nominating things
Well, this is sort of a pointless post, as I have no intelligent opinion on the topic, but what's the deal with all the hoo-ha over Nebula nominations? How complicated is it to actually nominate? Not being a member of SFWA, I'm a little in the dark on this one.
Also, did you guys make any great book/writer discoveries this year or read anything you hated/thought overrated?
Also, did you guys make any great book/writer discoveries this year or read anything you hated/thought overrated?
posted by Gwenda at
11:39 AM
5 Comments:
Where is this hoo-ha over Nebula nominations occurring?
I'm not a member of SFWA either, but based on everything I've heard, the Nebula nomination process worked better when you only needed five recs to get on the preliminary ballot. When they upped the requirement to ten recs, they instituted rolling eligibility to give stories more time to collect those ten recs, but that only confused people. Plus, I gather there's more campaigning now by authors to drum up the needed ten recs.
As for books I felt were overrated, I'll mention Pullman's The Amber Spyglass. I read all three of the Dark Materials trilogy this year, and enjoyed the first two (the first one, predictably, being the best). However, I thought the third one was an absolute chore to get through.
Not that this is an uncommon opinion, from what I gather.
In general, I feel the same about awards, but it's nice when they go to good stuff. Gives you -- and a good writer -- a reason to yay!
I told Mr. Rowe to point to the controversy locales, as I mostly just get it secondhand from him. I think some of it is somewhere on the F&SF section of the Night Shade Boards. (Now there's a helpful directive, seeing as how even that subsection of NS is HUGE.)
I haven't read any Pullman--though I want to read the Dark Materials books before I see the movies, so I can complain about how god-free they are.
I think the public version of the hufrah is going on in two Nightshade forums:
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction: topic Review of F&SF (near the bottom)
Ellen Datlow: Sci Fiction 8
And on the Asimov's boards under a topic called SFWA MEMBERS ONLY.
Basically it seems to be some editors (Gordon, Gardner and Ellen) concerned by the very low number of works getting enough recomendations to make the preliminary Nebula ballot. Apparently people are afraid to recommend a lot because of some kind of guidelines that SFWA issued a couple of years ago.
I just rejoined SFWA in the last couple of days, and am now looking throught the SFF.Net private groups, but they don't seem to be talking about it at all.
But Richard's right, anyway, the real heat isn't so much from people concerned about Nebulas as it from people who can't get their short stories published and take that as an indicator that short fiction in general sucks.
I done rec'd things for those things for the 1st time. How, I mean how, exciting it all was.
Discoveries? None. None. Nuns. Well, not really.
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