2016 NEBULA AWARDS: Naomi Novik's Uprooted Wins Best Novel In All-Female Sweep

The 2016 Nebula Awards for the best writing in science fiction and fantasy released in 2015 were announced this weekend and all of the winners in the main categories (Novel, Novella, Novellette and Short Story) were women!

Novel

• Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

Novella

• Binti, Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)

Novelette

• ‘‘Our Lady of the Open Road’’, Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s 6/15)

Short Story

• ‘‘Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers’’, Alyssa Wong (Nightmare 10/15)

Additionally, Fran Wilde's Updraft won the Young Adult Nebula award, i.e. Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. Mad Max: Fury Road deservedly won the Outstanding Dramatic Presentation category.

The big kahuna is the Novel category, and this year there are three books that have been nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula: Naomi Novik's Uprooted (which I have not read yet and since I was not a fan of her Temeraire stories I may not get around to), Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy and N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season (both of which I have read). If I were voting, I would have picked Jemisin, and the SFF award prognosticator at Chaos Horizon did just that as well. However, we were both wrong. Does that mean Novik is now the front runner for the Hugo? I doubt it, but I do think it means that voters may not split as many votes among Leckie, Jemisin and Novik, which could make it harder for Neal Stephenson's Seveneves to win the award (which I think it is going to do).