In this post, I’ll discuss the Nebula winners that were not also Hugo winners, and list those double-winners that I already described in the previous post.
The Nebula Award started in 1966, so there are over 10 years of generally poor-quality books that were Hugo-eligible but that were out of contention in this quest (all of my 5 worst Hugo books were before 1962). Nevertheless, there were two that I disliked enough to put in the category of worst Nebula winners.
List of favorites
Not surprisingly, many of the really good books won both awards. So the list of favorites that won only the Nebula is rather short. It’s hard to be sure that I’m holding them to exactly the same standard as my Hugo favorites – I may be a little more generous here. But all of these favorites are solid and worth a read.
NOTE: to read my full reviews of all of the Nebula Award-winning novels see my Goodreads books.
Samuel R. Delany: Babel-17 (1967)
I’m not sure that this falls into my top books of all times, but it was one of my favorite of the Nebula winners. It was pretty weird, which often is a negative for me, but somehow this one was weird in an interesting way and also pretty good for 1967. In particular, I liked the strong female main character, which was refreshing for a book from that decade. Like Babel, the 2023 winner, it was in the “power of words and language” genre, but did not drag on for page after dull page as Babel did.
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1967)
It’s hard to place this book relative to the others since I haven’t read it since I first did in about 1974. But I think it made a big impression on me at the time and was a really solid story. Very different in style from the other 1967 winner that I just described.
Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (2001)
This was a really exciting and interesting book that I had trouble putting down. Not one of my all-time top books, and I found the biology a bit hard to swallow (as a biologist). But worth reading.
Elizabeth Moon: The Speed of Dark (2004)
This is not your typical sci-fi book: the focus was not really on the advanced technology, which was only tangential to the real story line: seeing our world from the eyes of someone with autism. I was a bit disappointed with the ending, but otherwise it was a really engaging and thought-provoking book.
Favorites that also won the Hugo
The following favorite Nebula winners were already discussed in my previous blog post on favorite Hugo winners, so I will just list them here and let you read about them in the other post.
Frank Herbert: Dune (1966)
Ursula K. Le Guin: Left Hand of Darkness (1970)
Frederik Pohl: Gateway (1978)
Orson Scott Card: Ender’s Game (1986), Speaker for the Dead (1987)
Connie Willis: Blackout/All Clear (2011), Doomsday Book (1993)
N. K. Jemisin: The Stone Sky (2018)
Lois McMaster Bujold: Falling Free (1996)
I’m putting this in a special category. This book did not win the Hugo and is actually not one of my favorite Bujold books, but I am including it because of my general love of the other Vorkosigan Universe books, some of which did win the Hugo.
5 star book that didn’t make my favorite list:
NOTE: there are other Nebula 5 start books that are not listed here because they were listed on the Hugo 5 star list of my other post and are therefore not repeated here.
Vonda N. McIntyre: The Moon and the Sun (1998)
Perhaps I was generous to give this 5 stars, but I liked the story. A bit slow to start and too much detail about the French court, but I really liked the characters and how different “good” characters had different viewpoints on topics like sex and religion.
Worst Nebula books
No “best” list would be complete without a corresponding “worst” list. Here it is:
Samuel R. Delany: The Einstein Interaction (1968)
Very weird book that was probably trying to make some point about myths that was lost on me. Interesting that Delany makes both my best and worst list!
Robert Silverberg: A Time of Changes (1972)
Preachy and depressing premise, disgusting attitude towards women, poor writing.
