2003 Nebula Awards Preliminary Ballot

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* Philip K. Dick Award Winner * Best of the Year:Locus, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, Book Magazine * Nominated for the Impac Award Charley is an athlete. He wants to grow up to be the fastest runner in the world, like his father. He wants to be painted crossing the finishing line, in his racing silks, with a medal around his neck. Charley lives in a stable. He isn''t a runner, he''s a mount. He belongs to a Hoot: The Hoots are alien invaders. Charley hasn''t seen his mother for years, and his father is hiding out in the mountains somewhere, with the other Free Humans. The Hoots own the world, but the humans want it back. Charley knows how to be a good mount, but now he''s going to have to learn how to be a human being. "I''ve been a fan of Carol Emshwiller''s since the wonderfulCarmen Dog. The Mount is a terrific novel, at once an adventure story and a meditation on the psychology of freedom and slavery. It''s literally haunting (days after finishing it, I still think about all the terrible poetry of the Hoot/Sam relationship) and hypnotic. I''m honored to have gotten an early look at it." --Glen David Gold "Carol Emshwiller''sThe Mount is a wicked book. Like Harlan Ellison''s darkest visions, Emshwiller writes in a voice that reminds us of the golden season when speculative fiction was daring and unsettling. Dystopian, weird, comedic as if the Marquis de Sade had joined Monty Python, and ultimately scary,The Mounttakes us deep into another reality. Our world suddenly seems wrought with terrible ironies and a severe kind of beauty. When we are the mounts, who--or what--is riding us? --Luis Alberto Urrea "We are all Mounts and so should read this book like an instruction manual that could help save our lives. That it is also a beautiful funny novel is the usual bonus you get by reading Carol Emshwiller. She always writes them that way." --Kim Stanley Robinson "This novel is like a tesseract, I started it and thought, ah, I see what she''s doing. But then the dimensions unfolded and somehow it ended up being about so much more." --Maureen F. McHugh "The Mount is so extraordinary as to be unpraiseable by a mortal such as I. I had to keep putting it down because it was so disturbing then picking it up because it was so amazing. A postmodernist would call it The Eros of Hegemony, but I''m no postmodernist. Nearly every sentence is simultaneously hilarious, prophetic, and disturbing. This person needs to be really, really famous." --Paul Ingram, Prairie Lights Bookstore "Brilliantly conceived and painfully acute in its delineation of the complex relationships between masters and slaves, pets and owners, the served and the serving, this poetic, funny and above all humane novel deserves to be read and cherished as a fundamental fable for our material-minded times." --Publishers Weekly "Adult/High School - This veteran science-fiction writer is known for original plots and characters, and her latest novel does not disappoint, offering an extraordinary, utterly alien, and thoroughly convincing culture set in the not-too-distant future. Emshwiller brings readers immediately into the action, gradually revealing the takeover of Earth by the Hoots, otherworldly beings with superior intelligence and technology. Humans have become the Hoots'' "mounts," and, in the case of the superior Seattle bloodline, valuable racing stock. Most mounts are well off, as the Hoots constantly remind them, and treated kindly by affectionate owners who use punishment poles as rarely as possible. No one agrees more than principal narrator Charley, a privileged young Seattle whose rider-in-training will someday rule the world. The adolescent mount''s dream is of bringing honor to his beloved Little Master by becoming a great champion like Beauty, his sire, whose portrait decorates many Hoot walls. When Charley learns that his father now leads the renegade bands called Wilds, he and Little Master flee. This complex and compelling blend of tantalizing themes offers numerous possibilities for speculation and discussion, whether among friends or in the classroom." --School Library Journal "Emshwiller''s prose is beautiful" --Laura Miller,Salon "The Mountis a brilliant book. But be warned: It takes root in the mind and unleashes aftershocks at inopportune moments." --The Women''s Review of Books "Carol Emshwiller has been writing fantasy, speculative and science fiction for many years; she has a dedicated cult following and has been an influence on a number of today''s top writers.... it is very easy to fall into the rhythm of Emshwiller''s poetic and smooth sentences." --Review of Contemporary Fiction "Emshwiller''s themes--the allure of submission, the temptations of complicity, the perverse nature of compassion--are not usual fare in novels of resistance and revolt, and her strikingly imaginative novel continues to surpass our expectations to the very last page." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "Both fantastical and unnerving in its familiarity. And like her work in romance and westerns, its genre-twisting plot resists easy classification." --The Village Voice "Emshwiller uses a deceptively simple narrative voice that givesThe Mount the style of a young-adult novel. But there''s much going on beneath the surface of this narrative, including oblique flashes of humor and artfully articulated moments of psychological insight. The Mount emerges as one of the season''s unexpected small pleasures." --San Francisco Chronicle "A memorable alien-invasion scenario, a wild adventure, and a reflection on the dynamics of freedom and slavery." --Booklist "A brilliant piece of work." --Bookslut "...a beautifully written allegorical tale full of hope that even the most unenlightened souls can shrug off the bonds of internalized oppression and finally see the light." --BookPage "A fable/fantasy/cautionary tale along the lines of, say,Animal Farm. It''s the story of Charlie, a preadolescent human who''s being used as a horse by shoulder-riding alien invaders known as Hoots. Charlie wants nothing more than to become a great Mount, a loyal slave and servant, until his father, a renegade Mount who has fled from the Hoots and now lives in the mountains, comes to take him away. Like so much of Emshwiller''s work,The Mount asks difficult questions--in this case, What is freedom? The issue is particularly appropriate at a time when "freedom" in America is increasingly defined as "security"--freedom from uncertainty, freedom from fear, freedom from want. All of which is, in the end, not really freedom at all."--Time Out New York "In a recent interview withScience Fiction Weekly, Ursula Le Guin called Emshwiller "the most unappreciated great writer we''ve got."The Mount proves Le Guin right.... If Emshwiller is not already on your top bookshelf,The Mount will put her there." --Rambles Carol Emshwiller''s stories have appeared inThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Century, Scifiction, Lady Churchill''s Rosebud Wristlet, TriQuarterly, Transatlantic Review, New Directions, Orbit, Epoch, The Voice Literary Supplement, Omni, Crank!, Confrontation, Trampoline, McSweeney''s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, and many other anthologies and magazines. Carol is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and has been awarded an NEA grant, a New York State Creative Artists Public Service grant, a New York State

Goonan's Nanotech Quartet concludes as Jason Peabody, one of the few on Earth who remember when radio, television, and the Internet connected the world, makes a startling discovery and begins a journey to find the truth behind long-concealed mysteries.

When three Caribbean slave women gather one night to bury a stillborn baby, their collected mournings braid into a powerful calling, and a deity is born. So begins the epic jouney of a spirit who defies the limitations of time and place to inhabit the minds of living women throughout history.

More than two hundred years after leaving Earth to build a colony among the stars, the Star Road returns home to escape the ravages of space radiation, only to find a much-changed world, a planet on the verge of extinction, whose surface is covered by a strange substance resembling ice under the control of a pseudospiritual order that has enslaved Earth. Original.

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A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations. Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage—and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon. For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave. Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada’s agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the waters—terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. . . . China Miéville is a writer for a new era—and The Scar is a luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of spectacular.

Thoughtful, provocative, poignant, unforgettable, The Speed of Dark is a gripping journey into the mind of an autistic person as he struggles with profound questions of humanity and matters of the heart. In the near future, disease will be a condition of the past. Most genetic defects will be removed at birth; the remaining during infancy. Lou Arrendale, a high-functioning autistic adult, is a member of the lost generation, born at the wrong time to reap the rewards of medical science. He lives a low-key, independent life. But then he is offered a chance to try a brand-new experimental “cure” for his condition. With this treatment Lou would think and act and be just like everyone else. But if he was suddenly free of autism, would he still be himself? Would he still love the same classical music—with its complications and resolutions? Would he still see the same colors and patterns in the world—shades and hues that others cannot see? Most important, would he still love Marjory, a woman who may never be able to reciprocate his feelings? Now Lou must decide if he should submit to a surgery that might completely change the way he views the world . . . and the very essence of who he is. Tenth anniversary edition • With a new Introduction by the author Praise for The Speed of Dark “Splendid and graceful . . . A lot of novels promise to change the way a reader sees the world; The Speed of Dark actually does.”—The Washington Post Book World “[A] beautiful and moving story . . . [Elizabeth] Moon is the mother of an autistic teenager and her love is apparent in the story of Lou. He makes a deep and lasting impact on the reader while showing a different way of looking at the world.”—The Denver Post “Every once in a while, you come across a book that is both an important literary achievement and a completely and utterly absorbing reading experience—a book with provocative ideas and an equally compelling story. Such a book is The Speed of Dark.”—Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel “A remarkable journey [that] takes us into the mind of an autistic with a terrible choice: become normal or remain an alien on his own planet.”—Mary Doria Russell, author of The Sparrow “A powerful portrait . . . an engaging journey into the dark edges that define the self.”—The Seattle Times

Robert J. Sawyer, the award-winning and bestselling writer, hits the peak of his powers in Humans, the second book of The Neanderthal Parallax, his trilogy about our world and parallel one in which it was the Homo sapiens who died out and the Neanderthals who became the dominant intelligent species. This powerful idea allows Sawyer to examine some of the deeply rooted assumptions of contemporary human civilization dramatically, by confronting us with another civilization, just as morally valid, that has made other choices. In Humans, Neanderthal physicist Ponter Boddit, a character you will never forget, returns to our world and to his relationship with geneticist Mary Vaughan, as cultural exchanges between the two Earths begin. As we see daily life in another present-day world, radically different from ours, in the course of Sawyer's fast-moving story, we experience the bursts of wonder and enlightenment that are the finest pleasures of science fiction. Humans is one of the best SF novels of the year, and The Neanderthal Parallax is an SF classic in the making. Humans is a 2004 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.

In an alternate Elizabethan England, the Queen is imprisoned in the Tower and William Shakespeare must write a play that will incite the citizens to rise against the Spanish monarchy that rules them.