Nebula Awards Showcase 2018

INTRODUCTION

This was an odd year for the Nebulas.

No, let me rephrase that because every year is an odd year for the Nebulas. Every year, some of the stories and books you and I voted for didn’t win or the ones you or I hadn’t been able to get into, even after multiple attempts, did. There was a challenge to a book’s authenticity or provenance. Sad people wanted to win Nebulas through intimidation or stealth. The odds-on favorite movie did a nose dive. You get the picture.

Or someone you barely heard of was named the Grand Master.

(Raises hand.)

That’s why it seemed to me to be an exceptionally odd year.

I was in my writing room supposedly—um—writing. The phone rang.

Oddly enough, it was neither a cold call nor a warning from the Hatfield, MA, police chief about scams targeted at the elderly. (My semi-official title these days.)

In fact, it was Cat Rambo who’d emailed me a day or two earlier to set up a phone date. For the uninitiated, Cat has been and will be SFWA’s Glorious Leader for a while. As I had been for two years back in the late 1980s. Cat—as other presidents before her—was rigorous about sounding-out past presidents on SFWA matters, so I assumed it was one of those calls.

I said, “Hi, Cat, how can I help you?”

She said, “What would you say if I asked you to become our next Grand Master?”

I laughed. “Nice one. So what’s the actual problem? What do you need to talk about?”

“No, actually, that’s it,” she said.

“Well, first of all, you’d have to poll the past presidents and I doubt you’d get an overwhelming vote.”

“Already did and it’s unanimous.”

We both knew there was a bit of fudging there. I mean—I had a bunch of negatives. Most of my writing is not sf. (Let’s consider that “most”: There will be, by the time this book comes out, 365 other books of mine floating around, possibly even in outer space and off to that Mars colony that certain conspiracy theorists are saying has already begun!) Most of my books are about nature or history, or are fantasy or a combination of all three. Most are for young readers. And…

“Done deal,” she said. “Can you come to the Nebs?”

For the first time in ages—you only have to ask my nearest and dearest and anyone I have ever been on a panel with—I was speechless.

I hung up. I did the happy dance. And then marveled at what an extremely odd year this was going to be.

I remembered when I was president of SFWA, my choice for Grand Master had been Isaac Asimov. No one could contest that. The only question the past presidents had was: “Why wasn’t he a Grand Master before?”

My point exactly. I called him, left a message to call me back. He called back and I was out. The message he left on my machine was: “Tell Jane I called. My name is Isaac Asimov. A-S-I-M-O-V.” The family had a good laugh about that one.

When I did finally connect with him, he was all Isaac A-S-I-M-O-V—funny, overcome, full of himself, and self-demeaning at the same time. His first question to me was, “Can I tell Clarke about it yet?” (Arthur C. Clarke, that is.) I understood—it was an old rivalry.

Months later at the Nebula Awards, because of a scheduling snafu that put the Nebs on the same weekend as Passover, we held a seder open to anyone—Jewish or not—who wanted to attend.

I sat next to Isaac.

During the (always interminably) long reading of the Haggadah and its history, Isaac took out a pen and began writing something on his paper napkin.

Of course I peeked.

Wouldn’t you? It was Isaac A-S-I-M-O-V after all. And he was writing a limerick.

It began:

There once was a khan named Attila.

Of mercy had not a scintilla.

Da-da’-da-da-da’

Da-da’-da-da-da’

Da-da-dad-da-da-d-da-da magillah!

(Alas, I don’t remember all of it.)

“Isaac,” I whispered, that last line doesn’t scan.”

“Of course it does,” he snapped.

I read it over again silently. Shook my head. “Isaac, that last line doesn’t scan.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said, dismissively.

“Isaac,” I said, “you know more than I do about almost everything in the universe, but I know that last line doesn’t scan.”

He held up his hand and addressed the people at the seder with a booming voice. “Stop! I want you to listen to something. Jane says this last line doesn’t scan.” And of course he, being Isaac A-S-I-M-O-V and the newest Grand Master besides, we were all in awe to one degree or another, and we stopped the seder to listen.

He read the limerick out loud. Waited for applause. And the entire table full of writers, editors, readers said together, “Isaac, that last line doesn’t scan!”

At which point he crumpled the napkin, poem and all, and shoved it into his pocket. Turned his back to me. Finished his meal in silence.

Though the next day, when he was officially awarded his Grand Mastership, he winked at me. So I suppose all was forgiven.

I don’t think that particular limerick was ever published—though I may be wrong, and some fan will certainly let me know.

So, this has been an odd year for the Nebulas, but they are always odd in some way or another. I remember being at one where a fist fight between two very famous authors (both male) broke out. A hotel guard—very large with a hand gun strapped to his waist, jackboots, and a name tag that said (I am NOT making this up) LUCIOUS—broke up the fight.

But still we celebrated the winners. The results might not have been what you or I or everyone wanted or expected. But when really good stories—even great stories—go up against one another in the SFWA version of the O. K. Corral, there’s going to be a winner and…

Well, not a loser any more. Just honor books. Now we have a time at the end of the Nebulas ceremony for the honor book winners’ speeches to be read out loud. I even got to read a friend’s honor acceptance speech for her because she had been scheduled somewhere else, and I gave it both the gravitas and the hype it deserved.

So though we always said it was an honor before, now it truly is an honor to be nominated. As someone who was nominated (and in the old terms “lost”) a number of Nebulas, I would have loved to have given my intended speech instead of scrunching it in my pocket sadly, while dutifully applauding the winner. Yes, I admit it—I wrote out each speech just in case I won so I didn’t babble a Sally Fields response.

Parenthetically, the two times I have won the Nebulas, I wasn’t even at the con that year, and someone had to accept for me. Maybe I should consider doing that some more.

So here are some of my quick thoughts about what did win the 2016 Nebula, some of which you have ahead of you in this book.

First—because the award is closest to my heart—the winner of the Andre Norton award is an Andre Norton-type book with a kick! A book that harkens back to those old, worn-out paperback sf-fantasy novels but manages to haul them into the future, and pummels the prose into brilliant shape with a touch of steampunk as well: Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine, which should also be a winner for sweetest dedication ever.

Charlie Jane Anders’s novel All the Birds in the Sky is a powerful blend of science fiction and fantasy plus lovely writing. The cast of characters are so well delineated that the novel can also serve as a writing lesson for those of you wanting to try that same doubled genre.

The Novella winner, Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, is a lyrical, shimmering, surprising novella that brings us back to our childhood reading and forward into murder, magic, mayhem and deep-soul fantasy.

The Novelette winner, “The Long Fall Up” by William Ledbetter, is true science fiction with an emphasis on the science. Ledbetter, a thirty-year veteran of the aerospace industry is a strong writer, and he’s not faking the science. The politics of birth and the place of women and pregnant women in space is a story that leaves a deep impression.

Amal El-Mohtar’s winning short story is the crown jewel in the anthology. As a folklorist manqué, I love how she plays with elements from folk tales. Her story is “Seasons of Glass and Iron” (from The Starlit Wood anthology). It’s a melding of several fairy tales. First, she has used the Norwegian “The Princess on the Glass Hill” to delineate one of the two main characters and problems. The second character seems to be from “East of the Sun & West of the Moon” combined with the Romanian story “The Sleeping Prince,” and perhaps “The Black Bull of Norroway,” all difficult and intriguing tales that I know and love. But Amal re-animates and re-imagines them through a feminist telescope, bringing the far-away and once upon a time into a newer, sharper focus.

Odd winners? You betcha, but in the best possible way.

—Jane Yolen