Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/20/nk-jemisin.html
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Those NK Jemisin books deserve awards, but the Hugos spotted it on the first book, so giving a prize to the third feels a little bandwagonny
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<3 Murderbot <3
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Read some reviews for the novel category entries. None really drew me in and that makes me bit of a Sad puppy. Luckily there are lots of books for me too. Congrats to the winners!
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The Hugos and the Nebulas are determined by a different group of voters and serve different purposes. Why should one feel any obligation to regularly grant awards to the same work as the other? What purpose would be served if that were to happen all the time?
Hugo award winners deserve the award. Nebula award winners deserve the award. More awards won by a greater number of works makes for a healthier profile for the genre as a whole, and celebrates a greater diversity of authors. Which is good.
Members of the SFWA didn’t give “The Stone Sky” the best novel Nebula because they suddenly realized that the first two books in the series had won Hugos. They did it because they thought it was the best novel this year.
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Lot of love here for Murderbot ~ the mix of drama, action and random literal lol bits has me hooked. 
️:heart:️:heart:️
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Glad to see the Stone Sky winning for novel although I’d posit it’s more for the entire series.
Maybe. But it shouldn’t be. All three of those books are extremely strong. The Stone Sky is probably one of the best ends to a trilogy in a long time.
If you liked Murderbot, check out some of Martha Wells’ fantasy. Her Books of the Raksura series is one of my all-time favorites, and her stuff is excellent as well.
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All Systems Red / Murderbot is the best thing I’ve read this year. Really superb.
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I disagree - I thought the first book was much better than the others.
I wasn’t being very serious there. And I can see how awards voters might want to spread the love around, especially given that standalone books get one chance, and those in a series get a bunch.
Still, if the point of the exercise is to alert the world when a book is particularly outstanding, that’s true of The Fifth Season, and not its sequels. They’re not bad, they just feel kind of like accessories to the original. Which was also how I felt about Ancillary Justice, and in fact the reason I read that is because I thought “hmm, Hugo and Nebula eh? Perhaps it’s more interesting than it sounds”.
"…Ancillary Justice, and in fact the reason I read that is because I thought “hmm, Hugo and Nebula eh? Perhaps it’s more interesting than it sounds”.
I had to accept a lot of blame for jump-starting a couple of my fellow sci-fi-heads into Leckie’s Radch trilogy, this after my learning of her awards for Ancillary Justice (and I just part way into AJ at that time) and its NPR recommendation. We all stuck it out to the end of the trilogy – give us that! – but when the narrative juice is made up of the contrived, runs-out-of-gas-early, somewhat sophomoric concept of non-specific genders (obviously a sideways riff on LeGuin’s far superior Left Hand of Darkness), and the story focuses down to the particulars of a tea set, for Pete’s sake, then what we were left with was a detective novel spread over three books. We felt had. That all said, literary trilogies are very risky, with each book having to stand on its own, yet, throughout, carrying the promise of a big payoff at the end, with all that making the readers’ investment in time and money worthwhile; kudos to Leckie for her bravery and stamina in that regard… but a sci-fi winner? I expected more. Afterwards, I had to clean my palate with some Bear and Tepper.
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Truly was a great novella, I loved it. I only wished it were longer.
I stuck it out to the end of the first, Ancillary Justice, great concept and world building, but boooooooring writing. couldn’t bring myself to try the second. Went and re-read an Iain Banks instead.
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Have you read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy yet? Deals very inventively (and logically) with the complications arising from human colonists on Mars (as it’s being terraformed), Earth corporations that foot the bill for Mars colonization, genetic engineering, multinationals, governments, ecosystems, politics, the works, with interesting soap-opera action between many characters thrown in.
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