Some Comments on the 2023 Nebula Finalists

The finalists for the 2023 Nebula Awards were announced today. The video of the live announcement may be found here.

Normally, the Nebula finalists are announced shortly before Hugo nominations close, giving people the chance to catch up with works they might have missed. This year, however, the Hugo nomination period was uncommonly short and nominations closed last Saturday. It will be interesting to see if this means that there is less overlap between the Hugos and Nebulas than usual.

For personal reasons, I didn’t get to read nearly as much as I wanted to last year, so there are a lot of finalists here that I haven’t yet read and can’t say a lot about.

Nonetheless, let’s delve right into the individual categories:

Best Novel:

There are not a lot of surprises in this category, which is full of well regarded novels that got a lot of buzz.

Translation State by Ann Leckie and Witch King by Martha Wells were the most recent novels by two very popular writers. Both were also on my personal Hugo ballot. The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang also got quite a bit of buzz, plus it’s a lot of fun and I’m glad to see it nominated.

I haven’t yet read either Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi or The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera, though both novels got a lot of buzz last year, so I’m not at all surprised to see them on Nebula ballot. Ditto for The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz, which I also haven’t yet read.

There also was a withdrawal in this category, because Martha Wells withdrew “System Collapse”, the latest Murderbot novel.

Diversity count: 3 women, 2 men, 1 non-binary, 3 authors of colour, 2 international authors

Best Novella:

I enjoyed Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee a lot and it was also on my personal Hugo ballot. T. Kingfisher is a perpetual Hugo and Nebula favourite and Thornhedge is also a great story, though it didn’t make my Hugo ballot in the end, because there only are so many slots.

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older got a lot of buzz last year and is part of a mini-trend of SFF mysteries (as is Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon). Oddly enough, I wasn’t aware that The Mimicking of Known Successes was a novella. For some reason, I assumed that this was a novel.

Nghi Vo is another author whose name we’ve seen on the Nebula and Hugo ballot several times in recent years, though I haven’t yet read Mammoths at the Gates.

Ai Jiang burst onto the SFF scene in the past two years and was a Nebula finalist for Best Short Story as well as an Ignyte Award winner last year. I haven’t yet read her nominated novella “Linghun”.

I have enjoyed several works by Kelly Barnhill, though again I haven’t yet read her nominated novella The Crane Husband.

As in previous years, Tor and Tordotcom dominate this category with five our of six finalists due to Tordotcom‘s popular novella line. This isn’t overly unexpected, because Tor and Tordotcom do great work and have a lot of marketing clout. Though I do wish that people would look beyond them once in a while, because publishers not named Tor also publish great novellas on occasion.

Diversity count: 6 women, 4 authors of colour, 2 international authors

Best Novelette:

I always enjoy Naomi Kritzer’s stories and her Nebula nominated novelette “The Year Without Sunshine” was also on my personal Hugo ballot.

Wole Talabi and Ai Jiang are represented in this category again with “Saturday’s Song” and the delightfully (and fittingly) entitled I Am AI respectively.

Eugenia Triantafyllou has been making a name for herself with her poetic, dark and thoughtful SFF stories in recent years and I’m glad to see “Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge“ on the Nebula ballot.

I’m really, really glad to see my pal Renan Bernardo nominated for his story “A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair“. It’s also great to see a story in translation on the Nebula ballot, since this happens much too rarely.

In spite of its striking title, “Imagine: Purple-Haired Girl Shooting Down The Moon“ by Angela Liu completely passed me by. However, I look forward to reading it.

We also have a good mix of story sources in this category with Uncanny, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Samovar in what is their first ever Nebula nomination, I believe, and a standalone novelette represented.

Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 4 authors of colour, 4 international authors

Best Short Story:

Naomi Kritzer  is represented in this category again with “Better Living Through Algorithms”, a story I enjoyed, but which did not make my personal Hugo ballot in the end.

I also enjoyed “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200“ by R.S.A Garcia, though once again it didn’t make my personal Hugo ballot.

John Wiswell’s stories are always worth reading and I did nominate one of his stories for the Hugo, though it was “So You Want To Kiss Your Nemesis?”, not his Nebula nominated “Bad Doors”.

“Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont“ by P.A. Cornell,  “The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones and “Window Boy“ by Thomas Ha completely passed me by, I’m afraid, though I look forward to checking them out.

Once again, we have a good mix of story sources in this category with two stories each appearing in Uncanny and Clarkesworld, one in the late-lamented Fantasy Magazine and one in Nightmare Magazine.

Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 3 authors of colour, 2 international authors

Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction:

We have only four finalists in this category this year and zero overlap with my Lodestar ballot.

Naomi Kritzer is represented once again with Liberty’s Daughter. This is really shaping up to be her year.

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose got a lot of positive buzz last year, though I haven’t read it yet.

J. Dianne Dotson and I follow each other on social media, so I’m glad to see her novel The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern on the Nebula ballot.

Greg Van Eekhout has been nominated in this category for his middle grade books before, though I haven’t read The Ghost Job.

Diversity count: 3 women, 1 man, 2 authors of colour

Nebula Award for Game Writing:

As usual, I can’t say very much about this category, because I’m not a gamer. That said, even I have heard about Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m a bit surprised that Legends of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom didn’t make the ballot, because that’s the other 2023 video game that got so much attention that even non-gamers like me have heard of it.

I enjoyed the Machineries of Empire novels by Yoon Ha Lee very much, though I had no idea that there now is a roleplaying game set in this universe.

I have never heard of any of the other finalists in this category, sorry, though The Bread Must Rise has a great title.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.

Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation:

This category is full of very good and not particularly surprising finalists and also has a fair amount of overlap with my personal Hugo ballot.

Barbie was the most successful movie of 2023 and it was good, too. It may have been mostly snubbed by the Oscars (even the song that won the Oscar was not the best song from the film), but I’m not at all surprised to see it nominated here. Barbie was also on my personal Hugo ballot.

The episode “Long, Long Time” from The Last of Us was a true standout, an unlikely gay love story after the zombie apocalypse between Bill,  your stereotypical conspiracy theorist doomsday prepper, who sees his secret wish for the end of the world come true, and Frank, urban, cultured, left-leaning. They meet when Frank stumbles into one of Bill’s traps, bond over their shared love for music, fine food and Linda Ronstadt and have a happy approximately twenty year relationship in their private little world. It’s an amazing piece of TV and already won multiple mainstream awards, breaking through the stranglehold that Succession and The Bear had on TV awards this year. This was also on my personal Hugo ballot.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was one of the most pleasant cinematic surprises last year. Given how utterly terrible the last attempt at a Dungeons & Dragons movie was, no one expected much from this one and then it turned out to be really good and funny, too. Sadly, it apparently wasn’t successful enough to get a sequel greenlit, probably because the inexplicably popular Super Mario Movie came out around the same time and flattened everything else. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was also on my personal Hugo ballot.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the sequel to the popular, Oscar- and Hugo-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, so I’m not at all surprised to see it nominated.

The nomination for The Boy and the Heron also isn’t a surprise, because a) it’s Hayao Miyasaki’s supposedly last film and b) it already won an Oscar. I haven’t yet seen the film, though I expect that it will be very good.

Nimona is another film I haven’t yet seen, partly due to having bounced off previous projects by N.D. Stevenson. That said, I’m not surprised to see it nominated here, because it got a lot of positive attention in the SFF community and also was an Oscar nominee.

I’m a bit surprised that Godzilla Minus One did not make the ballot, considering how popular and good that film was. Thankfully, Oppenheimer and Poor Things, both of which I intensely dislike, are also absent.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies and TV shows.

***

I don’t see any strong trends this year, though some of the trends we’ve seen in past years such as stories focussing on robots and AI, fairy tale retellings, horror and SFF mysteries continue to be in evidence this year.

All in all, this is a very good and diverse Nebula ballot. I’m also happy to see so many international writer and creators on the ballot. The usual suspects will probably complain, but then they always do.