The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America are pleased to announce the 2015 Nebula Awards winners (presented 2016), as well as the winners for the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation and Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Annual Nebula Awards Weekend was held at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, Illinois, from May 12th through May 15th, 2016. The weekend included tours and workshops, plus the prestigious 50th Annual Nebula Awards hosted by comedian John Hodgman, taking place on May 14th.
Nominees are listed below, with winners in bold.
Novel:
Winner: Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
Raising Caine, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu (Saga)
Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, Lawrence M. Schoen (Tor)
Updraft, Fran Wilde (Tor)
Novella:
Winner: Binti, Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
Wings of Sorrow and Bone, Beth Cato (Harper Voyager Impulse)
‘‘The Bone Swans of Amandale’’, C.S.E. Cooney (Bone Swans)
‘‘The New Mother’’, Eugene Fischer (Asimov’s 4-5/15)
‘‘The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn’’, Usman T. Malik (Tor.com 4/22/15)
‘‘Waters of Versailles’’, Kelly Robson (Tor.com 6/10/15)
Novelette:
Winner: ‘‘Our Lady of the Open Road’’, Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s 6/15)
“Rattlesnakes and Men’’, Michael Bishop (Asimov’s 2/15)
‘‘And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead’’, Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed 2/15)
‘‘Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds’’, Rose Lemberg (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/11/15)
‘‘The Ladies’ Aquatic Gardening Society’’, Henry Lien (Asimov’s 6/15)
‘‘The Deepwater Bride’’, Tamsyn Muir (F&SF 7-8/15)
Short Story:
Winner: ‘‘Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers’’, Alyssa Wong (Nightmare 10/15)
‘‘Madeleine’’, Amal El-Mohtar (Lightspeed 6/15)
‘‘Cat Pictures Please’’, Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld 1/15)
‘‘Damage’’, David D. Levine (Tor.com 1/21/15)
‘‘When Your Child Strays From God’’, Sam J. Miller (Clarkesworld 7/15)
‘‘Today I Am Paul’’, Martin L. Shoemaker (Clarkesworld 8/15)
Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation
Winner: Mad Max: Fury Road, Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris
Ex Machina, Written by Alex Garland
Inside Out, Screenplay by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley; Original Story by Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen
Jessica Jones: AKA Smile, Teleplay by Scott Reynolds & Melissa Rosenberg; Story by Jamie King & Scott Reynolds
The Martian, Screenplay by Drew Goddard
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Written by Lawrence Kasdan & J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt
Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy:
Winner: Updraft, Fran Wilde (Tor)
Seriously Wicked, Tina Connolly (Tor Teen)
Court of Fives, Kate Elliott (Little, Brown)
Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan UK 5/14; Amulet)
Archivist Wasp, Nicole Kornher-Stace (Big Mouth House)
Zeroboxer, Fonda Lee (Flux)
Shadowshaper, Daniel José Older (Levine)
Bone Gap, Laura Ruby (Balzer + Bray)
Nimona, Noelle Stevenson (HarperTeen)
C. J. Cherryh is the 32nd Damon Knight Grand Master.
About the Nebula Awards
The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of SFWA. SFWA Active members voted between March 1 and March 30 of this year.
So all the awards went to women — except for the Bradbury, which went to a movie that had by far the best female characters in any action movie of the last twenty years.
I’m going to bed happy with my genre tonight.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I don’t get it, I read Uprooted and just thought is was ok. Everybody RAVED about it,but I fail to see what makes it so good. I mean in the end it’s just an opinion, but it has made every award list for genre writhing so there’s gotta be some meat on that bone. I thought Seveneves, or The Library at Mount Char were the only books that really stood out as excellent for me in the last year.
Women always dominate the Nebulas.
I don’t know about the winners, but I wouldn’t sleep easy. Awards given as social statements, like with the 2001 Academy Awards, place such a big asterisk next to the award it distracts from the individual works being honored. It’s great making winners more diverse, but I think it would be better for all, women, men and transgender, if these things weren’t done quite so heavy-handed. Diversity works best when it’s truly diverse.
Sorry, but this list screams agenda, just as when awards with all male winners scream sexist agenda. In whatever direction, overcompensation comes across as inauthentic, clumsy and, frankly, juvenile on behalf of the awards.
Just one opinion. Congrats to the winners all the same.
Pat @2:
I loved “Uprooted” and think that it is a worthy nominee/winner, but I also loved “The Library at Mount Char” and think that it should have been on all the award shortlists/deserved to win as much as anything out there. I guess that all the triggers it contains damaged it’s chances.
OTOH, I found “Seveneves” disappointing and disliked “Updraft”, so there.
Novelette and short story winners are both good, though personally I would have chosen other things. But they are reasonable winners, IMHO. Didn’t read the winning novella. From the YA list I only read “Cuckoo Song”, which is excellent and “Updraft”, which see above.
Jamie @5:
What makes you think that it is the case of “Awards given as social statements” instead of just how the dice fell this time?
@6, I’m not Jamie, but when a decent but not top-notch book wins the Nebula, you have to wonder why people voted for it. Maybe it’s a delayed award for not having voted for a Temeraire book? Or maybe it’s something else. But Uprooted just was not Nebula-award worthy IMO of course. Though to be honest, I’m not sure any of the novels listed were. Those that I read among them weren’t.
And for the record, I don’t think Seveneves was either. Last year was a pretty lame one for sff as far as I’m concerned. But I though VE Schwab’s book could have been on the list. And Kate Elliot’s Black Wolves. Sorcerer to the Crown was as good if not better than Uprooted. I don’t know, it just seems like the list of nominees was full of the same old names.
I have to admit, I was really surprised that Mad Max: Fury Road won for best picture. It was good, sure, but Nebula worthy? I thought that The Martian, Inside Out and Ex Machina were all so much better, all more thoughtful, all more speculative, all better written. They all moved me in one way or another. Fury Road, on the other hand, was one big, long chase scene without much in the way or character development or anything. OK, seriously, who doesn’t love a flaming, mobile metal band? :-) Still and all, I don’t think it was a landmark in much of any way.
To my mind this doesn’t read like any kind of social agenda. I loved Uprooted. The book reads like a dream. In fact , the last novel I read that leapt off the page like that was The Name of the Wind. I haven’t read Binti, yet, but I’ve read Updraft and it was fantastic, though I admit I would have picked Archivist Wasp for the win.
So yeah, less social agenda and more some fucking awesome work from the females last year.
I will say that it’s a crime The Library at Mount Char didn’t make the shortlist, and I’m really surprised at the lack of love in all the lists for Alex Marshall’s A Crown for Cold Silver.
And how the hell Ex Machina didn’t win I’ll never understand. It’s like Forest Gump beating Pulp Fiction all over again.
Uprooted was the best book written this year and deserved to win all the awards, all of them. It was a masterpiece of standalone fiction in a world overrun with series. I loved the way it pulled the genre switch from YA romance to the sort of horror story that reminded me vividly of that old master Stephen King. It had complex characters in a richly developed with an interesting magic system. Though really, the best part of the book was of course its monster. I like the Temeraire books well enough but Uprooted is hands down Novik’s greatest achievement.
Wow, I’m really surprised by all the love people have for Uprooted. I mean, I enjoyed it, but I’ve gotta echo the people who say ‘decent but not top-knotch’.
Especially when it’s running against Ancillary Mercy, which is a better book by a whole order of magnitude!
Kate @7:
That’s the thing, though – I thought that “Uprooted” was great and fully deserving of all the nominations and now of this win. In fact, I thought that the trifecta of “Uprooted”, “The Fifth Season” and “Ancillary Mercy” that appears on a lot of shortlists this year is pretty uniformly great. However, only “Uprooted” among them is truly standalone – while the other 2 are being somewhat hampered in the awards (IMHO) by being respectively either the first book of a trilogy(?) which ends on a pretty blatant cliff-hanger, or being the conclusion of a trilogy and strongly depending on the previous installments, particularly on the one immediately preceding it, for the full impact of the pay-off.
Were there other excellent books among those that I have managed to read (IMHO, YMMV), that were not nominated? Sure.“The Library at Mount Char” foremost among them. But I notice that it is also absent from Gemmell award shortlist and IIRC was from Locus Award longlist as well. It’s grittiness probably harmed it’s chances, since it had strong early buzz. What can you do?
Oh, and I completely disagree that 2015 was a weak year for SF/F, IMHO it was pretty good, actually. And, personally, I picked up VE Schwab’s “A Darker Side of Magic” last year because of all the buzz and found it rather mediocre. Tastes, they do vary.
Basically, I have heard that it is typical to agree enthusiatsically with some of the award nominees/winners, see others as reasonable picks, but maybe not the very top personal favorites, and have at least one “what were they thinking?!” offering, and that’s my experience with the current Nebulas. So, things working as usual/intended, from my perspective.
For my money, Fury Road was very nearly a perfect movie, and certainly one of the best films of 2015. It’s a master class in worldbuilding without dialogue—there’s a deeply layered invented religion hiding between the explosions. And it confounded genre expectations at every turn. I’m very happy it won.
So, tastes vary, is my point. :)