What I'm Looking Forward to about This Year's Nebula Conference Programming: An Appreciation of Kate Baker

This has been in discussion for a while now; I’m glad we’ve finally moved ahead on the project of making the Nebula Suggested Reading List public. The intent is to build awareness of the awards, help drive participation by members, and help the genre by providing a solid list of notable material from the year. Authors do not need to be SFWA members to make their work eligible.

Here’s the official press release about it:

As part of its mission to serve professional genre writers, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is pleased to announce that for the first time they’ll be making the Nebula Suggested Reading List public. The list is compiled from the suggestions of SFWA members and is available on the SFWA website at http://www.sfwa.org/forum/index.php?app=readinglist. All SFWA members are eligible to add items to the list throughout the year, providing a list of notable speculative novels, novellas, novelettes, short stories, and dramatic works from the year. Inclusion on the list is not an endorsement by SFWA.

From November 15 through February 15, 2016, Active and Associate members will be able to make actual Nebula nominations as well as nominations for the Bradbury and Andre Norton Award. The votes will be tallied and the final ballot will be released on or before February 20 for voting on by the membership. Winners will be announced at the Nebula Awards Weekend, to be held May 12 -15 at the Palmer House in Chicago. The banquet and awards ceremony will take place the evening of May 14. Other awards presented at the weekend include the Grand Master Award, the Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service to SFWA Award, and the Solstice Award.

Nebula Commissioner Terra LeMay says “Even before I became the Nebula Awards Commissioner, I’ve always thought the Suggested Reading List was one of the best resources I’ve ever encountered for finding the most exciting new science fiction and fantasy works each year. It is a great privilege to have helped bring this list out to the public where any reader may benefit from it.”

SFWA President Cat Rambo notes, “Every year there’s plenty of terrific stuff to read. I hope that providing a list that draws upon the wide spectrum of tastes represented in the SFWA’s membership of professional writers helps up the discoverability of great writing that should be considered for awards. For me the Nebula Awards remain the most meaningful in the field, chosen by writers working in the genre, who understand and appreciate craft and who possess an understanding of the works that have shaped our field. SFWA has had a productive year in 2015, and it’s a pleasure to share yet another result of our members working together.”

For more information please email pr@sfwa.org.

Recent high notes for SFWA include the Accessibility Checklist being made available to the public, an event Lee Martindale blogged eloquently about. Several conventions have expressed interest in the checklist already and we’ve gotten some useful feedback on how to update them to make them even more useful.

Stick with us; there’s even more cool stuff coming in 2016.

I got back late last night, after a trip back that included a lost reservation, my luggage being overweight (how could that be? oh, look at all those books) so I had to repack a bit at the counter under the check-in agent’s impatient gaze, and the poor kid beside me throwing up steadily all the way from PIT to IAD. It’s always weird, the day after travel, because one feels as though you’ve been simultaneously on vacation and yet working harder than most days.

I cannot begin to enumerate all the ways that weekend was wonderful. It was a great joy to see months and months of planning finally bear fruit and now we can relax for at least a couple days before thinking about next year. The programming was, in my opinion, outstanding. My only quarrel would be that there was so much good stuff that I could not get to every panel I wanted to, and that I could not spend enough time with the fabulous SFWA events team of Kate Baker, Terra LeMay, and Steven H Silver, who are responsible for everything that was wonderful.

One of the challenges for the Programming Team, led by Mary Robinette Kowal, was making sure the programming had something for all writers, whether they were tradpub, small press, indie, or hybrid. There were so many terrific, in-depth panels, including a wealth of shadow programming additions and office hours with writers and other publishing professionals. It made me think back to a Nebula from several years when I was on a lackadaisical panel about writers block that was, I think, so much less useful than it could have been and realize just how far the Nebula Conference has come from the days of “let’s all get together in a hotel and hand out the awards and then drink a lot.”

Sarah Pinsker did a great job with the mentoring program, which matched up literally dozens of folks for mentoring sessions that were, for a number of folks, a major highlight of the con. I am sure many of the relationships formed there will last long after this weekend; I know I picked up two of my mentee’s books and am looking forward to reading them.

The book depot structure, so adeptly administered by Sean Wallace, meant that everyone had a chance to have their books there. That had been an issue for a number of the indies last year and it was gratifying to see that problem addressed. I apologize for being one of the people who brought a stack of books in at the last minute; Sean was very patient with the number of us who did so.

I will not claim everything was perfect; I think I’m one of the people most acquainted with every behind-the-scene misstep and/or perceived slight that needed smoothing over. But so many of the small touches were stellar. The centerpieces on the banquet tables were charming robots assembled from vintage materials by artist Don L. Jones. There were plenty of chances for networking with partners and finding new and interesting opportunities. The gender-neutral bathroom was there, and usable, and in a place where people could find it. The Volunteer Breakfast on Sunday was lovely; we had a great turn-out and people liked the appreciation certificates and special SFWA temporary tattoos. (I still have a lot of these and am happy to mail them to SFWAns.) Toastmaster Kjell Lindgren was charming and smart and loves SF as much as any of us; he even showed us the books that drew him on his lifepath.

Speaking of reading, the swag bags were STUFFED with great stuff; I was making a number of happy noises while unpacking mine. I also enjoyed pointing people at the excess tables towards books that I knew were terrific, like Sarah Kuhn’s The Heroine Complex or Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Spirit Binders books.

I got to wear several of my more high-end thrift store finds from this year, and also learned how to pack garments that consist mainly of chainmail-like layers of sequins. I also learned that such things really end up being heavy when you accumulate a few in one suitcase. My banquet dress was a big hit; I’ve never been asked before “who were you wearing?”, which amuses me and may underscore the lengths to which I will go in SFWA’s service.

I did indeed announce that SFWA will be giving out a game-writing Nebula. Not an award with a separate name, like the Andre Norton or Ray Bradbury Award, but a Nebula. Why? Because game-writing deserves to be right up there in the ranks, not treated like a special case (no disrespect is intended there to either of the named awards). If you’re a gamewriter interested in providing feedback on how SFWA can help/serve gamewriters — or better yet, if you’re interested in helping make that happen by volunteering — I’d love to hear from you, and you can find my contact information here.

Next year’s Nebulas will again be in Pittsburgh and at the same hotel. Overall, they did a pretty solid job (with a few overwhelmed restaurant bobbles) and I know the manager and the events team sat down together on Sunday and went over everything that went wrong and how we can avoid them next year, down to details like marking the ramp’s edges with white tape so next time no one trips and has a bad fall over that invisible edge.

The business meeting on Saturday went smoothly; I don’t think there were any real surprises for anyone. The officer election results were announced; thank you and welcome to incoming officers Curtis Chen, Andy Duncan, Jeffe Kennedy, and John P. Murphy, with special thanks again to Erin M. Hartshorn for agreeing to take up M.C.A. Hogarth’s sparkly war axe. The most contentious discussion was a member who felt that some members might prefer to write letters to the editor in the e-newsletter The Singularity in order to communicate with fellow members than use the discussion forums; the agreement was made that should anyone wish to write such a letter, we will include it in The Singularity. Afterwards we had a panel in the same room about all the stuff SFWA offers writers; the challenge was that we didn’t have enough time to cover it all.

I don’t often get to surprise Steven H Silver, and yet Kate and I managed to keep the fact that Walter Day had made one of his awesome trading cards for him secret until the banquet. Walter’s trading cards are so nifty; he’s up to over 200 of them now and they were one of the nifty features of the swag bags. He also presented Jane Yolen with a special blown-up version of her new one. Jane gave a lovely speech, finishing with her Sally Field moment, and just generally was awesome and generous with her time all throughout the weekend.

The Super Nebula Showcase HumbleBundle has one day to go. So far it has raised more money for the SFWA Givers Fund, which administers grants to promote F&SF writing, than the Fund gave out last year. If you haven’t checked it out — there’s an awful lot of good reading in there.

Liz Argall did an adorable cartoon about the weekend, and another based on my closing words, which I hope she’ll post at some point, but I will reiterate them. It was so lovely to see you all. You are my people and I appreciate the trust you’ve given me. I’ll keep trying to steer things in a reasonable direction, but you’re the ones powering the ship. Thank you.

Many thanks to the Future Affairs Administration for live tweeting the Nebulas — they had over 4.5 million page views, which is awesome. I hope to be in Chengdu this winter to meet some of those viewers.

I am sure I have left out so much, and I suspect I’ll be updating this post throughout the next couple days as things occur to me, but I wanted to get a post up so peeps who weren’t there got to see some of the pictures. Here’s a few more.