Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation Wins the Nebula

In an upset victory (at least if you’re us, since we banked on The Goblin Emperor taking home the prize), Jeff VanderMeer’s slim, steamy novel of existential environmental horror, Annihilation, was the night’s big winner. Our surprise should not be taken as disappointment—we loved the first installment of the Southern Reach trilogy, and only its status as an incomplete thing kept us doubting it would come out on top.
In the end, the Nebula voters (all of them VanderMeer’s peers among the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) overlooked any lingering questions to award its sheer craft: its ability to take us inside the fevered mind of a distant, reserved, possibly insane protagonist, its evocative descriptions of a world both familiar and utterly alien. The entire trilogy is very much worth reading, but Annihilation is definitely a singular achievement.
The other nominees included Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie, Coming Home by Jack McDevitt, The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu), and Trial By Fire by Charles E. Gannon.
Best Novel isn’t the only Nebula Award, however. Here’s the full rundown of the night’s other award-winners, nominees, and special honorees (winners in bold):

Best Novella
Yesterday’s Kin, by Nancy Kress
We Are All Completely Fine, by Daryl Gregory
The Regular, Ken Liu (Upgraded)
The Mothers of Voorhisville, by Mary Rickert
Calendrical Regression, by Lawrence M. Schoen
Grand Jeté (The Great Leap), by Rachel Swirsky

Best Novelette
“A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” Alaya Dawn Johnson
“Sleep Walking Now and Then,” Richard Bowes
“The Magician and Laplace’s Demon,” Tom Crosshill
“The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado
“We Are the Cloud,” Sam J. Miller
“The Devil in America,” Kai Ashante Wilson

Best Short
“Jackalope Wives,” Ursula Vernon
“The Breath of War,” Aliette de Bodard
“When It Ends, He Catches Her,” Eugie Foster
“The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye,” Matthew Kressel
“The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family,” Usman T. Malik
“A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide,” Sarah Pinsker
“The Fisher Queen,” Alyssa Wong

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy
Love Is the Drug, Alaya Dawn Johnson
Unmade, by Sarah Rees Brennan
Salvage, by Alexandra Duncan
Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, by A.S. King
Dirty Wings, by Sarah McCarry
Greenglass House, by Kate Milford
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Leslye Walton
Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!