Nebula Awards

The Nébula Awards (Nebula Awards in the original in English) are a set of literary awards given annually to the best science fiction or fantasy works published in the United States. Joined. The awards are organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association of America (SFWA), a non-profit association of professional science fiction and fantasy writers. They were first awarded in 1966 at a ceremony created for the awards and are awarded in four categories based on the length of the works. In the years 1974-78 and 2000-09 a fifth category was awarded for scripts for movies and television episodes and in 2018 a sixth category was awarded for game scripts. The rules governing the awards have been modified several times throughout its history, most recently in 2010. The SFWA Nebula Conference, at which the awards are announced and presented, is held each spring in the United States; locations vary from year to year.

They are one of the best known and most prestigious science fiction and fantasy awards and, along with the Hugo Awards, have been called "America's Top Science Fiction Awards." Winning entries have been published in special collections, and winners and nominees are frequently mentioned as such on the book covers. The SFWA determines the prizes by the year of publication, that is, the year before the prize is awarded.

Rules

The awards are given annually by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association of America (SFWA) for the best science fiction or fantasy works published during the previous calendar year. To be eligible for the award, works must have been published in English in the United States, although works published in English in other parts of the world are also eligible as long as they are published on a website or in an electronic edition accessible to the public. americans. Prizes are not limited to US citizens or members of the SFWA. Works translated into English may also be candidates. The award regulations do not determine which works are considered science fiction or fantasy, leaving the decision in the hands of the voters themselves.

Finalists and winners in each category are chosen by active SFWA members. Since 2018, the voting body has been expanded to also include associate members. Nominations are made between November 15 and February 15 by members of the association and the six works that receive the highest number of nominations enter the be part of the final vote for each category. In the event of a tie, additional finalists may be added. Members have the entire month of March to vote for the winners of each category and the final results are presented at the awards ceremony in May. Authors cannot nominate their own works, although they can reject their being nominated. In the final vote, ties are broken ―if possible― by the number of nominations that the work has received in the previous phase.

The winner receives a trophy consisting of a clear block inlaid with a glowing spiral nebula and with gemstones cut to resemble planets. The trophy was designed by J. A. Lawrence for the 1966 First Awards based on a sketch by Kate Wilhelm and has remained unchanged ever since. The prize does not entail any financial endowment.

History

The first Nebula Prizes were awarded in 1966, to works published in 1965. The idea for this prize, financed by sales of anthologies of winning works, was proposed by SFWA Secretary-Treasurer Lloyd Biggle, Jr. in 1965, based on the Edgar Award given by the Mystery Writers Association of America, and the holding of a ceremony to present them was taken from the Edgar and Hugo Awards. During the initial ceremony awards were presented in four categories: novel, novella, story and short story, categories that have been maintained ever since. A category for screenplays was created between 1974 and 1978 under the names "Best Dramatic Performance" and "Best Dramatic Screenplay" and again from 2000 to 2009 as "Best Screenplay", but after 2009 it was abolished again and replaced by the Ray Bradbury Award, an award that is not part of the Nebula but follows the rules and procedures and is presented during the Nebula ceremony. In 2018 a new category of game scripts was added, both video games and board games.

Before 2009, the Nébula used an eligibility system known as rolling, that is, to be eligible for voting, a work could be nominated for a year from its publication date. With this system, there was the possibility that the works would be nominated in the calendar year after their publication and then awarded in the following calendar year. Works were added to a preliminary list for the year if they had ten or more nominations, which were then voted on to make up the final vote. In 1970 the possibility for voters to choose the "no award" option was added if they considered that no nominated work was worthy of being awarded, something that happened in 1971 in the short story category and in 1977 in the screenplay category.

Starting in 1980, the year of eligibility for candidacies was set to the calendar year, instead of between December 1 and November 30 as initially conceived, and the organizing committee of the SFWA was allowed to add a additional work in each category. Authors were also allowed to use the one year later paperback edition of their books (higher circulation) as the start of their designation period, rather than the original hardcover publication. As a consequence of the combination of this rule and rolling eligibility, the 2007 awards, despite being nominally for works published in 2006, were awarded to works published in 2005. As of 2010, the rolling system of eligibility and the paperback exclusion were superseded by the current rules.

Categories

In addition to the Nebula awards, other awards and recognitions are also given during the presentation ceremony, although not necessarily every year. Two of these are annual literary awards voted for by SFWA members in the Nebula final selection: the Andre Norton Award for Best Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel, instituted in 2006, and the Ray Bradbury Award for Performance Outstanding Drama, which replaced the Best Screenplay Award in 2010. The others are the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, given since 1975 to authors for "outstanding lifetime achievement in science fiction or fantasy", Emeritus Author since 1995 for contributions to the genre, the Kevin O'Donnell, Jr. Award for services to the SFWA, and the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award since 2009 for Outstanding Impact on Speculative Fiction. These four are discretionary, but officers and past presidents have appointed a Grand Master each year for more than a decade. While the Grand Master or Emeritus Author is reserved for living authors, the Solstice Award may be awarded posthumously.

Acknowledgment

Along with the Hugo Awards, the Nebula Awards are considered "America's Top Sci-Fi Awards" and "the world's sci-fi/fantasy equivalent" of the Emmy Awards. In Salon, Laura Miller called it "the most prestigious science fiction award" and Justine Larbalestier, in The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction (2002), called the Nebula and the Hugo as "the best-known and most prestigious science fiction awards". In his book Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, Brian Aldiss said that while the Hugo was a barometer of the Popularity with readers, rather than artistic merit, the Nebula Award brought "more literary judgement", although he noted that the winners of the two awards often overlapped. David Langford and Peter Nicholls wrote in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2012) that the two prizes were often awarded to the same works, noting that some critics considered the selection of the Nebula prizes to reflect "both political and literary aptitude" as it did not seem to focus as much on literary talent as well as expectations of his popularity.

Some personalities in the publishing industry have stated that winning or being nominated for a Nebula has repercussions for the author's career and the sales of that work. In 1992 Spider Robinson, as quoted in Science Fiction Culture (2000), said that publishers "pay a lot of attention" to who wins a Nebula Award. Literary agent Richard Curtis said in his Mastering the Business of Writing (1996) that having the label "Nebula Award" appear on a book cover, even just as a nominee, was a "powerful incentive" for science fiction fans to bought a novel, and in the First World Fantasy Awards (1977), writer-illustrator Gahan Wilson claimed that emphasizing a Nebula Award-winning book on the cover "manifestly" increased sales of that novel. novel.

Several anthologies of award-winning short stories have been published. The Nebula Winners series, published annually by SFWA and edited by various members of the Association, renamed as Nebula Awards Showcase since 1999, began in 1966 as a compilation of winners and short story nominees that year. Sales from these anthologies were intended to cover the costs of presenting the awards. The anthology The Best of the Nebula Awards (The Best of the Nebulas, 1989), edited by Ben Bova, compiled the winners of the Nebulas from 1966 to 1986, officially selected by SFWA members. The unofficial anthology Nebula Award Winning Novellas (1994), edited by Martin H. Greenberg, included ten works that had won the Best Short Novel award between 1970 and 1989.