Nick Mamatas on the Nebula Awards

The winners of the Nebula Awards have been announced – it was a diverse list of nominees that included Amal El-Mohtar, Ted Chiang and N.K. Jemisin, and Apex Book of World SF series contributors Aliette de Bodard, Shweta Narayan and Nnedi Okorafor.

There have been various comments made about the eventual winners, most outspoken of whom was Nick Mamatas, who commented, sarcastically,  that

“At least SFWA managed to, for the most part, hold back the tide of black and brown people on the nominating ballot.”

What do you think? Is Mamatas right? Is he wrong? As always, we welcome discussion.

5 thoughts on “Nick Mamatas on the Nebula Awards

  1. Yeah, pretty disappointing. I love how he said (accurately) that “objectively the worst possible choices were made for Novel and Novelette”. Quite right.
    One could say that at least there was a decent showing of POC on the ballot. Still.

  2. Connie Willis is as nice a person as they come. Funny, too. And she’s written some good stuff.

    But giving her a Nebula for her overstuffed, two-volume ($52!) Willis formula tome, “Blackout/All Clear,” makes all too apparent what I first began to realize even as a kid in the 1970s: The Nebulas are more about who is liked than what is groundbreaking, deserving and so on.

    And interesting, the observation that SFWA went for the old white woman (sorry!) rather than some deserving non-white nominees.

    Ah, well.

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