It's that time of year when science fiction and fantasy books, short stories, graphic novels, dramatic presentations, and more have been nominated for the two largest of the genre awards, the Hugo and the Nebula.

The Hugo Awards are nominated and voted on by members of WorldCon. A member of WorldCon is anyone who's registered to attend the next WorldCon, or someone who's paid a membership fee just to be able to vote and not attend the con. As such, the Hugos can be considered a fan award. But it's a rather expensive proposition to be able to vote, so it's definitely a subset of the fan community.

This year the Hugo nominees for Best Novel are: * Anathem by Neal Stephenson * The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman * Little Brother by Cory Doctorow * Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross * Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi The Graveyard Book also just won this year's Newbery Award. You can find it and Little Brother in the Teen Room. (And don't let your age stop you from reading them! I highly recommend both.) The others can be found in the science fiction and fantasy alcoves in the back of the main floor. Here are the Hugo nominees in the other categories.

The Nebula Awards are nominated and voted on by the members of SFWA. To qualify as a member of SFWA, a writer has to meet certain professional publication requirements. This then is the award given by the pro's to their peers.

The Nebula nominees for Best Novel this year are: * Brasyl, Ian McDonald * Cauldron, Jack McDevitt * Little Brother, Cory Doctorow * Making Money, Terry Pratchett * Powers, Ursula K. Le Guin * Superpowers, David J. Schwartz Powers, and of course, Little Brother again, can be found in the Teen Room. Brasyl is in Fiction. The other two can be found in the science fiction and fantasy alcoves. You can check here for the full list of Nebula nominees, including the other categories.

Who would you vote for?

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

If you're looking for a book with Mexican flavor, I just finished reading Flora Segunda : being the magickal mishaps of a girl of spirit, her glass-gazing sidekick, two ominous butlers (one blue), a house with eleven thousand rooms, and a red dog by Ysabeau Wilce, which was on the Tiptree honor list last year. This year, the sequel, Flora's Dare is. You can find both of these in the teen room.

But what is the Tiptree?

The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award is "an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender". It's named after James Tiptree, Jr, which was one of Alice Sheldon's pen names. Unlike the Nebula and the Hugo, this award is decided by a panel of judges, though anyone may recommend a book or story for consideration.

This year the winners of the award are:

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. I borrowed this through interlibrary loan and read it over the weekend. It's very good, but ends on a horrible cliffhanger! The next book won't be published until September. This is a young adult book, but, again, don't let that stop you from reading it. Surely it says something about the quality of YA books that they keep winning non-YA specific awards.

Filter House by Nisi Shawl. This is a collection of short stories and I'm still in the process of reading it. A 'collection', by the way, differs from an 'anthology' in that it's a book of short stories by one author, instead of short stories by multiple authors.

You can find what the judges thought of these works and the honor's list for this year on The Tiptree Award website. The library has a number of the books and series on the list, if you'd like to read them.

I also highly recommend the three Tiptree Award anthologies. Past winning and shortlisted short stories are compiled along with excerpts from the novel winners and essays by big names such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ. The library has all of them.

The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1

The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2

The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3

And when you're done reading those, you can check out James Tiptree Jr. : The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips

Happy reading!

Yes, I know the Olympics are still a few weeks away. I'm talking about the gold medal in young adult literature also referred to as the Printz Award. This award created to honor Michael L. Printz, a school media specialist from the mid-west, celebrates the cream of the crop of books written for teens in the previous year. Think the Newbery Award but for older readers.

This year's committee of nine librarians selected Going Bovine by Libba Bray. This title is a departure from her previous historical/magical books you may be more familiar with (A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and A Sweet Far Thing). This story will instead take you on a twisted road trip with a sixteen year old diagnosed with mad cow disease. While elements of the supernatural realm may appear, you will not be led on any Victorian adventures by curious and determined teenage girls.

You can learn more about previous winners as well as honorable mentions at the award's page on YALSA's website (Young Adult Library Services division of the American Library Association).

There's something notable about the Hugo and Nebula Award nominees this year. Check out the Hugo Award Nominees and the Nebula Award Nominees yourself and see if you can spot it.

Or read on to be spoiled on the answer!

In the past, the short fiction has mostly been drawn from 'The Big Three' magazines. This would be Asimov's (which you can borrow from the Nashua Public Library!), Analog, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF). Even other notable print magazines didn't necessarily get a lot of love, such as Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales.

But this year, there's a great diversity amongst the short fiction (novella, novelette, and short story) categories. A number of stories that were nominated for both awards first appeared in anthologies. Even cooler, a fair few of them were published in online venues.

What does this mean? It means that the people nominating for the awards (professionals in the case of the Nebula and fans who paid for WorldCon memberships for the Hugos) are reading more widely. Not only that, but they're finding good stories when they do.

But what does it mean for you as a reader? It means you can read a lot of these really cool stories. Online. For free!

And as a bonus, a lot of the sites also have podcasts, audio fiction. If reading on a screen isn't your thing, there's plenty of excellent science fiction and fantasy out there to listen to.

The one online magazine that appears over and over on both ballots is Clarkesworld. If you have the same interests I do, you may have seen ads for them on Facebook or other sites you visit. Clarkesworld in particular has some really cool artwork.

Another big name is Tor.com. You may recognize that name from the cover of a favorite book.

Some sites you may be less familiar with, but who are publishing some really cool stuff are:
Strange Horizons, Ideomancer, Fantasy Magazine, and Expanded Horizons. Most of these are well-known amongst science fiction and fantasy short story writers. Many of them pay pro or semi-pro rates (meaning slightly more than a pittance) and/or are read by professionals in the business, so getting published there will get you noticed. Plus, writers are readers as well, and we love to read this stuff!

Perhaps the best-known site for fantasy fiction podcasts is PodCastle. Go. Have a listen.

If short stories aren't for you, maybe you want something shorter? Here's two places that publish fiction in the form of tweets. Thaumatrope and Tweet the Meat. Add them to your twitter feed for a regular dose of short short short fiction.

The Nebula Awards will be handed out on May 15th at the Nebula Awards Banquet in Florida.

The Hugo Awards will be awarded in early September at this year's WorldCon in Australia.