Le Guin has already won Nebula Awards for The Left Hand Of Darkness, The Dispossessed, Tehanu, a story called "The Day Before The Revolution," and a story called "Solitude." (At least, that's according to Wikipedia.) Her latest Nebula comes for Powers, which came out in 2007. Here's the full list of Nebula winners, via Tor.com:

Novel: Powers - Le Guin, Ursula K. (Harcourt, Sep07)
Novella: The Spacetime Pool - Asaro, Catherine (Analog, Mar08)
Novelette: Pride and Prometheus - Kessel, John (F&SF, Jan08)
Short Story: Trophy Wives - Hoffman, Nina Kiriki (Fellowship Fantastic, ed. Martin H. Greenburg and Kerrie Hughes, DAW Books Jan08)
Script: WALL-E - Screenplay by Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Original story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter (Walt Disney June 2008)
Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy: Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) - Wilce, Ysabeau S. (Harcourt, Sep08)

Also honored during the Nebula Award Weekend were:
* A. J. Budrys — Solstice Award
* M.J. Engh — Author Emerita
* Marty Greenberg — Solstice Award
* Harry Harrison — Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master
* Joss Whedon — Ray Bradbury Award
* Kate Wilhelm — Solstice Award

Meanwhile, the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Awards, which go to writers whose works explore gender, honored two writers: Patrick Ness, for The Knife Of Never Letting Go, and Nisi Shawl, for her story collection Filter House. According to the press release:

A panel of five jurors selects the Tiptree Award winners and compiles an Honor List of other works that they find interesting, relevant to the award, and worthy of note. The 2008 jurors were Gavin J. Grant (chair), K. Tempest Bradford, Leslie Howle, Roz Kaveney, and Catherynne M. Valente.
The Knife of Never Letting Go begins with a boy growing up in village way off the grid. Jury chair Gavin J. Grant explains, "All the villagers can hear one another's thoughts (their "noise") and all the villagers are men. The boy has never seen a woman or girl so when he meets one his world is infinitely expanded as he discovers the complications of gender relations. As he travels in this newly bi-gendered world, he also has to work out the definition of becoming and being a man."

Juror Leslie Howle praises Ness's skills as a writer: "Ness is a craftsman, plain and simple. The language, pacing, complications, plot this story has all of the elements that raise the writing to something well beyond good. Some critics call it brilliant. It's a page-turner, and the story continues to resonate well after reading it. It reminds me of the kind of classic SF I loved when I was new to the genre."

In addition to the Tiptree Award, The Knife of Never Letting Go also won the 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize (U.K.), which celebrates contemporary fiction for teenagers, and the Guardian Children? Fiction Prize.

Publishers Weekly, which selected Filter House as one of the best books of 2008, described it as an "exquisitely rendered debut collection" that "ranges into the past and future to explore identity and belief in a dazzling variety of settings." Tiptree jurors spotlight Shawl's willingness to challenge the reader with her exploration of gender roles.

Juror K. Tempest Bradford writes, "The stories in Filter House refuse to allow the reader the comfort of assuming that the men and women will act according to the assumptions mainstream readers/society/culture puts on them."

Juror Catherynne M. Valente notes that most of Shawl's protagonists in this collection are young women coming to terms with womanhood and what that means "in terms of their culture, magic (almost always tribal, nuts and bolts, African-based magical systems, which is fascinating in itself), [and] technology." In her comments, Valente points out some elements of stories that made this collection particularly appropriate for the Tiptree Award: "'At the Huts of Ajala' struck me deeply as a critique of beauty and coming of age rituals. The final story, 'The Beads of Ku,' deals with marriage and motherhood and death. 'Shiomah's Land' deals with the sexuality of a godlike race, and a young woman's liberation from it. 'Wallamellon' is a heartbreaking story about the Blue Lady, the folkloric figure invented by Florida orphans, and a young girl pursuing the Blue Lady straight into a kind of urban priestess-hood."

The Tiptree Award Honor List is a strong part of the award's identity and is used by many readers as a recommended reading list for the rest of the year. This year's Honor List is:

* Christopher Barzak, The Love We Share Without Knowing (Bantam, 2008)
* Jenny Davidson, The Explosionist (HarperTeen, 2008)
* Gregory Frost, Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet: A Shadowbridge Novel (both published by Del Rey, 2008)
* Alison Goodman, Two Pearls of Wisdom (HarperCollins Australia 2008), published in the United States as Eon: Dragoneye Reborn (Viking 2008), also Eon: Rise of the Dragoneye in the United Kingdom
* John Kessel, Pride or Prometheus (Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2008)
* Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels (Knopf, 2008)
* Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia (Harcourt)
* John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In (Quercus (UK) 2007), original Swedish title Låt den rätte komma in (2004), first published in English as Let Me In, St. Martin's Press (2007), Translated by Ebba Segerberg)
* Paul Park, A Princess of Roumania (Tor, 2005), The Tourmaline (Tor, 2006), The White Tyger (Tor, 2007), The Hidden World (Tor, 2008)
* Ekaterina Sedia, The Alchemy of Stone (Prime Books)
* Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy (Canongate U.S., 2007)
* Ysabeau S. Wilce, Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) (Harcourt, 2008)

In a sense, Making Money is Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle writ small and funny. I should reveal here that I did not finish The Baroque Cycle. This is also only the third Discworld novel I have read, but enjoyed the other two.

Clearly there has been a lot going on since I last visited the Discworld. Moist von Lipwig, also the hero of Going Postal, was a petty thief and con-man given the choice of facing the gallows, or setting Ankh-Morpork's postal system on its feet. He has now been drafted to reform the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork, although there is also a lingering feeling that he has been gently but firmly ushered into a conspiracy to nationalize Ankh-Morpork's banking system. Sound familiar? There's also a mad plutocrat and an enigmatic mystery surrounding the city's golems, who are not Jewish but are definitely indefatigable workers made of clay.

In the ensuing pages, Moist's shrewd grasp of street-level microeconomics once again stands him in good stead (viz the grasp of "sweating" gold currency - jingling it in a bag until it sheds enough gold dust to be usable). To say that he succeeds by liberating Ankh-Morpork from the gold standard sells the book a bit short. Pratchett deftly dramatizes the question "what is money?" in the context of a fantasy novel. Is it gold? Why is it gold, when gold isn't good for anything other than being gold? If it's not gold, what the hell is it? Hint: the symbol of economics is a worn black top hat - a symbol for cheap magic, just sleight of hand really; a dirty kind of psychological magic. Or as Pratchett puts it, "It was a dream, but Moist was good at selling dreams. And if you could sell the dream to enough people, no one dared to wake up."

The comic results of contemporary capitalism mixed in with heroic fantasy - as old as Bilbo's contractual negotiations with a wizard and a band of dwarves - are in full play here. The arrival of a cohort of golems threatens not mayhem, but a labor shortage; an alchemical economic instrument reveals the witchy reversibility of causation between economic model and reality, courtesy a mad scientist (er simulationist-economist) and his Igor.

For all the economic theory in play here, Pratchett makes everything look easy - you get the sense that he's one of the smartest people writing fantasy out there, but he just doesn't feel like showing it off. He is always unbelievably fluid in his prose and the comic aphorisms that seem to flow out of him. Every once in a while he cues his punchlines too noticeably, with an "after all," or an "oh all right then." But it's hard to complain - he also uses the word "hopefully" correctly. Also: "charivari."

On the 19th of May, 2001 Charlie and Jack, Juniors at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, invite the three girls from downstairs to hang out and try Jack's first successful attempt at home-brewed beer. The beer's pretty good - but in the morning something more extraordinary has occurred than Charlie's fumbling make-out session with his dream girl, Caroline. All five of them awake with a bit of a hangover and new abilities, right out of a comic book.

Each of them has gained one of the more typical powers from our dreams of wish-fulfillment. Caroline, who feels ignored by her globe-trotting cougar mom, can fly. Jack gets mistaken for a big clumsy lunkhead, but now the local farmboy and Chem major is the fastest man alive. Short, bookish study-grind Mary Beth can toss cars around like nerf balls. Charlie, a good-natured but vague and unfocused slob becomes a mind-reader. Harriet is the daughter of a Madison P.D. detective and is haunted by a horrible incident in her past, so she gets the relatively lame power of invisibility. Almost immediately they all decide to band together as a superhero team.

Mary Beth purchases a stack of essential research from an amazingly helpful and informative woman at the local comic book store. Caroline whips up some Lycra costumes in primary colors. Everybody goes to Jack's family farm to practice a few martial-arts moves Harriet picked up. Now properly prepared, they go off to fight crime, foiling an armored car heist on their very first day. At first this has all the makings of a comedy, and I immediately thought of the comic book Freshman by Seth Green and Hugh Sterbakov. Although there are several very funny moments, Schwartz wants us to take his story seriously. This is meant to be a sober, realistic examination of normal confused, insecure kids thrust into fantastic circumstances. The characters are realistically portrayed and believable, but their powers are pure fantasy. The new heroes make no attempt to find out how any of this could possibly be happening. "Hey, I can fly! Well that's weird. Better get me a costume." Magic beer, really?

The powers are also utterly inconsistent with physics. A 5'2" girl stops a speeding car as if it had smashed into a wall. Her outfit gets torn but she hasn't budged an inch. Does she have some sort of force field like Alan Moore used with Miracleman? Apparently that's none of our business, because no explanation is ever given for any of these miraculous feats. Forgive a nerd for nit-picking, but David Schwartz is an avowed comic book fan and should really have known better. I wouldn't want to wade through pages of Character Stats and technobabble, but if he wants to play in a realistic world, he should observe the rules.

Schwartz's characters are well-written with actual depth and personal backgrounds that live and breathe. The passages about Jack and his family coming to grips with his father's losing battle with cancer are especially moving. Like young people anywhere, they also struggle with demanding classes, crummy jobs, and disastrous romances. Most of the cast is very believable, maybe too much so. They are likable, normal - and ultimately, not very interesting.

The third-person omniscient narrative is occasionally interrupted by "Editor's Notes" written in the first person by a supporting character who supposedly wrote the book Superpowers. Marcus Hatch, independent journalist and conspiracy nut, breaks in repeatedly to remind us this is all a True Story, that He Was There, and that Terrible Things will happen before the story is over. He also tosses around some vague ruminations on the nature of heroism. This is all mind-bogglingly annoying. And one of these Terrible Things, hmm... will it happen in the first half of September, 2001?

So do the superheros get involved with the tragic events of 9/11 and their aftermath? Not really. Other than losing people they knew and being horrified and furious, the heroes of this story have no more connection to 9/11 than most of us. Schwartz is telling us that even with superpowers, life is still filled with problems. While that is a bit depressing, his message is neither bleak, nor even particularly original. They keep the streets of Madison safe, but face no supervillain or any major threat other than lawsuits and keeping up their GPAs. There is also some attempt at political allegory, observations of the media and law, even a tantalizing hint of other superheroes in the world. Alas, none of it really goes anywhere. I cannot recommend this lightweight, bland tale of nice kids with superpowers and personal tragedies. It might make a perfect show for the CW, but I doubt I would ever watch it.

Superpowers via Amazon

This month, io9 reviews all the nominees for the Nebula, Hugo and Clarke awards. You can read them all here.

Commenter Grey_Area is known to the Justice League of Dawson's Creek as Christopher Hsiang. Next book, please.

Here's the full list:

Best Novel
Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury)
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor)
Saturn's Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit)
Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

Best Novella
‘‘The Erdmann Nexus'' by Nancy Kress (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008)
‘‘The Political Prisoner'' by Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF Aug 2008)
‘‘The Tear'' by Ian McDonald (Galactic Empires)
‘‘True Names'' by Benjamin Rosenbaum & Cory Doctorow (Fast Forward 2)
‘‘Truth'' by Robert Reed (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008)

Best Novelette
‘‘Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders'' by Mike Resnick (Asimov's Jan 2008)
‘‘The Gambler'' by Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2)
‘‘Pride and Prometheus'' by John Kessel (F&SF Jan 2008)
‘‘The Ray-Gun: A Love Story'' by James Alan Gardner (Asimov's Feb 2008)
‘‘Shoggoths in Bloom'' by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov's Mar 2008)

Best Short Story
‘‘26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss'' by Kij Johnson (Asimov's Jul 2008)
‘‘Article of Faith'' by Mike Resnick (Baen's Universe Oct 2008)
‘‘Evil Robot Monkey'' by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
‘‘Exhalation'' by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
‘‘From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled'' by Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Feb 2008)

Best Related Book
Rhetorics of Fantasy
by Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan University Press)
Spectrum 15: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art by Cathy Fenner & Arnie Fenner, eds. (Underwood Books)
The Vorkosigan Companion: The Universe of Lois McMaster Bujold by Lillian Stewart Carl & John Helfers, eds. (Baen)
What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid (Beccon Publications)
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 by John Scalzi (Subterranean Press)

Best Graphic Story
The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle
Written by Jim Butcher, art by Ardian Syaf (Del Rey/Dabel Brothers Publishing)
Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Fables: War and Pieces Written by Bill Willingham, pencilled by Mark Buckingham, art by Steve Leialoha and Andrew Pepoy, color by Lee Loughridge, letters by Todd Klein (DC/Vertigo Comics)
Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic Story and art by Howard Tayler (The Tayler Corporation)
Serenity: Better Days Written by Joss Whedon & Brett Matthews, art by Will Conrad, color by Michelle Madsen, cover by Jo Chen (Dark Horse Comics)
Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores Written/created by Brian K. Vaughan, pencilled/created by Pia Guerra, inked by Jose Marzan, Jr. (DC/Vertigo Comics)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer, story; Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, screenplay; based on characters created by Bob Kane; Christopher Nolan, director (Warner Brothers)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army Guillermo del Toro & Mike Mignola, story; Guillermo del Toro, screenplay; based on the comic by Mike Mignola; Guillermo del Toro, director (Dark Horse, Universal)
Iron Man Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, screenplay; based on characters created by Stan Lee & Don Heck & Larry Lieber & Jack Kirby; Jon Favreau, director (Paramount, Marvel Studios)
METAtropolis edited by John Scalzi; Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, John Scalzi, and Karl Schroeder, writers (Audible Inc.)
WALL-E Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter, story; Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, screenplay; Andrew Stanton, director (Pixar/Walt Disney)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Lost
: "The Constant", Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof, writers; Jack Bender, director (Bad Robot, ABC studios)
Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog Joss Whedon, & Zack Whedon, & Jed Whedon, & Maurissa Tancharoen, writers; Joss Whedon, director (Mutant Enemy)
Battlestar Galactica: "Revelations", Bradley Thompson & David Weddle, writers; Michael Rymer, director (NBC Universal)
Doctor Who: "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", Steven Moffat, writer; Euros Lyn, director (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: "Turn Left", Russell T. Davies, writer; Graeme Harper, director (BBC Wales)

Best Editor, Short Form
Ellen Datlow
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Sheila Williams

Best Editor, Long Form

Lou Anders
Ginjer Buchanan
David G. Hartwell
Beth Meacham
Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Best Professional Artist
Daniel Dos Santos
Bob Eggleton
Donato Giancola
John Picacio
Shaun Tan

Best Semiprozine
Clarkesworld Magazine
edited by Neil Clarke, Nick Mamatas, & Sean Wallace
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi
The New York Review of Science Fiction edited by Kathryn Cramer, Kris Dikeman, David G. Hartwell, & Kevin J. Maroney
Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal

Best Fan Writer
Chris Garcia
John Hertz
Dave Langford
Cheryl Morgan
Steven H Silver

Best Fanzine
Argentus
edited by Steven H Silver
Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
Challenger edited by Guy H. Lillian III
The Drink Tank
edited by Chris Garcia
Electric Velocipede edited by John Klima
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer

Best Fan Artist
Alan F. Beck
Brad W. Foster
Sue Mason
Taral Wayne
Frank Wu

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Aliette de Bodard
David Anthony Durham
Felix Gilman
Tony Pi
Gord Sellar

I'm kind of surprised Neal Stephenson didn't get a nod in the novel category, not to mention Iain Banks' Matter. But I'm thrilled for Kelley Eskridge getting nominated in the novella category. Also, the more I ponder, the more surprised I am that Hunger Games didn't make it in the young-adult category.

Novels

Little Brother - Cory Doctorow (Tor, Apr08)
Powers - Ursula K. Le Guin (Harcourt, Sep07)
Cauldron - Jack McDevitt (Ace, Nov07)
Brasyl - Ian McDonald (Pyr, May07)
Making Money - Terry Pratchett (Harper, Sep07)
Superpowers - David J. Schwartz (Three Rivers Press, Jun08)

Novellas

"The Spacetime Pool" - Catherine Asaro (Analog, Mar08)
"Dark Heaven" - Gregory Benford (Alien Crimes, Resnick, Mike, Ed., SFBC, Jan07)
"Dangerous Space" - Kelley Eskridge (Dangerous Space, Aqueduct Press, Jun07)
"The Political Prisoner" - Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF, Aug08)
"The Duke in His Castle" - Vera Nazarian (Norilana Books, Jun08)

Novelettes

"If Angels Fight" - Richard Bowes (F&SF, Feb08)
"Dark Rooms" - Lisa Goldstein (Asimov's, Oct/Nov 07)
"Pride and Prometheus" - John Kessel (F&SF, Jan08)
"Night Wind" - Mary Rosenblum (Lace and Blade, ed. Deborah J. Ross, Norilana Books, Feb08)
"Baby Doll" - Johanna Sinisalo (The SFWA European Hall of Fame, James Morrow & Kathryn Morrow, Ed., Tor, Jun07 )
"Kaleidoscope" - K.D. Wentworth (F&SF, May07)

Short Stories

"The Button Bin" - Mike Allen (Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly, Oct07)
"The Dreaming Wind" - Jeffrey Ford (The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Ed., Viking, Jul07)
"Trophy Wives" - Nina Kiriki Hoffman (Fellowship Fantastic, ed. Greenberg and Hughes, Daw Jan08)
"26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" - Kij Johnson (Asimov's, Jul08)
"The Tomb Wife" - Gwyneth Jones (F&SF, Aug07)
"Don't Stop" - James Patrick Kelly (Asimov's, Jun07)

Scripts

The Dark Knight - Jonathan Nolan; Christopher Nolan, Christopher, David S. Goyer (Warner Bros., Jul08)
"WALL-E" Screenplay by Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Original story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter (Walt Disney June 2008)
"The Shrine" - Brad Wright (Stargate Atlantis, Aug08)

Andre Norton Award For Young Adult Fiction

Graceling - Kristin Cashore (Harcourt, Oct08)
Lamplighter - D.M. Cornish (Monster Blood Tattoo, Book 2, Putnam Juvenile, May08))
Savvy - Ingrid Law (Dial, May08)
The Adoration of Jenna Fox - Mary E. Pearson (Henry Holt and Company, Apr08)
Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) - Ysabeau S. Wilce (Harcourt, Sep08)

[SF Awards Watch]

NOVELLA: "Fountain of Age", Nancy Kress (Asimov's Jul 2007)
Kress' latest collection of short stories, Nano Comes to Clifford Falls, is about to hit the bookstores. I'm excited to read it, and will be reviewing it here!

NOVELETTE: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", Ted Chiang (F&SF Sep 2007; Subterranean Press)

SHORT STORY: "Always", Karen Joy Fowler (Asimov's Apr/May 2007)
Fowler's latest novel, Wit's End, just came out this month.

SCRIPT: Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro
This tale of a girl, a fairy kingdom, and a nation full of fascists was one of the best fantasy movies I've ever seen. Del Toro is directing Hellboy 2, and two forthcoming movies based on The Hobbit. His monsters are more sympathetic and nuanced than most human characters.

ANDRE NORTON AWARD: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling (Scholastic)
Apparently Rowling has ever won a Nebula before. About time.

My favorite multiverse Marxist, Michael Moorcock, was presented the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. I hope that means he gets to wear a cloak or something. Or maybe shiny shoes? Nothing says "grand master" like shiny shoes.

(Thanks for the reminder, Saadiq!)

Nebula Winners [Locus Online]