Nick Offerman was the toastmaster for this year’s Nebula Awards, which was excellent and his songs and his Three-Body Problem joke made it well worth it to deal with livestreaming the show on a shaky internet connection. Even though I about choked on my drink when he made a Left Hand of Darkness joke as well.
The Solstice Awards went to feminist author and critic Joanna Russ (posthumously) and Analog Magazine Editor Stanley Schmidt.
The biggest winner of the night is probably Alaya Dawn Johnson, who won the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy for her novel, Love is the Drug (alas, still on my to-read list), as well as the Nebula Award for Best Novelette for “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i.”
None of my picks for Best Novel won. I’d read three of the six nominees so far this year, and I was envisioning the award as a sort of Sophie’s choice between The Three-Body Problem and Ancillary Sword, which are both superb. The other nominee I’d read, The Goblin Emperor, was also excellent but such a love it or hate it sort of book that I didn’t think it had a real chance. However, the award went, in the end, to Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, which I’ve been planning to read this summer, but which has now definitely increased in priority. Probably will get started on the Southern Reach trilogy in the next few days.
The rest of the award winners:
Best Short Story – “Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon
Best Novella – Yesterday’s Kin by Nancy Kress
Ray Bradbury Award for Best Dramatic Presentation – Guardians of the Galaxy
Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award – Larry Niven
SF Bluestocking 
Too bad; I wanted The Three-Body Problem to win All The Awards. Both it and Yesterday’s Kin were in my Top 5 of 2014 post.
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I just finished The Three-Body Problem last week and really loved it, so it was very fresh in my mind. Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice is amazing, and I’ve been evangelizing for her books for a while now. It’s just hard for me to believe that BOTH of those got beat. Annihilation is definitely next on my to-read list, now, though. It’s been nominated for a couple of other awards as well.
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Just a quick correction, Stan Schmidt was the long-time editor of Analog, not Apex.
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Whoops! That’s what happens when I stay up too late! Fixed it in the post. Thank you!
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