With over a hundred confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Massachusetts, a number of Boston area schools are shutting down for a minimum of two weeks starting today, mine included.
I try to be a glass-half-full, silver-lining kind of guy, so as long as my family and I are all fortunate enough to be healthy, I’m going to see this as an opportunity to Get Stuff Done. Of course this means taking advantage of the extra writing time, but I’ve got plenty of other things to try crossing off my list.
First up today: Nebula reading!
As a newly-minted SFWA member, this is the first time I’ll be voting on the Nebula Awards–pretty exciting! I’ve always tried to read at least some of the various nominated works and eventual winners, but I’ve never read all of them. As someone with a ballot now, though, I feel a little extra responsibility to make an effort to read as many of the works as possible before voting closes at the end of March.
Nothing like a little social distancing to help with that project!
My plan is to start with short stories and work my way up the word-count categories to novels. (I’m worried that if I start with the novels, I’ll linger and take too long to read them and run out of time; whereas, if I leave the novels to last, I’ll be motivated to read more quickly.)
If you’re interested in checking out the full slate of 2020 Nebula finalists, you can see it here. In the meantime, here’s the list of nominees from the Short Story category:
- “Give the Family My Love”, A.T. Greenblatt (Clarkesworld 2/19)
- “The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power”, Karen Osborne (Uncanny 3-4/19)
- “And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons 9/9/19)
- “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, Nibedita Sen (Nightmare 5/19)
- “A Catalog of Storms”, Fran Wilde (Uncanny 1-2/19)
- “How the Trick Is Done”, A.C. Wise (Uncanny 7-8/19)