The Nebula Awards annually recognize the best
works of science fiction or fantasy published
in the United States. The awards are organized
and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy
Writers of America (SFWA), a nonprofit association
of professional science fiction and fantasy
writers. They were first given in 1966 at
a ceremony created for the awards, and are
given in four categories for different lengths
of literary works. A fifth category for film
and television episode scripts was given 1974–78
and 2000–09, and a sixth category for video
game writing was begun in 2018. The rules
governing the Nebula Awards have changed several
times during the awards' 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.
The Nebula Awards are one of the best known
and most prestigious science fiction and fantasy
awards and have been called "the most important
of the American science fiction awards". Winning
works have been published in special collections,
and winners and nominees are often noted as
such on the books' cover. SFWA identifies
the awards by the year of publication, that
is, the year prior to the year in which the
award is given.
For lists of winners and nominees for each
Nebula category, see the list of categories
below.
== Award ==
The Nebula Awards are given annually by the
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
(SFWA) for the best science fiction or fantasy
fiction published during the previous year.
To be eligible for consideration works must
be published in English in the United States.
Works published in English elsewhere in the
world are also eligible provided they are
released on either a website or in an electronic
edition. The awards are not limited to American
citizens or members of SFWA. Works translated
into English are also eligible.There are no
written rules as to which works qualify as
science fiction or fantasy, and the decision
of eligibility in that regard is left up to
the nominators and voters, rather than to
SFWA.The winner receives a trophy but no cash
prize; the trophy is a transparent block with
an embedded glitter spiral nebula and gemstones
cut to resemble planets. The trophy itself
was designed for the first awards by J. A.
Lawrence, based on a sketch by Kate Wilhelm,
and has remained the same ever since.Nebula
Award nominees and winners are chosen by members
of the SFWA. Works are nominated each year
between November 15 and February 15 by published
authors who are members of the organization,
with the six works that receive the most nominations
forming the final ballot. Additional nominees
are possible in the case of ties. Members
then vote on the ballot throughout March,
and the final results are presented at the
Nebula Awards ceremony in May. Authors are
not permitted to nominate their own works,
though they can decline nominations. Ties
in the final vote are broken, if possible,
by the number of nominations the works received.
== History ==
The first Nebulas were given in 1966, for
works published in 1965. The idea for such
an award, funded by the sales of anthologies
collecting the winning works, was proposed
by SFWA secretary-treasurer Lloyd Biggle,
Jr. in 1965. The idea was based on the Edgar
Awards, presented by the Mystery Writers of
America, and hosting a ceremony to present
them at was prompted by the Edgar and Hugo
Awards. The initial ceremony consisted of
four literary awards, for Novels, Novellas,
Novelettes, and Short Stories, which have
been presented every year since. A Script
award was also presented from 1974 to 1978
under the names Best Dramatic Presentation
and Best Dramatic Writing and again from 2000
through 2009 as Best Script, but after 2009
it was again removed and replaced by SFWA
with the Ray Bradbury Award. In 2018, a new
Game Writing category was added, for writing
in video games.Prior to 2009, the Nebula Awards
employed a rolling eligibility system. Each
work was eligible to qualify for the ballot
for one year following its date of publication.
As a consequence of rolling eligibility, there
was the possibility for works to be nominated
in the calendar year after their publication
and then be awarded in the calendar year after
that. Works were added to a preliminary list
for the year if they had ten or more nominations,
which were then voted on to create the final
ballot. In 1970, the option was added for
voters to select "no award" if they felt that
no nominated work was worthy of winning; this
happened in 1971 in the Short Story category
and in 1977 in the Script category.Beginning
in 1980 the eligibility year for nominations
was set to the calendar year, rather than
December–November as initially conceived,
and the SFWA organizing panel was allowed
to add an additional work. Authors were also
allowed to use the mass-market paperback publication
of their books as the beginning of their nomination
period, rather than the initial hardback publication.
As a consequence of the combination of this
rule and the rolling eligibility, the 2007
awards, despite nominally being for works
published in 2006, instead were all given
to works initially published in 2005. Beginning
with the 2010 awards, the rolling eligibility
system and paperback publication exemption
were replaced with the current rules.
== Categories ==
Beside the Nebulas, several other awards and
honors are presented at the Nebula Awards
ceremony, though not necessarily every year.
Two of them are annual literary awards voted
by SFWA members on the Nebula ballot: the
Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult
Science Fiction or Fantasy Book, inaugurated
2006, and the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding
Dramatic Presentation, which replaced the
Best Script award in 2010. The others are
the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award
since 1975 for "lifetime achievement in science
fiction and/or fantasy", the Author Emeritus
since 1995 for contributions to the field,
the Kevin O'Donnell, Jr. Award for service
to SFWA, and the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award
since 2009 for significant impact on speculative
fiction. All four are discretionary but a
Grand Master, selected by the officers and
past presidents, has been named every year
for more than a decade. The Solstice Award
may be presented posthumously (where only
living writers may be named Grand Master or
Author Emeritus); in all, twelve have been
awarded in five years to 2013.
== Recognition ==
The Nebula Awards have been described as one
of "the most important of the American science
fiction awards" and "the science-fiction and
fantasy equivalent" of the Emmy Awards. Along
with the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award is also
considered one of the premier awards in science
fiction, with Laura Miller of Salon terming
it "science fiction's most prestigious award",
and Justine Larbalestier, in The Battle of
the Sexes in Science Fiction (2002), referring
to it and the Hugo Award as "the best known
and most prestigious of the science fiction
awards". Brian Aldiss, in his book Trillion
Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction,
claimed that the Nebula Award provided "more
literary judgment" while the Hugo was a barometer
of reader popularity, rather than artistic
merit, though he did note that the winners
of the two awards often overlapped. David
Langford and Peter Nicholls stated in The
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2012) that
the two awards were often given to the same
works, and noted that some critics felt that
the Nebula selection reflected "political
as much as literary ability" as it did not
seem to focus as much on literary talent over
popularity as expected.Several people within
the publishing industry have said that winning
or being nominated for a Nebula Award has
effects on the author's career and the sales
of that work. Spider Robinson in 1992, as
quoted in Science Fiction Culture (2000),
said that publishers "pay careful attention"
to who wins a Nebula Award. Literary agent
Richard Curtis said in his 1996 Mastering
the Business of Writing that having the term
Nebula Award on the cover, even as a nominee,
was a "powerful inducement" to science fiction
fans to buy a novel, and Gahan Wilson, in
First World Fantasy Awards (1977), claimed
that noting that a book had won the Nebula
Award on the cover "demonstrably" increased
sales for that novel.There have been several
anthologies collecting Nebula-winning short
fiction. The series Nebula Winners, published
yearly by SFWA and edited by a variety of
SFWA members and renamed as the Nebula Awards
Showcase series since 1999, was started in
1966 as a collection of short story winners
and nominees for that year. The sales of these
anthologies were intended to pay for presenting
the awards themselves. The anthology The Best
of the Nebulas (1989), edited by Ben Bova,
collected winners of Nebula awards from 1966
through 1986 officially selected by SFWA members.
The unofficial anthology Nebula Award Winning
Novellas (1994), edited by Martin H. Greenberg,
contained ten stories which had won the novella
award between 1970 and 1989.
== See also ==
List of science fiction awards
List of joint winners of the Hugo and Nebula
awards
