Congratulations to the 2021 Nebula Award Finalists!

Although the Nebulas aren’t one of the awards I tend to cover on my annual beat, I’m paying attention this time around for a writing project that covers SF/F published in 2020. I don’t have a lot to say about the latest round of finalists themselves – the only one I’ve read is N. K. Jemisin’s The City we Became – but I do have some thoughts on the general make-up of the ballot.

In particular, I’m wondering how many of these works I’ll be covering when I’m reviewing the year’s Hugo Awards. The Nebula novels tend to have a three-book overlap with the Hugos (at least, they have done the last few years) and it seems a dead cert that we’ll be seeing both the N. K. Jemisin and Martha Wells novels on the Worldcon ballot. The others are up in the air, though. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic has been getting considerable buzz – but bear in mind that the same author’s Gods of Jade and Shadow, which won last year’s Nebula, didn’t even make the Hugo ballot.

Cora Buhlert, more familiar with the finalists than I am, notes some of the recurring traits on the ballot – namely, revisionist takes on Lovecraftian horror and the strong presence of African authors.

Courtesy of File 770, here’s a complete ballot with links to online copies (either full or excerpted) of the stories:

Novel

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury US; Bloomsbury UK) (Excerpt – Audio Excerpt)
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US & UK) (Excerpt – Audio Excerpt)
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey; Jo Fletcher) (Excerpt – Audio Excerpt)
The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk (Erewhon) (Excerpt – Audio Excerpt)
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga; Solaris) (Excerpt – Audio Excerpt)
Network Effect by Martha Wells (Tordotcom) (Excerpt – Audio Excerpt)

Novella

Tower of Mud and Straw by Yaroslav Barsukov, Metaphorosis (full text: part 1 – part 2 – part 3 – part 4)
Finna by Nino Cipri, Tordotcom (Excerpt – Audio Excerpt)
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark, Tordotcom (Excerpt – Audio Excerpt)
Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon by Oghenechovwe D Ekpeki (in Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora, Aurelia Leo) (free EPUB, MOBI, PDF, DOC)
The Four Profound Weaves by Rose Lemberg, Tachyon Publications (Overdrive Excerpt – Audio Excerpt)
Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi, Tordotcom (Excerpt – Audio Excerpt)

Novelette

“Stepsister” by Leah Cypess (F&SF 5-6/20)
“The Pill” by Meg Elison (in Big Girl, PM Press)
“Burn or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super” by A.T. Greenblatt (Uncanny 5-6/20)
“Two Truths and a Lie” by Sarah Pinsker (Tor.com 6/17/20)
“Where You Linger” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Uncanny 1-2/20)
“Shadow Prisons” by Caroline M. Yoachim (in Dystopia Triptych, Broad Reach Publishing + Adamant Press) (full text: The Shadow Prison Experiment – Shadow Prisons of the Mind – The Shadow Prisoner’s Dilemma)

Short Story

“Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse” by Rae Carson (Uncanny 1-2/20)
“Advanced Word Problems in Portal Math” by Aimee Picchi (Daily Science Fiction 1/3/20)
“A Guide for Working Breeds” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, Solaris)
“The Eight-Thousanders” by Jason Sanford (Asimov’s 9-10/20)
“My Country Is a Ghost” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 1-2/20)
“Open House on Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell (Diabolical Plots 6/15/20)