort to track it down. It is unabridged as well. See Coraline CD [UNABRIDGED]