The Nebula Awards were announced this weekend. Uncanny Magazine made a strong showing in short fiction. Some of this year’s winners were surprising, others nearly uncontested. We do have a second award to Ai Jiang’s Linghun, too.
Prose Fiction
Short Story
The short story “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200” by R.S.A. Garcia, published in Uncanny Magazine won the Nebula for short story. This is available to read for free on the zine’s website.
A word of warning: this story is written from a narratorial perspective that is heavily dialectal. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Novelette
Uncanny Magazine took both short fiction categories for the Nebula. The winning novelette was “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer, which is also available online.
Uncanny has also released an 80-minute audio production of this story. If you’d like to listen to it, there is a media player embedded in the page linked above, and it is also available on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, available on standard podcast sources like Apple Podcast and Spotify.
Novella
Linghun won the novella category, but it also won the “long fiction” category of the Stoker Awards. Here is what I had to say about it after the Stokers:
“I would classify Ai Jiang’s Linghun as a novelette. It’s listed at 150 pages on Amazon, but the book also contains a foreword, a non-fiction essay, and two short stories.
This looks to be a ghost story at wide-scale. Think Haunting of Hill House meets Uzumaki. I’ll be picking this one up for myself and keeping an eye on this author, who has another book coming out next year.”
Novel
The Saint of Bright Doors is Vajra Chandrasekera’s first novel. Described in reviews as exceedingly original and eminently re-readable.
Although it is classified as a fantasy novel, reviews indicate that it is one which defies traditional expectations of the fantasy genre.
Young Adult and Middle Grade Fiction
Moniquill Blackgoose’s To Shape a Dragon’s Breath had caught my attention when it first came out last year, but I did not have an opportunity to read it. A member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe, Blackgoose writes into being a world that fights back against the colonization of North America with the full force of dragons and teenage willpower.
Miscellaneous
Game Writing
Baldur’s Gate 3 is going to continue collecting awards until there are none left to collect, and with good cause. I understand that there was some frustration around the wait for BG3 to finally fully release, but it was very much worth the wait.
I played this in early access, and the volume of work done between initial early access and full release is remarkable. Substantive changes to the game’s writing and progression were made, not just mechanical tweaks and bug fixes. Anyone who enjoys fantasy will enjoy this game (although if you’re uncomfortable with sexual content, buyer beware). If you are more of a science fiction or horror fan, you may be pleasantly surprised to find that this game will scratch some of your itches as well, with prominent alien tech and body horror throughout.
Dramatic Presentation
I must admit that I personally have no interest in watching the Barbie movie. I’ve heard wonderful things, and I understand that it has become a cultural phenomenon. It is a kind of fantasy–in the same way that Indian in the Cupboard is fantasy–but it is not my kind of fantasy.
Either way, it was a strong enough film to take the Nebula, beating out such contenders as the Dungeons & Dragons movie and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Cthulhuville 