Nebula Awards 2007 - novelette nominees & winners: Brief summaries & my rankings

List below is based on the results of preliminary ballot, final ballot, & the official winners announcement. Some remarks on peculiar Nebula conventions are in the opening paras of my post of Nebula 2007 short stories.

My rating in brackets (ABC: A = worth your time; C = don't bother). Where I have posted a separate review of the entry, link on story title takes you there.

Story list (14 stories, best first).

An observation: novelette nominees this year seem to be a lot less gamed than short story nominees. Several good stories here, unlike the short story list. While first 3 entries stand in a class of their own, I found each of the first 6 interesting.

I wonder if Resnick's entry is removed from final ballot on technical grounds? There was some talk that stories published in 2008 are not eligible.

1. [winner, final, prelim] Ted Chiang's "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" (A); download as text, as MP3; as a short book by Subterranean Press, July 2007; fantasy: Four time travel folktales - told in the style of (I think) Arabian Nights. Added to my best of the year 2007 list.
2. [final, prelim] Kij Johnson's "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" (A); download; Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Ed)'s "Coyote Road, Trickster Tales", July 2007: What if animals could speak? Very moving accounts of man/dog relations - told from the perspective of dogs. Added to my best of the year 2007 list.
3. [prelim] Mike Resnick's "Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders" (A); download; Asimov's, January 2008; fantasy: An enigma is described. Added to my best of the year 2008 list.
   
4. [final, prelim] Nancy Kress' "Safeguard" (B); download; Asimov's, January 2007; science fiction: An earthquake has forced 4 little children, genetically modified to have a poisonous breath & kept in quarantine, to get out of quarantine. Plot is a variation of classic Indian story of "vish kanya".
5. [final, prelim] Geoff Ryman's "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" (B); download; F&SF, November 2006; non-genre: A love story, in the backdrop of a political story - a girl comes to terms with the ghosts of her dictator dad's victims.
6. [prelim] Peg Robinson's "Tonino & the Incubus" (B); download; Helix #2 (Fall 2006); fantasy: A male prostitute takes his job very seriously.
7. [prelim] Beth Bernobich's "A Flight of Numbers Fantastique Strange" (B); download; Asimov's, June 2006; science fiction: A serial killer is on the lose on a university campus. I found the science fictional ending rather incomprehensible
8. [prelim] William Shunn's "Not of this Fold" (B); download; An Alternate History of the 21st Century, Spilt Milk Press, September 2007; science fiction: A priest on duty aboard a big space habitat to convert locals to his faith becomes a hero when he becomes the main human contact with aliens due to a misunderstanding.
9. [final, prelim] Robin Wayne Bailey's "The Children's Crusade"; Martin H Greenberg and Jim C Hines (Ed)'s Heroes in Training, September 2007 : not read.
10. [prelim] Michael A Burstein and Robert Greenberger's "Things That Aren't"; Analog, April 2007: not read.
11. [prelim] Jim C Hines' "Sister of the Hedge"; Realms of Fantasy, June 2006: not read.
12. [prelim] Andrea Kail's "The Sun God at Down, Rising from a Lotus Blossom"; Algis Budrys (Ed)'s Writers of the Future Volume 23, September 2007: not read.
13. [final, prelim] Delia Sherman's "The Fiddler of Bayou Teche"; Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Ed)'s "Coyote Road, Trickster Tales", July 2007: not read.
14. [final] Terry Bramlett's "Child, Maiden, Mother, Crone"; download; Jim Baen's Universe, #7 (June 2007): Not read. This was not on preliminary ballet (is probably a jury nominee).
    

Related.

1. 2007 Nebula Awards short stories, novellas.
2. 2008 Hugo Awards novelettes.
   

Beth Bernobich's "A Flight of Numbers Fantastique Strange" (novelette, science fiction): A serial killer is on the loose

It began as a very gripping story - several murders on a university campus by what looks like the same killer. Plus an apparently unrelated but likely to later get related parallel tale of schizophrenic girl locked up in a sanatorium.

I had a feeling may be Chiang & Resnick will have competition next Nebula round. But I was wrong.

Perhaps half way through, I started losing interest - it wasn't boring, but kind of draggy. End is utterly incomprehensible & muddled. A group of university students & a professor have figured out some kind of relationship between numbers, colors, & I think electrical signals (I might be mixing up the last with something else).

Anyway, they have used this "theory" to build a time travel device. To change history so Simon & Gwyn's dead-in-an-accident parents can live in the alternate version of history. One of them uses the machine, & never returns. Then another... These vanishing ones are those getting murdered in the main story. Eventually Simon will also go there & vanish. I could not quite figure out how the main story relates to this time travel one; or may be I wasn't paying enough attention by then.

Title comes from some poem of "Henry Donne. Obscure Anglian poet of the late sixteenth century."

Full text of this story is available for download.

Fact sheet.

"A Flight of Numbers Fantastique Strange", short story, review
First published: Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2006.
Rating: B
Passed the preliminary nominations stage of Nebula Awards 2007 in novelette category.