# Talk:Nebula Award

A picture of the actual award would be nice... --JollyRogerz 13:31, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Word within SFWA from numerous sources is that the award has no bearing on sales, and can, in fact, reduce advances and sales of an author who isn't already an established name.  Both the Hugo and Nebula are seen as being "literary" and pretentious by many readers.  It's entirely dependent upon how the author's existing market is perceived. 209.43.8.69 00:51, 25 January 2007 (UTC) Michael Z. Williamson
Changed "award is handed out" to "Award is presented" since the former seems to belittle it. 209.43.8.69 00:56, 25 January 2007 (UTC) Michael Z. Williamson

I've shortened and ordered the list of notable Nebula winners.  In the interest of scannability and conciseness, I cut down the list to anyone who has won the award three times or more.  Without wanting to exclude anyone in particular, the list must be short enough to read well in paragraph form, so it cannot include every Nebula winner who some wikipedian thinks is notable enough to add to this list--I assume that's how this list grew so monstrous in the first place.
Also, how do we list a reference for this?  The Nebula Award for Best Novel and related pages have references--can someone come up with a concise way of noting the source for this information?  Tdimhcs (talk) 20:54, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Nebula Award/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: GreatOrangePumpkin (talk · contribs) 10:09, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written.
a (prose):  b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): 
"They were first given in 1966 at a ceremony created for the awards, and have been awarded every year since." - The only interesting part is the date. That it is an annual award was already mentioned. Perhaps merge the first part with the next sentence
Done.
"Works that have won have been published in special collections, and winners and nominees often have mentions of such on the books' cover. " - how about "Winning works have been published in special collections...". Also I don't understand the last phrase
Done.
" instead the award itself being a transparent block with an embedded glitter spiral nebula with gemstones cut to resemble planets.[2]" - does not make sense. How about (start a new sentence): The winner receives a trophy but no cash prize...
Done.
" The trophy itself was designed for the first awards by J. A. Lawrence, based on a sketch by Kate Wilhelm, and has remained the same ever since.[3]" - "Based on a sketch by Kate Wilhelm, the transparent block with an embedded glitter spiral nebula with gemstones cut to resemble planets was designed for the debut awards by J. A. Lawrence, and no changes were made to its design since then."
That sounds really awkward to me, rearranged the prior sentence instead.
"From 1974 to 1978 under the names Best Dramatic Presentation and Best Dramatic Writing and again from 2000 through 2009 as Best Script a Script award was also presented," - how about "A Script award was also presented from ..., ,but after 2009 it was again removed and replaced by SFWA with the Bradbury Award.[3]"
Done.
"which were then voted on to create a final ballot" - how about "which were then voted for the final ballot"
Reworked a bit, they voted on the big list of preliminaries to narrow it down to 5, then voted on those 5.
ranges should use an unspaced n-dash instead of an m-dash: "December—November "
Done.
"Solstice Award to honor individuals making a significant impact on the speculative fiction field" - better is "who made a significant..."
" David Langford and Peter Nicholls, in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2012) also said that the two awards were often given to the same works," - David ... and Peter... stated in The Encyclopedia... (2012) that the two awards ...
Done.

It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references):  b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR): 

It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects):  b (focused): 

It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias: 

It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.: 

It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales):  b (appropriate use with suitable captions): 

Overall: Looks good overall. Hold.--Kürbis (✔) 16:10, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
Pass/Fail: 

Responded inline. --PresN 21:15, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Something is off here. On the list there is no mention of Samuel R. Delany's winning the Nebula Award for "Ye, and Gomorrah" for Short Story, the same year he won it for "The Einstien Intersection" as best SF novel. I know he won it for the short story, because I am looking at the twelve(?) pound block of lucite with the sparkly things inside which he/I was presented with that evening in New York in 1968 right now. Beset wishes. (SRD)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.52.140.190 (talk) 14:37, 15 January 2016 (UTC) 

The winners themselves (and the nominees) are listed at the various award category lists- in this case Nebula Award for Best Short Story and Nebula Award for Best Novel, where he/you are listed as the winner in 1968 for both categories. This article doesn't go into winner statistics like you winning twice in the same year, though perhaps it should. --PresN 14:44, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

The individual article pages, best script, best short story, best novelette, nest novella and best novel, the tables need some serious work. Most awards tables use rowspans for the year only to make it easier to read and separate the different nominees and winners. Examples: Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay), Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. Also, they all include this little tidbit:

"In the following table, the years correspond to the date of the ceremony, rather than when the work was first released. Entries with a blue background and an asterisk (*) next to the writer's name have won the award; those with a white background are the other nominees on the shortlist. Entries with a gray background and a plus sign (+) mark a year when "no award" was selected as the winner."
It's completely unnecessary to have the winners "*" when they are already highlighted within the table and the "+" is also redundant if the "no award" is highlighted gray. Lady Lotus (talk) 17:30, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I knew before looking that your two examples weren't going to be featured lists. Know how? Because it's completely impossible nowadays (i.e. at least the past 2 years) to get a list featured if it doesn't follow the WP:ACCESS parts of the MOS. Part of that doc is that you can't just use color to highlight specific rows that mean something special- like winners. Because if you use a screen-reader, then there's no way to tell the difference. You're not going to get anywhere with removing the "*" signs.
As far as the rowspans go, I'm not totally against you. They would be nice, if I can figure out a good way to do them (rowpans for the ref column won't work, btw.) The issue, though, is again that MOS- I have no idea if it works right for WP:ACCESS, and didn't get a clear answer last time I asked.
You really want rowspans? Go to WT:FLC or WT:ACCESS, and pin somebody down on if they're okay for use in featured lists. You do that, and I'll even help you change all the Hugo/Nebula award lists to use them. I'm not as against it as you seem to be in favor of it, so I'll go along. But since we're talking about 22 lists at minimum, I'm not going to put in that massive amount of effort only to get blocked for it on my next FLC or have it all be reverted. --PresN 21:09, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
OK that seems fair enough, and I really wasn't changing things to make them worse or just to be a brat, just trying to make the pages look nicer. The only thing I'm really looking for is the change in the years, it's just a jumbled mess and I totally understand about the accessibility aspect bc i remove rowspans on most pages but when it's things like this, it just makes more sense and looks nicer. So i'll try to get an answer from someone but if not, I'll be ok with it. Thank you for responding nicely :) Lady Lotus (talk) 17:24, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

We say in the lead that the 2012 Awards were presented in Washington DC, May 2012.
The sponsor SFWA at "Nebula Awards Winners" (announced) calls those the 2011 winners --and that dating convention holds back to "2000 Nebula Award Winners" at the bottom of the same page.
I don't know who consistently we or they follow the pattern reported here. --P64 (talk) 18:35, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

The standard used to be that we went by the year that the award ceremony was in, to maintain consistency with other awards (such as the Hugo)- they all got moved over to the SFWA counting scheme a few months ago, though, and I guess this page didn't get updated. Now done. --PresN 18:51, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
Regarding SFWA Grand Masters, now created by the practically annual Damon Knight Award, the association has been inconsistent during the last year: Connie Willis listed for 2012 Gene Wolfe announced for 2012
Continued at Talk: Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. --P64 (talk) 20:42, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
In rewriting the paragraph on other awards beside Nebulas, I changed 1976/1996/2007 to 1975/1995/2006 (because our outside source SFE gives those dates) and neglected to change Bradbury's 2010 to 2009.
As I noted above, SFWA is not consistent. I doubt that either SFE or Locus is consistent. On SFE's part, shouldn't that be Norton Awards from 2005 --the year established and the first eligible publication year? (I can't imagine where we got 2007, maybe a simple typo.)
Locus refers to Nebula rules changes early in 2009[1], first governing awards presented in 2010. I don't know whether that is the most recent rule change we date 2010. Elsewhere (EN.wikipedia, not SF) I have used "in 2009" and "for 2010" regarding rule changes in 2009 that first bear on the 2009/2010 or 2010 awards. Unfortunately that suggests "in 2010" and "for 2009" regarding awards official dated 2010 for works published in 2009.
Anyway, I don't know whether those Locus 2009 rules changes are our changes "most recently in 2010". --P64 (talk) 20:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
May I ask for clarification on this issue?  At least with recent announcements, the SFWA websites and press releases themselves use publication year as the designation for awards, not ceremony date. (in other words, the "2015 Nebula" is given in a ceremony in 2016 for works published in 2015).  Does Wikipedia have a standard rule about this, and if not shouldn't we be using the organization's own system?AnneTG (talk) 23:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

This also got discussed the year before this discussion (in more detail) at Talk:Nebula Award for Best Novel#Dates in the table, though that was 6 years ago. To sum up:
a) Before 2009, SFWA's numbering scheme made no sense- the "1999" awards were given in 2000 for works published in 1998/1999.
b) They don't match other major SFF book awards- both the Hugos and WFAs number them by the ceremony year, as do most minor awards, leaving the Nebulas as the odd one out
c) as a result of a) and b), the main source used in the lists (Locus) numbers them by ceremony year
d) and the big one: I (the author/primary maintainer of this article/associated lists) don't really care to fight about one scheme vs. the other (WP has no guideline that I'm aware of), but in 8 years of comments, not a single person has seriously offered or jumped in to change all of the dates across 6 articles to match SFWA. I'm not going to do it, and will revert any half-baked attempt to do it inconsistently, but will not stop anyone from doing it themselves. After 6 years, I'm not holding my breath. --PresN 23:57, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

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The “list of categories” internal link is dead and there is no current list, let alone link, of winners. Or is this exclusive to iPhones? Signinstranger (talk) 17:27, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

@Signinstranger:It works on my iPhone.  I'm not sure what else I can tell you.  Is there some error message you're seeing? Dan Bloch (talk) 18:37, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

This has been discussed before, but not in the previous few years. I would suggest moving all of the year dates back one year. I am willing to take on the task over the next few weeks, but I want to gather feedback from other editors and ensure it is not going to be reverted before putting in the work.
As an example, Nebula Award for Best Novel lists The Saint of Bright Doors as the 2024 winner. However, reliable sources such as Locus (here) and Reactor (here) call it the 2023 winner. Same goes for Babel, listed as the 2023 winner on the Wikipedia page but as the 2022 winner in reliable sources (1, 2) and even by the Nebula Awards themselves.
I realize this is a convention that has changed over the years, but using the most recent sources and backdating from there seems to be the most consistent.Michelangelo1992 (talk) 01:26, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

My position on this remains the same as it was last time (7 years ago, wow), which I'll repeat for clarity:
a) Before 2009, SFWA's numbering scheme made no sense- the "1999" awards were given in 2000 for works published in 1998/1999. That means for 43 years of awards out of 59, numbering it as the year before the ceremony doesn't actually match up to when the books/stories/whatever came out.
b) They don't match other major SFF book awards- both the Hugos and WFAs number them by the ceremony year, as do most minor awards, leaving the Nebulas as the odd one out. That includes even the "not-a-nebula" awards run by SFWA- the 2024 Infinity award was given in 2024, and is listed as such at Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.
c) as a result of a) and b), the main source used in the lists (Locus's SF Award Database, e.g. [2]) numbers them by ceremony year.
d) no one has ever seriously put in the work to change it. Both the 2018 and 2012 discussions died when the people who proposed it didn't follow through and make the edits. If you're truly willing to adjust the years on this page and the 8 sublists, I won't revert you, but please do put in the work if you want the change made. --PresN 01:40, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for your feedback! I am happy to put in the work to get it updated; I just wanted to ensure there was no compelling reason not to do so. I would hate to put in the substantial work and then realize it was a mistake. I will probably leave this discussion open for a week or so to ensure no other commenter has any opposing opinion prior to delving into the editing process. Thank you! Michelangelo1992 (talk) 11:20, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Seeing no objections, I'm going to start this project. It's going to take a few days, so please bear with me while I work to get everything standardized across all the different articles! Michelangelo1992 (talk) 01:12, 4 June 2025 (UTC)
There should probably be a more detailed explanation of this in the article itself, with its own subsection instead of being buried in 'History'. DS (talk) 00:44, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
This is already in the lede as well as the history section. The lede states "SFWA identifies the awards by the year of publication, that is, the year prior to the year in which the award is given."
I don't think it needs an entire other section, but if you'd like to add a phrase or sentence about how this contrasts with other major awards, I think that would be fine. For example, we might say that: "Many other major literary awards, such as the Hugo Award and Locus Award, are identified by the year in which the ceremony takes place. In contrast, SFWA identifies the awards by the year of publication: that is, the year prior to the year in which the award is given."
I still don't think that needs its own section, but something like the above could be added to the "History" section or elsewhere in the article. It may also fit under the "Categories" heading. Michelangelo1992 (talk) 01:19, 6 August 2025 (UTC)