2009 Nebula Award Nominees

The nominees have been announced for the 2009 Nebula Awards, selected by SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America:

http://www.sfwa.org/2010/02/2009-nebula-awards-final-ballot/

Note that nominees for the major awards are often posted free online, at least temporarily, for publicity purposes. Richard Cissée runs a great website that provides links to free - legally free - speculative fiction online, and he's already prepared for the Nebula nominees (scroll down on the home page here):

http://freesfonline.de/

And check out the "Awards" link at the top of the page for previous nominees and winners of the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards.

Regarding this year's Nebula Award nominees, I must admit that I haven't read a single one of them, not yet. However, I immediately noticed James Patrick Kelly, nominated for his short story, "Going Deep," because I loved his novelette, "Think Like a Dinosaur," which won a Hugo Award in 1996. I've read a couple of other works of short fiction by him, and I thought they were all pretty good. But nothing that struck me as powerfully as "Think Like a Dinosaur."

Kiji Johnson, another nominee in the short story category, was the author of the short story, "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss," which was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards last year, and actually won the World Fantasy Award. I thought it was a cute, pleasant little story, but not that good - not exceptional enough to win awards. But I tend to think that about a lot of the nominees.

Of the other authors I recognize, John Scalzi is another example of that. For the most part, I've enjoyed his books, but I'm just amazed that they're regularly nominated for Hugo and Nebula Awards. Don't get me wrong, they're usually very entertaining. But... you need more than that to be of award-winning caliber, don't you?