What is the difference between hugo and nebula awards

Press ESC to cancel. Ben Davis April 21, What is the difference between the Hugo and Nebula awards? Who won the most Hugos? Who is the Hugo Award named for? Who is eligible for a Hugo Award?

How do you get nominated for a Nebula Award? How do you beat a nebula? Is the Hugo Award prestigious? What causes a nebula? Is Earth in a nebula? How long does a nebula last?

What is it like inside a nebula? What happens if you touch a nebula? What if you were in a nebula? Are nebulae dangerous? What is the most dangerous nebula? What do we call a dying star? The Terminal Experiment — Robert J. Sawyer — Thought-provoking Canadian author Sawyer conjures up a tale of a scientist trying to determine whether there is life after death, using clones of himself.

A smart, fast-reading examination of ethics. Rite of Passage — Alexei Panshin — A perfectly enjoyable yet unremarkable bildungsroman about a young girl on a generation starship. Solid science, to be sure, but not all that much fun. OK, not really, but a surprising amount of it takes place in one.

Seeker — Jack McDevitt — Hey, the guy had been on the ballot for the previous three years without taking home any hardware — give the guy an award already! McDevitt is an old-school sf writer, fun, well-plotted, easy to read, but this hardly deserved a Nebula. No innovation whatsoever. The Falling Woman — Pat Murphy — A rather ordinary novel by a very good short-story writer that won in a very weak year. Dreamsnake — Vonda N. McIntyre — Apparently Ursula Le Guin has made a case for this novel, but to me it was a mediocre post-apocalypse science-fantasy.

It topped the ballot in an extremely weak year for novels; it also took the Hugo. I liked it well enough, but it won in a somewhat weak year. The Moon and the Sun — Vonda N. Forever Peace — Joe Haldeman — Not great and not a sequel to The Forever War , this near ish future war story won in an exceptionally weak year. Like Connie Willis, Haldeman is beloved personality among fans and professionals alike.

Camoflage — Joe Haldeman — A perfectly serviceable, but hardly exceptional, novel about an alien among us. Strange not every fat fantasy is a derivative doorstopper , a much better book, won the Hugo.

Among Others — Jo Walton — A realist fantasy about fairies that charmed fans with its many inside references to favorite works in the field. The Hugos which this novel won were beginning to succumb to the commercial dominance of fat fantasy tomes and so, it seems, were the Nebulas.

And voters missed a chance to reward Martin for A Storm of Swords. It might have worked, had the author resisted her tics and kept it to, say, pages.

An egregious example of fans voting for a bad book because the author is a truly great person and the formula is comfortably familiar. And Willis can be so good….

Outstanding world-building, innovative and deeply intelligent. Not easy, and not even as fun as many books further down the list, but a pinnacle—maybe the pinnacle? A Canticle for Leibowitz — Walter M. Miller, Jr. Spare and sharp, thought-provoking and thrilling. Everything he wrote after is cranky, self-regarding garbage, but this slick tale of libertarians on the moon exemplifies how he influenced sf—snappy dialogue, smart characters, that winning sense of relaxed realism—as much as Hemingway did American fiction and the Beatles pop music.

Hyperion — Dan Simmons — Simmons may be one of the smartest writers ever to focus on the fantastic, and his quasi-retelling of the Canterbury Tales is both literary and fun. Once a consummate Renaissance thinker, he has sadly fallen into right-wing crankery. A Case of Conscience — James Blish — Blish was unafraid to tackle religion head on, and here he puts a Catholic missionary through the ringer on an alien world, reaching a shocking conclusion.

I imagine it was pretty controversial back when. Starship Troopers — Robert A. Heinlein — Written as a juvenile, this novel earns its place in the top 20 for its sheer bravado.

Does Heinlein really believe all this? Is he the anti-democratic warmonger he seems? Could be. Interesting … and a little scary. This is the first true fantasy Dune has fantasy elements, and Stranger in the Strange Land is as much fantasy … or something … as sf to make the upper echelons of my list, which may be unfair. Gaiman is a huge fan favorite. Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert A. Probably because of the free love, man. So why do I have it all the way down here?

Must be my anti-fantasy bias shining through. Startide Rising — David Brin — Just before the explosion of cyberpunk, a straightforward but entertaining novel packed with ideas and star-traveling dolphins. They wanted to be sure to catch him this time. Clever, dense, flashily written. The usual line is that the middle section is a hell of a novella, an ingenious imagination of a truly alien life form and social structure, while the two encompassing earthbound and moonbound sections are just average.

I dont want to read just "joint" winners, so I plan on reading all of them. I may be getting ahead of myself there. Ive always thought of the Hugo's as being a bit more forgiving in the way of fantasy. Normally I dont go for the whole "award" thing, but of the books I've read that are featured on the lists I do like them- a lot.

So I might as well try them all. I also want to make some headway into the SF Masterworks series, I also have that on an excel chronologically by publication date. I've been considering merging the two lists, havent decided yet. Becky wrote: "I created an excel spreadsheet last week that listed all the Hugo and Nebula winners in chronological order by publication date It'd be interesting to compare them, but I don't know how.

There's plenty of information on the 'net, but not in the format I wanted. And there's always some borderline cases - like do you include withdrawn nominees?

I also wondered about merging the SF Masterworks, but as that's a commercial venture, with its own priorities, I decided against it. For instance, can they get the rights to all the award winners?

And is their list skewed towards books that are out of copyright? So I'm just going to use them as a source of the older books when I get round to buying them.

I havent added nominees for the awards, I figured there were 87 winners already,I'd have enough to read. Currently I have the SF Masterworks series as its own thing exactly becuase it is a commercial venture but then, so are the awards in their way. As for the SF masterworks most of the books are still in copyright. I find this unfortunate, I love books to be out of copyright becasue then I can get them on Gutenberg and Librivox.

Oh well. I'm upset with them because they dont include any H. Beam Piper, but that might be just me. If anything its a reference point for ideas on books that I might enjoy someday. I really love to see the history of the genre unfolding, and its a decent source for that. Oct 20, PM.

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