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2015 Nebula Award Winners Announced (sfwa.org)
Dave Knott writes: The winners of the 2015 Nebula Awards (presented 2016) have been announced. The Nebulas are voted on by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and (along with the Hugos) are considered to be one of the two most prestigious awards in science fiction. This year's winners are:
Best Novel: Uprooted , Naomi Novik
Best Novella: Binti , Nnedi Okorafor
Best Novelette: "Our Lady of the Open Road," Sarah Pinsker
Best Short Story: "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers," Alyssa Wong
Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Mad Max: Fury Road , Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris
Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy: Updraft , Fran Wilde
Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award: Sir Terry Pratchett
Kevin O'Donnell Jr. Service Award: Lawrence M. Schoen
2016 Damon Knight Grand Master Award: C.J. Cherryh
Best Novel: Uprooted , Naomi Novik
Best Novella: Binti , Nnedi Okorafor
Best Novelette: "Our Lady of the Open Road," Sarah Pinsker
Best Short Story: "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers," Alyssa Wong
Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Mad Max: Fury Road , Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris
Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy: Updraft , Fran Wilde
Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award: Sir Terry Pratchett
Kevin O'Donnell Jr. Service Award: Lawrence M. Schoen
2016 Damon Knight Grand Master Award: C.J. Cherryh
Did you know that Jews carried out the 9/11 attacks with the backing of Israel? Zionists have conspired to suppress this information and blame Muslims. It's obvious listening to recordings that the attackers had Israeli accents. The trail of money leads back to Mossad. Can anyone provide any real evidence to disprove these facts?
Also, this is NOT racist, despite the accusations leveled against me. It's no more racist to say that Jews did 9/11 than it is to say that Muslims did 9/11. I'm not saying all Jews are terrorists, which actually would be racist. I'm simply saying that Israel and Mossad were behind 9/11.
She's been due for the Grand Master award for decades.
sad
Four soppy stories clothed in sci-fi.
I'm surprised about Fury Road; I would have gone for The Martian.
Dystopias are still in fashion, I guess.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
No book in French this year :-(
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I guess no men wrote anything decent this year?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
So it looks like the Sad Puppies aren't able to influence the Nebula awards.
It would seem there is no Nebula equivalent of the Hugo's "Sad Puppies" campaign.
But but but, it's $CURRENT_YEAR, how come so many more female than male winners???!?!??!?!?!
The list of winners seems to be heavy with female authors.
I learned decades ago to avoid science fiction written by females after reading some Andre Norton crap. I developed a distaste for Norton's work before I ever learned that Norton was a woman, so my perceptions were not biased by gender.
Give me Heinlein, Asimov, van Vogt and maybe Clark.
I haven't paid much attention to SF/Fantasy or any other printed fiction since the mid 90s. I used to know the SF/Fantasy section of private bookstores very well. then as prices went up faster than inflation ($2 for a paperback in the early 80s, up to $5 by 1990, and it kept right on climbing) I got more conservative in my choices, buying only the latest of a series from a big name author, not taking a chance on a new author. Tried relying on lists of award winners. Finally I quit. Had enough of the publishing industry's crap, such as the practice of putting out an expensive hardback edition first, delaying the paperback for a year. I was also very annoyed with the fanatic Scientologists for gaming the system to boost L. Ron Hubbard's garbage to #1 bestseller status, and I heard recent Hugos are similarly compromised?
Most damning of all is for SF to deliberately inject bad propaganda about print publishing itself. We can read about all kinds of fantastically futuristic technologies, unless it's something that replaces the printing press or copyright law? Maybe it's okay for other genres to ignore this issue, but SF must not if it wishes to remain good, insightful, and relevant. The Internet and the ability to copy massive amounts of text rapidly and easily hasn't been futuristic SF for at least 20 years now, and any SF that pretends otherwise can't help but be stupid. The "I, Mudd" Star Trek episode has a little dialog about death being the penalty for violating intellectual property rights. Yeah, Hollywood wishes!
I wonder if the SF awards even look at works that are available online only, no printed edition. Took the music world entirely too long to warm up to video game music.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Is there any hard sci-fi among them? I am starving for good hard sci-fi.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
It's not really SF anymore when Bruce Sterling put up stuff on the net for free in the mid 1990s!
What the difference between Novel, Novella, Novelette and Short Story? I guess all them translate to the same thing for me.
I don't place any value at all in these awards anymore, not after what the puppies showed to be true regarding the Hugos. And that sucks for the actual and talented authors out there that no longer get the spotlight they deserve for doing an excellent job.
I'm not sure if that's a win for the ideologues, but it's damn sure a loss for the actual writers.
Try 3-body Problem. It may be a slow start, though and I don't think it was a nominee. For that matter, I'm not sure it's a current-year book, but it was a good read.
I think The Water Knife was on the list, though.
In a sense, Dan Brown's Inferno is sci-fi, although like all his books, it's as much about arcana and action as about what-if. And mass-market writing, of course. Just heard it's coming out as a movie.
Women don't write hard science fiction, therefore hard science fiction doesn't deserve awards.
I realize that your misogyny wasn't intentional here, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to report you to the authorities for advocating against female superiority. It's nothing personal, mate. But I don't want to risk losing my housing and food privileges if I don't. I hope you understand.
Looks like a bunch of fantasy dressed up as sci-fi to me.
How did these things win?
Try 3-body Problem. It may be a slow start, though and I don't think it was a nominee. For that matter, I'm not sure it's a current-year book, but it was a good read.
I think The Water Knife was on the list, though.
In a sense, Dan Brown's Inferno is sci-fi, although like all his books, it's as much about arcana and action as about what-if. And mass-market writing, of course. Just heard it's coming out as a movie.
So none of the winners is hard sci-fi?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
You're looking at an award. Please. If you want something worth reading you're wrong here. This is about making people feel good, not telling you what's worth reading.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The plot: "Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood."
Hasn't these "evil authority takes young attractive teen from the population for nefarious purposes" plots been done to death? Maze runner, hunger games, etc. Get a new idea already.
Let's give it to women and minorities, because they either (a) suffered under oppression or (b) achieved less, and we can't consider b because then we're not all equal and our entire system of government is invalid.
IMHO the Mad Max movie, as good as it was (and I liked it), shouldn't even qualify. It's not Sci Fi.
"Try 3-body Problem. It may be a slow start, though and I don't think it was a nominee. For that matter, I'm not sure it's a current-year book, but it was a good read."
The second or third volume of Cixin's trilogy probably is, though.
One of the nominees, "Ancillary Mercy," by Ann Leckie is sci-fi.
Also, folks are recommending "Three Body Problem" which was nominated for a Nebula in 2014 and won the Hugo for best novel in 2015. It's the first book of a series, and is sensational.
I don't know how "hard" your "hard sci-fi" definition runs, if 3-Body isn't hard sci-fi, then I'd probably have to strike off Robert L. Forward's "Dragon's Egg" and Clarke's "2001 A Space Odessy" for starters.
Brown is primarily action/adventure, but the prime motivator is more based on real-world science than the Andromeda Strain.
Water Knife has certain parallels with A Canticle for Leibowitz, although more immediate.
Along with other "why don't men?" questions, somewhere along the line someone founds a committee, some group co-opts the committee and what came before, becomes something else and men go and do something else more interesting instead.
Then some one forms a committee.
In other news, dystopia has been done, show some more imagination, we get that bad is bad. Zombies are not science fiction, neither is Doctor Who. Before any script writer starts including babies and coffee mornings they should know it's over and move on. Just coz it happens doesn't make it interesting.
Cisfemale hunnies only have as much power as you give them... they don't know how to have power any other way without white knights constantly beating down assigned males who would question their privilege.
The Three-Body Problem IS hard SciFi. Well... it starts as such. Sorta.
But then the supposed hard SciFi turns into science fantasy with deus ex machinae around every corner.
A big part of the story is about aliens building a proton-sized computer by "folding-out" a proton to 11 dimensions, then folding it back in.
Which would not be such a huge problem - if the said alien civilization wasn't forced to invade Earth on account of its own solar system's inhospitableness reaching critical levels.
Said civilization also has 1/100th of light speed capability (and faster) ships and other really advanced tech, their home is HIGHLY inhospitable (far more than say... Mars) and unstable - yet there is simply no other solution for them other than complete extermination of humanity.
A task in which they will be aided by Earthly pan-species-commies and ecologists.
No... Really.
And then there's the second book.
And boy... if you have a short fuse for "everyone is stupid" episodes of Star Trek or some other SciFi show where every otherwise smart character acts like a complete idiot in order to serve the plot... well...
"Because reasons" everyone on Earth decides to lay all their hopes into supersecret plans of 4 "wall facers" - scientists and statesmen who are given unquestionable and nearly unlimited authority to create supersecret plans to save humanity in the upcoming war with the aliens.
One of them being a slacker we meet at the beginning of the book.
Who is pining for an imaginary waifu he imagined on a dare - a stereotypical Chinese mail-order bride turned up to 11.
And then with the help of a detective friend and a global database of every human on the planet - he finds her.
Well... he finds a girl up to the specifications he imagined as "perfect". All the cringing while going through their romance does wonders for one's muscle tone though.
And then the day is saved by playing the Mutually Assured Destruction card in the pan-galactic game of Everyone Always Defects In Prisoner's Dilemma.
Meanwhile, ants still don't give a fuck.
Scifi in Liu's book isn't really bad... but the plotting is horrible with supposedly brilliant geniuses acting like complete idiots any time anyone walks through a door.
On the other hand, there is a built-in level of "strangeness" on account of cultural differences.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
... I feel dumber, just for having read that statement. I can award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
First; over-broad subject. Sue me, I had a character limit. :)
I haven't read all of them so this comment is specifically about "Our Lady of the Open Road." It reminded me strongly of Harlan Ellison, and a plethora of other authors whose names never made it into even semi-permanent storage because their work resonated so strongly with OhMyGodWouldTheyJustQuitPuttingWordsOnThePageForFucksSake. I hate them, because I'm strongly OCD and have a very hard time putting down a piece of text without making it to the end, and by the time I have made it that far I'm scanning as fast as I can. I guess in some ways I'm waiting for some mystical payoff where it turns out to be a gem. It doesn't happen.
I am so sick to death of how people praise "I have no mouth and I must scream." It. Is. DULLLLLL. A sustained assault on the wrists of my mind with a dull butter knife.
That's what I was thinking of the whole time I read this story.
Ah. I feel better. Carry on.
And boy... if you have a short fuse for "everyone is stupid" episodes of Star Trek or some other SciFi show where every otherwise smart character acts like a complete idiot in order to serve the plot... well...
OK, I have enough data now to give the book a wide berth.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
"The three body problem" was nominated but didn't win a Nebula award.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I don't understand your complaint. Why is Trisolarian's plan to invade and conquer earth implausible? Just because they have advanced tech, somehow they should easily tame 3 suns orbiting in unpredictable manner? What if taking over earth is the best option they have? Or do you believe as in common scifi tropes advanced civilization must be friendly and preservation minded? The whole point of the books is advanced alien species can be extremely hostile. Also the wall-facer project is due to constant spying of the sophons sent by the Trisolarians, not just "because reasons".
It sounds like you missed the point of the books completely. The central theme is the author's offering his own explanation of the Fermi Paradox, the reasoning of which is quite compelling by a novel's standard. Yes the characterization is not the best, but if you appreciate the sci-fi aspect, those are easily tolerable.
Compared to other classic hard sci-fi, the 3 body problem is no less hard. Nearly all science elements are based on modern physics, for ex., the 11 dimension is straight from string theory. I'm sure there're inaccuracies here and there but we're not reading physics thesis here.
Actually, there's a much more fatal flaw.
The whole proton-folding scheme (I loved that one, BTW, finally found a use for all those hidden dimensions in String Theory), involves a stage where for part of the process, the unfolded proton is large enough to block out the sun(s).
At that very moment, they no longer needed to invade the Earth. Or, indeed, go anywhere. They had the technology to focus and direct the energy of their own suns, blocking them when they were too strong, aiming additional sunlight when they were too weak. I'm presuming that something as light as a single proton could be redirected far faster than the suns could move, and that furthermore, while a long-term solution to the 3-body problem might be impossible, it's almost certain that on a solar scale, it can be projected far enough to direct the solar shields safely.
So they could live quite happily right where they were until such time as their technology advanced to the level of being able to stabilize the suns themselves.
Of course, maybe the reason they continued on was that they were ruled by a party that considered "flip-flopping" to be the ultimate evil and couldn't discard a questionable strategy in favor of one notably more effective, but there we're leaving the realm of science fiction and descending into fantasy. Such pointless and irrational behavior would never happen in an intelligent species.
Look up Carbide Tipped Pens.
He has a story called "The Circle" in there, which he redid for Three Body Problem later.
It's about the emperor of China and his lead sage and building a computer made out of people.
Same thing happens at one point in the TBP... while the original story suffers from the same "Why is everyone acting stupid?" issues.
If you don't mind that story, you'll get through the books too.
He DOES have interesting ideas... but the reasoning behind how and why it all takes place is often strained.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I wouldn't call it "fatal", but debatable point. If memory serves me right, the sophons are a new tech for the trisolarians and they rushed it to send them to earth to stall human tech advance. The expansion process was quite fragile and not nearly weather proof as necessary. Plus invading earth also makes sure they wipe out a close neighbor who just started tech explosion, so the purpose is two fold.
I just think if one is hell bent to pick fault with a fictional work, there's bound to have plentiful holes. A reasonable standard is to compare the work with other similar work and I think 3 body problem doesn't stack too shabby at all.
Out of the list in the summary, the following are scifi:
1. Binti - looks like a run-of-the-mill war/coming-of-age story that is coincidentally set in space/galaxy. Not interested.
2. Our lady of the open road - definitely scifi, interesting premise. Will check this out, but not very excited.
3. Hungry daughters of starving mothers - this is neither scifi nor fantasy. A description found on the web: "It’s about terrible eating habits, generational isolation, & finding love in the big city." *snore*
4. Mad Max: Fury Road - Ummm...is this a fucking joke?
5. Updraft: looks like a nice fantasy story.
So have we no author remaining who writes hard scifi that is exciting and futuristic? Is this what we have been reduced to?
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Male writers saw the writing on the wall years ago. These days men have their sights on bigger prizes, like Woman of the Year.
There's been a lot of books considered hard SF that did as improbable a job on the science. So, instead of faster-than-light travel, we get computers made out of a single proton? Both are highly improbable, and both fit nicely into plots.
What mostly bothered me was how the Trisolarians managed to survive. The first time we see them, they also have infrastructure for dehydrating and rehydrating, including large buildings, and the occasional massive screw-up didn't seem to doom civilizations. Finally, we see them expecting something any time now that hasn't happened for hundreds of millions of years, and they can't even make a Beowulf cluster of unfolded protons to model the orbital mechanics in the system? So massive variations and catastrophes in the civilized period, but presumably hundreds of millions of years of evolution? It felt like more of a twisted artificial setting than I'm used to.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Wait until it starts gnawing on you that "dehydrating and rehydrating" is another way of describing hibernation.
I.e. Not only do those cataclysmic events DO NOT interrupt the progress of science (which is something Niven and Pournelle also figured out how to prevent, decades ago) - Trisolarans have an innate ability which allows them to colonize the galaxy at their leisure.
They should have been on both a much higher scientific level AND they should have already spread everywhere across the galaxy.
And forget about the protons.
Even as they are sending their ships towards Earth, and folding and unfolding protons, they still only realize that a Chaotic Era is starting when it already starts.
Not to mention that most their problems in previous Chaotic Eras, before they became capable of space flight, would have been solved by digging holes - not by building pyramids.
The whole thing is VERY contrived.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens