The Nebula Awards annually recognize the best works of science fiction or fantasy
published in the United States during the previous year. The awards are
organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America,
a nonprofit association of professional science fiction and fantasy writers.
They were first given in 1966 at a ceremony created for the awards, and are
given in four categories for different lengths of literary works. A fifth
category for film and television episode scripts was given 1974–78 and 2000–09.
The rules governing the Nebula Awards have changed several times during the
awards' history, most recently in 2010. The Nebula Awards have been termed as
one of "the most important of the American science fiction awards".
Winning works have been published in special collections, and winners and
nominees are often noted as such on the books' cover. SFWA numbers the awards by
the year prior to the year the award is given in; the 2012 awards were presented
in San Jose, California on May 18, 2013, and the 2013 awards were presented in
San Jose, California on May 17, 2014. Award
The Nebula Awards are given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers
of America for the best science fiction or fantasy fiction published in the
United States during the previous year. The winner receives a trophy but no cash
prize; the trophy is a transparent block with an embedded glitter spiral nebula
and gemstones cut to resemble planets. The trophy itself was designed for the
first awards by J. A. Lawrence, based on a sketch by Kate Wilhelm, and has
remained the same ever since. Works are eligible for an award if they were
published in English in the prior calendar year. There are no written
rules as to which works qualify as science fiction or fantasy, and the
decision of eligibility in that regard is left up to the nominators and voters,
rather than to SFWA. Nebula Award nominees and winners are
chosen by members of the SFWA, though the authors of the nominees do not need
to be members. Works are nominated each year between November 15 and February 15
by published authors who are members of the organization, and the six works that
receive the most nominations then form the final ballot, with additional
nominees possible in the case of ties. Members may then vote on the ballot
throughout March, and the final results are presented at the Nebula Awards
ceremony in May. Authors are not permitted to nominate their own works,
though they can decline nominations, and ties in the final vote are broken, if
possible, by the number of nominations the works received.
History The first Nebulas were given in 1966,
for works published in 1965. The idea for such an award, funded by the sales
of anthologies collecting the winning works, was proposed by SFWA
secretary-treasurer Lloyd Biggle, Jr. in 1965. The idea was based on the Edgar
Awards, presented by the Mystery Writers of America, and hosting a ceremony to
present them at was prompted by the Edgar and Hugo Awards. The initial
ceremony consisted of four literary awards, for Novels, Novellas,
Novelettes, and Short Stories, which have been presented every year since. A
Script award was also presented from 1974 to 1978 under the names Best
Dramatic Presentation and Best Dramatic Writing and again from 2000 through 2009
as Best Script, but after 2009 it was again removed and replaced by SFWA with
the Bradbury Award. Prior to 2009, the Nebula Awards
employed a rolling eligibility system. Each work was eligible to qualify for
the ballot for one year following its date of publication. As a consequence of
rolling eligibility, there was the possibility for works to be nominated in
the calendar year after their publication and then be awarded in the
calendar year after that. Works were added to a preliminary list for the year
if they had ten or more nominations, which were then voted on to create the
final ballot. In 1970, the option was added for voters to select "no award" if
they felt that no nominated work was worthy of winning; this happened in 1971
in the Short Story category and in 1977 in the Script category.
Beginning in 1980 the eligibility year for nominations was set to the calendar
year, rather than December–November as initially conceived, and the SFWA
organizing panel was allowed to add an additional work. Authors were also
allowed to use the mass-market paperback publication of their books as the
beginning of their nomination period, rather than the initial hardback
publication. As a consequence of the combination of this rule and the rolling
eligibility, the 2007 awards, despite nominally being for works published in
2006, instead were all given to works initially published in 2005. Beginning
with the 2010 awards, the rolling eligibility system and paperback
publication exemption were replaced with the current rules.
Categories Beside the Nebulas, several other awards
and honors are presented at the Nebula Awards ceremony, though not necessarily
every year. Two of them are annual literary awards voted by SFWA members on
the Nebula ballot: the Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult
Science Fiction or Fantasy Book, inaugurated 2006, and the Ray Bradbury
Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, which replaced the Best
Script award in 2010. The others are the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award
since 1975 for "lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy", the
Author Emeritus since 1995 for contributions to the field, the Kevin
O'Donnell, Jr. Award for service to SFWA, and the Solstice Award since 2009
for significant impact on speculative fiction. All four are discretionary but
a Grand Master, selected by the officers and past presidents, has been named
every year for more than a decade. The Solstice Award may be presented
posthumously; in all, twelve have been awarded in five years to 2013.
Recognition The Nebula Awards have been described as
one of "the most important of the American science fiction awards" and
"the science-fiction and fantasy equivalent" of the Emmy Awards. Along
with the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award is also considered one of the premier
awards in science fiction, with Laura Miller of Salon terming it "science
fiction's most prestigious award", and Justine Larbalestier, in The Battle of
the Sexes in Science Fiction, referring to it and the Hugo Award as "the best
known and most prestigious of the science fiction awards". Brian Aldiss,
in his book Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, claimed that
the Nebula Award provided "more literary judgment" while the Hugo was a barometer
of reader popularity, rather than artistic merit, though he did note that
the winners of the two awards often overlapped. David Langford and Peter
Nicholls stated in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction that the two awards were
often given to the same works, and noted that some critics felt that the Nebula
selection reflected "political as much as literary ability" as it did not seem
to focus as much on literary talent over popularity as expected.
Several people within the publishing industry have said that winning or being
nominated for a Nebula Award has effects on the author's career and the sales of
that work. Spider Robinson in 1992, as quoted in Science Fiction Culture, said
that publishers "pay careful attention" to who wins a Nebula Award. Literary
agent Richard Curtis said in his 1996 Mastering the Business of Writing that
having the term Nebula Award on the cover, even as a nominee, was a
"powerful inducement" to science fiction fans to buy a novel, and Gahan Wilson,
in First World Fantasy Awards, claimed that noting that a book had won the
Nebula Award on the cover "demonstrably" increased sales for that novel.
There have been several anthologies collecting Nebula-winning short fiction.
The series Nebula Winners, published yearly by SFWA and edited by a variety
of SFWA members and renamed as the Nebula Awards Showcase series since
1999, was started in 1966 as a collection of short story winners and
nominees for that year. The sales of these anthologies were intended to pay
for presenting the awards themselves. The anthology The Best of the Nebulas,
edited by Ben Bova, collected winners of Nebula awards from 1966 through 1986
officially selected by SFWA members. The unofficial anthology Nebula Award
Winning Novellas, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, contained ten stories which
had won the novella award between 1970 and 1989.
See also List of joint winners of the Hugo and
Nebula awards List of science fiction awards
References Citations
Aldiss, Brian; Wingrove, David [1973]. Trillion Year Spree: The History of
Science Fiction. Paladin. p. 349. ISBN 0-586-08684-6.
Bacon-Smith, Camille. Science Fiction Culture. University of Pennsylvania
Press. ISBN 0-8122-1530-3. Card, Orson Scott. How to Write Science
Fiction and Fantasy. Writer's Digest Books. ISBN 0-89879-416-1.
Clute, John; Langford, David; Nicholls, Peter, ed. The Encyclopedia of Science
Fiction. ESF Ltd. Curtis, Richard. "15". Mastering the
Business of Writing. Allworth Press. ISBN 1-880559-55-2.
Franson, Donald; DeVore, Howard. A History of the Hugo, Nebula and
International Fantasy Awards. Misfit Press.
Larbalestier, Justine. The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction. Wesleyan
University Press. ISBN 0-8195-6527-X. Wilson, Gahan, ed.. First World Fantasy
Awards. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-12199-7. External links
Official website