Nebula award reading

It looks like a fair amount of my short fiction reading this month will be taken up by Nebula award reading. Voting must take place by the end of the month and I am determined, this year, to have read all of the short fiction on the ballot. When I first glanced at the ballot, I thought I’d read a fair amount of what was one it, but as luck would have it, I really haven’t. I didn’t start my attempt to read one piece of short fiction each day until last September, so most stuff that appeared in the magazines since then, I’ve read. But it gets a lot more sketchy pre-September. I’ve only read one of the short story nominees so far, Adam-Troy Castro’s “Her Husband’s Hands.” I haven’t read any of the novelettes on the ballot, and I’ve read two of the novellas, Kij Johnson’s “The Man Who Bridged the Mist” and Ken Liu’s “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary.” I also tend to miss stuff in original anthologies. By my count, I have 17 pieces of Nebula-nominated short fiction to read this month.

Thankfully, the good folks at SFWA have made electronic versions of all of these stories (as well as the novels on the ballot) available to members. This morning, I grabbed what I didn’t already have and loaded them up on the Kindle App on my iPad. I plan to work my way through them, beginning with the short stories and working up through the novellas that I haven’t yet read. This is an incredibly convenient way to get these stories read. I love that I can get them all onto my iPad without having to carry around a ton of books and magazines in my backpack.

Of the novels on the final ballot, I’ve only read Jack McDevitt’s Firebird. If I have time, I’d like to read Jo Walton’s Among Others because I’ve heard good things about it.

Next year, I expect I’ll be in somewhat better shape come March, as I have been pretty good at keeping up with the stories being published in the magazines. I still generally don’t pick up the original anthologies that come out, but I still think that will mean less last-minute reading next time around than I have this time.