60th Annual Nebula Awards Finalists
This past week saw the nominations for the 60th Annual Nebula Awards Finalists. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association announced a shortlist of six novels for work published in 2024.
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60th Annual Nebula Awards Finalists
Honoring the best in science fiction and fantasy from 2024 The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced the finalists for the 60th Annual Nebula Awards®.
The awards will be presented in a ceremony on Saturday, June 7, in Kansas City, MO as part of the 60th Annual Nebula Awards Conference.
Last year’s award went to The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. Other recent winners include R.F. Kuang and Martha Wells.
Nebula Award for Novel
Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslav Barsukov
Refusing the queen’s order to gas a crowd of protesters, Minister Shea Ashcroft is banished to the border to oversee the construction of the biggest defensive tower in history. However, the use of advanced technology taken from refugees makes the tower volatile and dangerous, becoming a threat to local interests. Shea has no choice but to fight the local hierarchy to ensure the construction succeeds—and to reclaim his own life.
Surviving an assassination attempt, Shea confronts his inner demons, encounters an ancient legend, and discovers a portal to a dead world—all while struggling to stay true to his own principles and maintain his sanity. Fighting memories and hallucinations, he starts to question everything…
Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory is a thought-provoking meditation on the fragility of the human condition, our beliefs, the manipulation of propaganda for political gains, and our ability to distinguish the real from the unreal and our willingness to accept convenient “truths.” The novel is a compelling exploration of memory, its fragile nature, and its profound impact on our perception of identity, relationships, and facts themselves.
Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera
Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story.
Annelid and Leveret met as children in the middle of the Sri Lankan civil war. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they’ll never leave each other behin
Asunder by Kerstin Hall
We choose our own gods here.
Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch being-three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving-who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with some very dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.
Ferain is willing to pay a ludicrous sum of money for her help. To save him, Karys inadvertently binds him to her shadow, an act that may doom them both. If they want to survive, they will need to learn to trust one another. Together, they must journey to the heart of a faded empire, all the while haunted by arcane horrors, and the unquiet ghosts of their pasts.
And all too soon, Karys knows her debts will come due.
A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
Cordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms-there are no secrets in this house!-Cordelia isn’t allowed to have a single friend. Unless you count Falada, her mother’s beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him.
But more than a few quirks set her mother apart. Other parents can’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless-obedient-for hours or days on end. Other mothers aren’t . . . sorcerers.
After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away together on Falada’s back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage. Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.
And indeed Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother. How the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.
The Book of Love by Kelly Link
Supernatural beings and chaos descend on the small seaside town of Lovesend, Massachusetts, in the wake of the unexpected return of three missing teenagers.
Laura, Daniel and Mo disappeared without trace a year ago. They have long been presumed dead. Which they were. But now they are not. And it is up to the resurrected teenagers to discover what happened to them.Revived by Mr Anabin – the man they knew as their high school music teacher – they are offered a chance to return to the mortal realm and solve the mystery of their death. But only two of them may stay.
What they do not realise is their return has upset a delicate balance that has held – just – for centuries.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
Shesheshen has made a fatal mistake for a monster: she’s fallen in love.
Shesheshen is a shapeshifter – one who is perfectly content to stay as an amorphous lump in her swamp unless impolite monster hunters invade intent on murdering her. Then, she meets warm-hearted Homily, who mistakes Shesheshen for a human like her.
But just as Shesheshen is about to confess her true identity, Homily reveals she’s hunting the shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give them both a chance at happiness, she must figure out why Homily’s family thinks she did – while surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to build a life with the woman she loves.
In addition to the Finalists in the Novel category the following nominations were announced.
Nebula Award for Novella
- The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed
- The Tusks of Extinction, Ray Nayler
- Lost Ark Dreaming, Suyi Davies Okungbowa
- Countess, Suzan Palumbo
- The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, Sofia Samatar
- The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui
Nebula Award for Novelette
- The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video, Thomas Ha
- Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka, Christine Hanolsy
- Another Girl Under the Iron Bell, Angela Liu
- What Any Dead Thing Wants, Aimee Ogden
- Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being, A.W. Prihandita
- Joanna’s Bodies, Eugenia Triantafyllou
- Loneliness Universe, Eugenia Triantafyllou
Nebula Award for Short Story
- The Witch Trap, Jennifer Hudak
- Five Views of the Planet Tartarus, Rachael K. Jones
- Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole, Isabel J. Kim
- Evan: A Remainder, Jordan Kurella
- The V*mpire, PH Lee
- We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read, Caroline M. Yoachim
If you enjoyed the 60th Annual Nebula Finalists, check out 10 Best Hard Sci-Fi Books of All Time
