Now that I’ve read and reviewed the seven finalists for Best Novel, I’ve found time to explore some of the other Nebula Awards categories. On June 6, the Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) will be announcing all the winners at the SFWA 61st annual conference in Chicago. To see the entire list of finalists in all the categories, go HERE.

I don’t have time to read all the finalists in categories other than Best Novel, but as I browsed through the finalists, I found a lot of new things to read (and watch), some things I had already read, and other things from authors I have already read and enjoyed.

In the Best Novella category, I found two finalists by writers I know I enjoy–Annalee Newitz, Automatic Noodle–I reviewed her novel The Terraformers HERE as a finalist for the Nebula 2024 awards, and Wole Talabi, Descent. I reviewed Talabi’s Shigedi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, also a finalist for the 2024 Nebula Award, HERE.

The Nebula Best Novelette category includes Thomas Ha’s Uncertain Sons, which I reviewed earlier this year among finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award. See my review HERE.

In the Best Short Story category, Thomas Ha was nominated again, for “In My Country.”

This year’s Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation includes a number of entries I have either seen or rushed right out to see, including the movie Sinners, an episode of the streaming series Severance, and a season each for the streaming series Murderbot and Pluribus.

In the Best Poem category, I read all the entries. I’m a poet myself, so I can tell you the world of poetry is full of different takes, different flavors, different modes, and all of us don’t like/read/write/understand all of them.

Other categories: I don’t read comics, sorry, so I’m unfamiliar with any of those entries. I don’t usually review middle grade and YA literature.

Here are some random observations, for what they are worth:

• Newitz’s Automatic Noodle charmed me because of the way it handled two themes familiar to me from her superb novel The Terraformers: sentient machines (if you’ve read The Terraformers, you’ll remember the great sentient train); and the way red tape, bureaucratic procedures, and rules and regulations can actually be used to shape the world for good, not just thwart it.
• Talabi’s Descent presents some fascinating world-building and a story drawing on explorers’ almost visceral, almost god-given need to risk everything in their quest to observe the world, not just gain theoretical knowledge based on logic and extrapolation. You can read Descent in Clarkesworld‘s May 2025 issue.
• Ha’s Uncertain Sons is the novelette that ends his great short-story collection Uncertain Sons and Other Stories. He won the Special Citation Award, judged by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, for that collection at the recent Philip K. Dick Awards ceremony at Norwescon. His short story “In My Country” is fiction in the same vein–his stories are enigmatic, obsessive, haunting tales that will lodge in your mind as vivid and as inexplicable as dreamscapes. You can read “In My Country” in Clarkesworld‘s April 2025 issue.
• I had trouble with all the poems, and that’s probably because I read and write a very different flavor of poetry than most of the nominated ones for this award. The poem I like best among the finalists is “Care for Lightning,” by Mari Ness ( https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/care-for-lightning/ ). Really, if you ask me who has written the best poem in the whole Nebula list, I’d point you to Thomas Ha. Yes, I know he’s a fiction writer. In his case, I want to tell you to read him without thinking about genre at all. But if poetry is the arrangement of words for the pleasure and beauty of and amazement at the arrangement–which I think it is–then yes, Ha is your poet.
• Sinners is a remarkable movie based on the folklore belief that music comes from the demonic. See my discussion of dangerous bards HERE. In that post, I mention the legend of ’20s bluesman Tommy Johnson, who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for musical talent–often confused with another great ’20s bluesman, Robert Johnson, who just sang about such a thing. Sinners is set in that same Delta blues environment. Ultimately, though, Sinners is a vampire movie, and one of the best. Ryan Coogler, the writer/director, also directed the masterpiece Judas and the Black Messiah, as well as the Black Panther movies, for those of you who love superheroes.
• Severance is a science fiction/dsytopic streaming series based on the premise (with very sinister overtones) that work/life separation can be achieved medically. What kind of life do the severed workers live–in what eerie netherworld do they exist? the show asks. Meanwhile, their ordinary selves go about their ordinary lives completely oblivious of these other selves. The series streams on Apple+TV and is now heading into its third season. The nominated episode, “Chikhai Bardo,” is one of its best, a supernatural story of the liminal place between life and death. (But do also watch the thrillingly weird episode where the character played by Trammell Tillman turns from smarmy corporate manager into the drum major for a marching band of the classic HBCU type–except. . . very, very surreal.)
• Murderbot, based on the popular Murderbot Diaries series of novellas by Martha Wells, is another Apple+TV streaming series. This one features a witty, deadpan performance by Alexander Skarsgård, a really fun, cheerfully fake retro design, and a hilariously touching, bumbling band of hippie scientists–great ensemble casting. Not to mention a show-within-a-show that is a send-up of cheezy SF tv.
• Pluribus, too, is a streaming series on Apple+TV. That is turning out to be THE streaming platform for speculative fiction fans. The showrunner for Pluribus is Vince Gilligan, who brought us two of my favorite series of all time, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Those weren’t set in a speculative fiction universe, while Pluribus is, but all three pay tribute to the truly weird ambiance of real-life Albuquerque, New Mexico. I spend a lot of my year there, and I can tell you everyone in town loves actors Bryan Cranston, Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, and all the others, with special affection for the local actors who take part–and deep affection for the local scene, because the show is largely shot there, too. In Pluribus, you get to see Rhea Seehorn’s character steal a Georgia O’Keefe from the museum in Santa Fe, soak blissfully in the Jimez Springs hot springs, gaze out over the amazing Sandia Mountains from a rooftop restaurant, and best of all, watch all the pod people of Albuquerque (including its real-life mayor) pick up her trash. Although I know I’m prejudiced in its favor, I truly have enjoyed this show’s first season. But really, appreciation for Albuquerque Weird goes ‘way back: