Nebula Award For Best Novelette

Nebula Award For Best Novelette

The Nebula Awards are given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for the best science fiction or fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year. The award has been described as one of "the most important of the American science fiction awards" and "the science-fiction and fantasy equivalent" of the Emmy Awards. The Nebula Award for Best Novelette is given each year for science fiction or fantasy novelettes published in English or translated into English and released in the United States or on the internet during the previous calendar year. A work of fiction is defined by the organization as a novelette if it is between 7,500 and 17,500 words; awards are also given out for pieces of longer lengths in the novel and novella categories, and for shorter lengths in the short story category. The Nebula Award for Best Novelette has been awarded annually since 1966.

Nebula Award nominees and winners are chosen by members of the SFWA, though the authors of the nominees do not need to be members. Works are nominated each year between November 15 and February 15 by published authors who are members of the organization, and the six works that receive the most nominations then form the final ballot, with additional nominees possible in the case of ties. Members may then vote on the ballot throughout March, and the final results are presented at the Nebula Awards ceremony in May. Authors are not permitted to nominate their own works, and ties in the final vote are broken, if possible, by the number of nominations the works received. The rules were changed to their current format in 2009. Previously, the eligibility period for nominations was defined as one year after the publication date of the work, which allowed the possibility for works to be nominated in the calendar year after their publication and then be awarded in the calendar year after that. Works were added to a preliminary list for the year if they had ten or more nominations, which were then voted on to create a final ballot, to which the SFWA organizing panel was also allowed to add an additional work.

During the 47 nomination years, 184 authors have had works nominated; 42 of these have won, including co-authors and ties. Ted Chiang has won three times out of three nominations, and Poul Anderson, Kelly Link, George R. R. Martin, and Connie Willis have each won twice out of five, two, four, and five nominations, respectively. One of Anderson's nominations was under the pseudonym Michael Karageorge. Ursula K. Le Guin has the most nominations of any author with seven, including one win. James Patrick Kelly has the most nominations for novelette without winning at six, and Michael Swanwick and Roger Zelazny have each been nominated five times in addition to Anderson and Willis, for zero and one win, respectively.