Nebula Awards

[jacey]

The Nebula award nominees have been announced here: http://sfwa.livejournal.com/312726.html

Needless to say not one thing I nominated has been shortlisted and I haven't actually read anything on the list at all. I'm not sure it's up yet, but they are supposed to be providing a voters' package for SFWA members, so hopefully I will be able to catch up with some of them before voting in March.

One observation is that (comparing this with last year's noiminees) that some writers seem to be the automatic go-to names when awards are on the table.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, with a heavy emphasis on SFWA officers. This is a very long pattern.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

That's a pity. I only got round to joining SFWA a few years ago and so I've never taken much notice of the Nebulas, but this year when the same names came up again I started to hear warning bells ringing. I'm not, of course, saying that the nominees are not very fine writers it's just that some of them I never see anywhere except on Nebula nomination lists.

I wonder how many nominations you need for something to make the shortlist.

There's a set of folk music awards in the UK and the voting committee consists of only 150 people. I've been told that it's possible to get an award with just 7 votes, especially on a year when a lot of the nominations are only suggested by singletons.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

SFWA has been messing with the Neb rules to try to cut down on logrolling, but I don't think that anyone can get past the popularity contest aspect of these things. It's so wired into human nature.