The Nebula awards 2018 will be announced tonight, at the SFWA Nebula Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Over the past few months, I’ve been working to read and review all of the nominees in the Best Novel category. As theVerge.com describes:
The Nebula Awards are issued annually by SFWA to the best works in genre novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories published in the last year, alongside the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy and the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation. The Nebulas are a sort of industry award, determined by professional authors.
Below, I’ll talk a little bit about each book as a nominee, as well as give you both my vote (which book I think should win) and my prediction (which book I think will win). Also, for each book I will include a link to my full review so you can get all caught up and (if I’ve done my job right) form your own opinions just in time for the award announcement.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter
I’m beginning this list with hands-down one of my favorite books from 2017. I can’t oversell how much I loved this book from top to bottom, and I think the most helpful thing I can talk about is why, given all my love, Theodora Goss’s The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is neither my prediction nor my vote.
Goss tells a story of the daughters of Victorian fiction’s most beloved mad scientists, including Mary Jekyll, Beatrice Rappacini, and more.
This book is written in a lovely format, nesting its main story within an ongoing interaction between the main characters as they recall the events of the story in question – for the purpose of writing their story. While it felt natural and graceful to me, this format left a LOT of people behind and I assume that will be a factor in the award decision. In addition, the Nebulas do not normally recognize historical dramas (scifi or not) and this is very “Victorian comedy/scifi/action”. In my estimation, it’s unfortunately just too Victorian to be a likely winner.
You can read my full review here.
Amberlough
In Amberlough, readers meet an incredibly rich and varied cast of characters in a world poised on the edge of a sociopolitical precipice. Lara Elena Donnelly turns what could be dry, wordy, political mush into a riveting 3-part ride readers take alongside impossibly fascinating characters. Her characters are so well-written, I even loved the bad guys. Every character’s reappearance on the page elicited a small “oh, yay” from me. I’m smitten by them all.
I loved reading it (against every expectation I had before I cracked the spine), but I don’t think Donnelly’s book a strong contender for this award. As fun as it was to read, the Nebulas appear to go for something more weighty than what Amberlough brings to the table. There’s nothing wrong with a fun read (and I both recommend this book and am totally going to read its sequel), but I think it’s a little too content-light to be a strong contender.
Of course, the last time I said that the nominee I was referring to did indeed win. If Amberlough wins the Nebula, let’s consider this a trend.
You can read my full review here.
Autonomous
Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous is an ambitious story indeed, one that I think falls short of its goal. The premise is fantastic: modern-day piracy in the form of pharmaceutical drug mimicking. The main character seems to fancy herself a kind of Robin Hood figure, whose ill deeds are justified because she also delivers affordable (or free) drugs to the poor and needy. She certainly mentions how wrong it is that pharmaceutical drug manufacturers are off making money while poor people are dying – a lot. But I never found her motivation to be believable.
In general, I wasn’t able to get into this book because of oft-cited pacing problems, and I have a hard time judging some of the story’s potential strengths/weaknesses given that. I don’t think it has any strengths enough to outweigh this shortcoming or elevate it above its fellow nominees. However, there are a number of charming aspects, particularly in how well Newitz humanizes her android characters.
Spoonbenders
Every once in a while, I encounter a book which leaves me personally cold, but which has obvious and undeniable strengths that neither mitigate or are lessened by my personal dislike. Daryl Gregory’s Spoonbenders is one such book.
Gregory is clearly a skilled author, and he’s been recognized many times before for his accomplishments. It’s rare to encounter someone so skilled at drawing short, small, but entirely resonant vignettes, but Gregory excels at this. There’s a certain concise quality to his writing, to the way he evokes a feeling or an image, that can only come from a practiced pen. In Spoonbenders, his conservation of word lends immense power to the depressive hopelessness he evokes for the Telemachus family and their troubles.
For a less science fiction-focused award, I would have a much more difficult time eliminating Spoonbenders from the running. However, I just don’t think it’s what the Nebula voters look for (judging from past awards) and there are too many excellent candidates for this outsider to outweigh them.
You can read my full review here.
My Prediction: Jade City
Other bloggers have listed Fonda Lee’s Jade City as unlikely to win because of its setting (an East Asian-inspired fantasy nation) and its contents (magical jade, which gives powerful abilities to those who can wield it). While I agree with the judgement that these things make Jade City unlike the Nebula’s typical winner, I think these are its strengths – and I anticipate that the voting committee members will agree.
Jade City contains triumph after triumph in its pages; the setting, the characters, the plot, the voice – Lee has created a masterpiece in this book. To my mind, none of the other nominees are outstanding on every category. Even if it isn’t the straightforward science fiction novel the Nebulas usually like, Jade City is outstanding.
You can read my full review here.
My Vote: Six Wakes
Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes was nominated for the Philip K. Dick award in February of this year. As I said in my post on the Philip K. Dick nominees, “Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes is a closed-spaceship murder mystery – with clones! If this doesn’t get your attention, I don’t know what you’re doing here. This book keeps you on your toes, keeps you guessing, and has you up all night with the lights on (or was that just me?). As a mystery, it’s satisfying from beginning to end. As a scifi tale? Same.”
I did not consider this book a likely winner for that award, but I think it’s a much better candidate for the Nebulas. It is a beautiful and well-balanced science fiction story, and the Nebulas seem to (in general) prefer to recognize science fiction nominees over fantasy nominees. However, I think it will fall slightly to Jade City, for the things I love most about it.
Six Wakes is a murder mystery in space, and the twists and turns of plotting and discovery left a lot of readers behind. I think both this and the classic scifi explorations into the impact human cloning had on human society will be strikes against it in the eyes of the voting committee. Make no mistake, though, as they are precisely why Six Wakes gets my vote.
You can read my full review here.
