Nebula Award Winners
Posted on May 7, 2006 Posted by John Scalzi 15 Comments
For those of you on the edge of your seat wondering who won the Nebula Awards this year, you can now fall off your seat:
Novel: Joe Haldeman for Camouflage
Novella: Kelly Link for “Magic for Beginners”
Novelette: Kelly Link for “The Faery Handbag”
Short Story: Carol Emshwiller for “I Live With You”
Script: Joss Whedon for Serenity
And the winner of the first Andre Norton award for Young Adult science fiction or fantasy is Holly Black for Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie. Harlan Ellison was made a Grand Master; William F. Nolan was proclaimed Author Emeritus.
I’m particularly happy for Kelly Link, because she’s a friend of mine; “The Faery Handbag” also won the Hugo, so it’s an award-winning hit no matter how you look at it. And winning two Nebulae in a year has got to be a nice feeling. Congratulations to all the winners, however.
However….however, what?
Oh and to keep my fan-boy cred, OMW is the bee’s knees. Just finished re-reading it for a fourth time and it gets better with each reading. Thanks for giving this to me John!
Bill Marcy:
“However….however, what?”
Well, however in, “although I have singled out Kelly Link, My joy extends to all the winners.”
Grace in the face of defeat, is class. It comes through, even in your liberal rants John .
Thanks! I try to live in grace. Although I should note for clarification that I was not nominated for a Nebula this year (or, indeed, ever, so far). I do hope to be equally complimentary in the case of not winning the Hugo this year, however. Fortunately, it’ll be easy because I like all the books.
We live in a universe of Shoulda’s John.
I, for one, am happy to see Joss win. I think that Firefly represented some of the best Science Fiction on TV ever and Serenity was a great Sci Fi movie.
I also thought Buffy was one of the best written TV shows as well.
I recently read the Magic for Begginers anthology, and “Magic for Beginners” and “The Faery Handbag” were my favorite stories in there. They’re both pretty amazing.
I kind of wasn’t into Serenity, though. For me, it was kind of like Firefly with all the awesome removed.
YAY HARLAN!
I think I shall crack open my copy of Stalking the Nightmare, and reread “The 3 Most Important Things In Life”.
Finally, some props for Joss! This man has deserved some awards recognition for SO many years, it’s insane. It’s rather like Susan Lucci not winning that soap award forever. Anyone who’s a Buffy fan will know that episodes like Hush, and The Body were some of the best-written stuff that’s ever been on tv, yet no love from the awards voters! While Firefly & Serenity generally weren’t up to the level of the best Buffy stuff, it was still great.
And by the way, I *am* a leaf on the wind! :)
Well, Joss’s work *has* won a Hugo–the Buffy episode “Conversations With Dead People”, which he had an (uncredited) hand in scripting.
Anyone who’s a Buffy fan will know that episodes like Hush, and The Body were some of the best-written stuff that’s ever been on tv, yet no love from the awards voters!
And there are no awards for season-long story arcs, which, to my mind, was the real strength of Buffy.
And who could forget the superb third season that culminated in the complete and utter destruction of Sunnyvale High School? I mean, que up Alice Cooper and shout “School’s out for-evah!”
More nuanced was the extended exploration of the line between good and evil embodied in the Buffy-Faith dynamic.
Some great writing that often transcended the genre.
Anyone who’s a Buffy fan will know that episodes like Hush, and The Body were some of the best-written stuff that’s ever been on tv, yet no love from the awards voters!
Indeed. I read an article that suggested that the major reason for the musical episode was actually a dare to the judges to deny him the ‘Best Musical’ award. You know, since it was the only musical that year.
I loved the writing for Buffy. It struck the perfect balance between seriously treating the plot and using humor to avoid taking itself too seriously. However, after season five when Josh turned over the primary script writing over to his proteges the quality noticably declined.
John: Congrats that the paperback version of OMW is now in the top 600 in terms of Amazon sales rank.
I have a question about your non-fiction books, though. I read Rough Guide to the Universe and thought it was great. And my boyfriend has promised me your Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies for my birthday.
My question: why do you think that your novels have taken off so well, while the sales ranks for your nonfiction books (while respectable) are still not in the top 1,000?
According to the conventional wisdom of publishing, it would have been easier for you to make the top 1,000 with a nonfiction book, because readers are supposedly more open to nonfiction books from newcomers (which you aren’t now–but were when OMW was published.)
Does this mean that you will focus on novels in the future rather than nonfiction?
Renee, please see the next entry for the answer.