I was unable to attend the Nebula Awards ceremony last night, but thanks to the magic of SFWA I watched the shindigs through the full-on glory of streaming video. Overall, I'm thrilled with the winners. As I mentioned when the finalists were announced, I believe this year's award represents some much needed generational change for our genre. This is still my view.
First off, I couldn't be more pleased with Eugie Foster and Paolo Bacigalupi winning. Eugie's story "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" was one of my favorite stories of 2009. Paolo's The Windup Girl was likewise my favorite novel of last year. As I wrote in my original review, The Windup Girl is a classic dystopian novel which deserves to be read and shortlisted for the major awards. While my review of Eugie's story was shorter, her tale stayed with me just like Paolo's novel.
In the other categories, I'm excited to see "Spar" by Kij Johnson and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente among the winners. And while I didn't win in the best novella category, I was thrilled "The Women of Nell Gwynne's" by Kage Baker took top honors. I'm ashamed that I didn't have a chance to read Kage's novella until after the Nebula nomination period had passed. It is a fine work and a fitting end to a career cut far too short.
It will be interesting to see how people react to these winners. One blogger is already calling this Nebulafail because he hates the short story and novel winners. I'm actually not surprised by this reaction and predict we will see more of it. Great stories do not appeal to all people--the surest way to tell that a story has a seed of greatness within is if half the readers love it and the other half hate it. And this has been the general reaction to many of this year's winners. While many people like myself have praised The Windup Girl, others have hated it or said it is simply a good first novel. Likewise with "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist..." which was overlooked by all of the year's best anthologies even as it made the shortlists for most of the biggest genre awards.
Still, I think the fact that these authors won this year's Nebula is indicative of what people will think about these works a decade or two from now. So congrats to all the winners and thanks to the SFWA for all the amazing work they do.
The Internet has really changed the game, I think. Not only do stories get significantly more attention based solely on the fact that you can talk about them with anyone, anywhere, and at anytime, but the net also serves as a gateway for people to express their opinions, positive and negative. I'm surprised there wasn't such a big stink last year. Maybe the SFF online community is finally catching up with everything else.
Posted by: SMD | May 16, 2010 at 12:06 PM
Sinner, Baker, Fabulist... was far any away the best story I read in 09 and it is completely wrong that it wasn't anthologized a dozen times. Creativity just isn't rewarded like it used to be.
Posted by: Weirdside | May 16, 2010 at 01:40 PM
SMD: I agree about the internet changing the game. And IMHO, it's about time the game was changed.
Weirdside: No argument from me about "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist..." I was also extremely irritated that it was overlooked by all the year's best anthologies. But as they say, success is the best reward, and Eugie's story is winning over readers and winning accolades without having been "blessed" as good by one of those anthologies.
Posted by: Jason Sanford | May 16, 2010 at 04:12 PM
I agree and disagree with the post, but the main point of disagreement: I think it's silly to say that these results will hold in a decade, or to say that they won't hold. It's somewhat insane puffery for anyone to think they can predict. In fact, I will come back in ten years and call you on this. :)
Posted by: Jeff VanderMeer | May 16, 2010 at 06:51 PM
Please do! :-)
Posted by: Jason Sanford | May 16, 2010 at 07:56 PM