The Goblin Emperor

The 2014 Nebula Nominees have been announced!

Best Novel
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Tor)
Trial by Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Tor)
Coming Home, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals; Fourth Estate; HarperCollins Canada)

-We’ve got a nice array of publishers here, compared to last year’s heavily dominated Tor/Orbit slate. The ones I’ve read so far are The Goblin Emperor, Ancillary Sword, and The Three-Body Problem. Perhaps not coincidentally, they’re also the ones I’m betting on as front-runners, but we’ll see after I’ve read them all. The Goblin Emperor especially is fighting an uphill battle, given how sci-fi dominated the Nebula (and Hugo) tends to be, but it’s good enough that it stands a serious chance. The Three-Body Problem is one of those rare translated books popping up on the list, and is actually the first Chinese science fiction novel translated into English. (I did a review, though due to changing financial circumstances, I’m missing out on Worldcon this year like I’d planned.) The weird thing this year, though? There is exactly one stand alone novel, and that’s The Goblin Emperor. Literally everything else is part of a series. Weird.

Best Novella

We Are All Completely Fine, Daryl Gregory (Tachyon)
Yesterday’s Kin, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)
“The Regular,” Ken Liu (Upgraded)
“The Mothers of Voorhisville,” Mary Rickert (Tor.com 4/30/14)
Calendrical Regression, Lawrence Schoen (NobleFusion)
“Grand Jeté (The Great Leap),” Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Summer ’14)

– I totally read novellas last year. Totally.

Best Novelette

“Sleep Walking Now and Then,” Richard Bowes (Tor.com 7/9/14)
“The Magician and Laplace’s Demon,” Tom Crosshill (Clarkesworld 12/14)
“A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” Alaya Dawn Johnson (F&SF 7-8/14)
“The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado (Granta #129)
“We Are the Cloud,” Sam J. Miller (Lightspeed 9/14)
“The Devil in America,” Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com 4/2/14)

– I think I’ve heard of one or two of these.

Best Short Story

“The Breath of War,” Aliette de Bodard (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/6/14)
“When It Ends, He Catches Her,” Eugie Foster (Daily Science Fiction 9/26/14)
“The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye,” Matthew Kressel (Clarkesworld 5/14)
“The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family,” Usman T. Malik (Qualia Nous)
“A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide,” Sarah Pinsker (F&SF 3-4/14)
“Jackalope Wives,” Ursula Vernon (Apex 1/7/14)
“The Fisher Queen,” Alyssa Wong (F&SF 5/14)

-Yeah, I don’t really read much short fiction, gotta be honest.

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Edge of Tomorrow, Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Guardians of the Galaxy, Written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Interstellar, Written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan (Paramount Pictures)
The Lego Movie, Screenplay by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (Warner Bros. Pictures)

-This one is really Birdman’s to lose. Who knows, though, this one has gone weird directions before, and will again.

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

Unmade, Sarah Rees Brennan (Random House)
Salvage, Alexandra Duncan (Greenwillow)
Love Is the Drug, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Levine)
Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, A.S. King (Little, Brown)
Dirty Wings, Sarah McCarry (St. Martin’s Griffin)
Greenglass House, Kate Milford (Clarion)
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, Leslye Walton (Candlewick)

-Haven’t read any of these, but then, I tend to be notably terrible at picking YA winners.

Weekly Reading List- 1/18/15-1/24/14

Thanks to one thing and another, I didn’t get many books read this week. Largely due to sleep deprivation, which makes me read really, really slow.

Firefight- Brandon Sanderson

YA, SF, Reread

I told you, I reread books a lot, especially Brandon Sanderson.

To be fair, I reread this one on my phone- which is what I read on in the bathroom, when waiting in line, etc. If I only have a minute or two, I’ll just read on here. I get a surprising amount of reading done this way, including, weirdly enough, most of the YA novels I read. My Kindle is still the format I do more of my reading on than any other device, but not by a ton- dead tree format is right behind it, with my phone in a distant, but by no means insignificant third. Audiobook comes in dead last. I listened to all of two audiobooks last year. Before that, it was something like 2010 since the last audiobook I’ve read, and before that? I couldn’t even tell you.

The Wanderer- Fritz Lieber

SF

I’ll have more on this one soon, I’m gearing up to reboot the Hugo Readthrough.

I meant to have the readthrough up and ready to go by now, but I’ve just not gotten much done and ready to go in the last week- I’ve been dealing with a major sleep shortage, which makes me move at about a quarter speed.

The Goblin Emperor- Kathleen Addison

Fantasy, Reread

The Goblin Emperor was one of my favorite fantasy novels from last year- it’s a breath of fresh air in the genre. There is very little violence, it doesn’t particularly leave itself open to a sequel- it’s pretty frankly excellent. 2014 was a really good year for fantasy, but it would not surprise me to see this one as a Hugo contender, even for the normally very science fiction dominated award.

Dune- Frank Herbert

SF, Reread

Man, what really needs to be said about this one? A lot, actually, but I’ll wait a couple weeks. Absolutely love this book, one of my all time favorites.