? of the Week: What do you think of the Nebula Awards finalists?

If you don’t know already, the Nebula Awards finalists were announced a little while ago.  It’s an interesting list, to say the least, and it has sparked some interesting responses across the blogosphere.  But what do you all think about the list?  Feel free to leave a comment.

Here are our brief responses:

Shaun

Overall, I’m happy with the list, though there are certainly some anomalies there.  A lot of repeat names, some works that I didn’t think would make it to such a list anyway and a few things I saw coming from a mile away.  As others here will mention, there are an extraordinary amount of women and a fair shake of POCs here — something I can’t help appreciating because such things tend to drive certain people in this community up the wall.

The only glaring omission is in a category that nobody really cares about anyway:  dramatic presentation.  For all its criticism of vision over substance, I find it difficult to understand why the genre community has completely neglected to include Cloud Atlas on the list.  If any film deserves genre’s recognition, it’s that one.  Such is life…

Julia

I’m quite excited about this year’s list. I think there is a wealth of strong work on the ballot. I look forward to seeing the winners, and I think that this year, no matter who wins, I’ll probably be really happy with the outcome.

I would like to add that the fact that some people are being ridiculous and getting upset because non-white and non-male people are nominated makes me like this ballot even more.

Paul

I will be terse.

I am very pleased by the Novel ballot. 4 out of the 6 are by women. An
epic fantasy written by a woman, too.

Interestingly, five of the six novel nominees are Fantasy, too. Only
2312 sits there defending SF.

Adam

I think it is one of the stronger lists of the past few years, especially in the short fiction categories. I would like to see more diversity in the short story category though, as far as the publications represented. Five out of the six stories come from either Lightspeed or Clarkesworld.

Jen

I’m *really* happy about this list of nominees – over half are women!! Yay women in SF&F! That’s about all I can reliably comment on though as I’ve only either read or watched 4 of the nominations.

Now it’s your turn!