Nebula Awards 2007
May. 14th, 2007 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morganminstrelThe winners of the Nebula Awards (the awards voted on by members of the SFWA) were announced this past weekend. The results are here.
Some thoughts:
It's no surprise to me that "Two Hearts" won in the Novelette category, though it had some strong competition. It's a fantastic short story; even poor little me who hasn't read The Last Unicorn in some twenty years found it accessible and really well told. Beagle's a pro.
It's a bit of a coincidence, I'll admit, that Elizabeth Hand's story "Echo," which won the Short Story award, would have been published in the same issue of F&SF as "Two Hearts." My terrible admission? I know I had to have read it, but I can't remember this story at all.
I'm unfamiliar with the winners for Novel and Novella (and, indeed, all the nominees), so no thoughts about those.
The big surprise, I think, is the win for the script to "Howl's Moving Castle," the Miyazaki film based on Diana Wynn Jones' novel. Now, you all know how big a Miyazaki booster I am and how much I love DWJ's books. But Steven Moffat was robbed, I think. The HMC script, while fun, was a bit jumbled. Visually, the film was wonderful. The story was....good, capturing about half of the book in broad strokes. But the script moved in fits and starts and occasionally seemed to be using almost storytelling shorthand to get plot points in. e.g. The ending: I've read the book, so I knew a bit about the prince. But the only real indication that he'd gone missing, thus causing the war, before the end was a bit of easily missed background dialogue. It's no wonder the ending left a few moviegoers a bit confused--removing parts of DWJ's story, while necessary for time, made things even more confusing. Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie, but it had definite storytelling flaws. "The Girl in the Fireplace," on the other hand, was an amazingly intricate script, as well as being very fun. Ah well, I shouldn't complain about a Miyazaki win, should I? :-) And the third act of "Howl's" still beats the pants off the third act of "Batman Begins," so I can't grudge the Nebula voters that..... ;-)
Some thoughts:
It's no surprise to me that "Two Hearts" won in the Novelette category, though it had some strong competition. It's a fantastic short story; even poor little me who hasn't read The Last Unicorn in some twenty years found it accessible and really well told. Beagle's a pro.
It's a bit of a coincidence, I'll admit, that Elizabeth Hand's story "Echo," which won the Short Story award, would have been published in the same issue of F&SF as "Two Hearts." My terrible admission? I know I had to have read it, but I can't remember this story at all.
I'm unfamiliar with the winners for Novel and Novella (and, indeed, all the nominees), so no thoughts about those.
The big surprise, I think, is the win for the script to "Howl's Moving Castle," the Miyazaki film based on Diana Wynn Jones' novel. Now, you all know how big a Miyazaki booster I am and how much I love DWJ's books. But Steven Moffat was robbed, I think. The HMC script, while fun, was a bit jumbled. Visually, the film was wonderful. The story was....good, capturing about half of the book in broad strokes. But the script moved in fits and starts and occasionally seemed to be using almost storytelling shorthand to get plot points in. e.g. The ending: I've read the book, so I knew a bit about the prince. But the only real indication that he'd gone missing, thus causing the war, before the end was a bit of easily missed background dialogue. It's no wonder the ending left a few moviegoers a bit confused--removing parts of DWJ's story, while necessary for time, made things even more confusing. Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie, but it had definite storytelling flaws. "The Girl in the Fireplace," on the other hand, was an amazingly intricate script, as well as being very fun. Ah well, I shouldn't complain about a Miyazaki win, should I? :-) And the third act of "Howl's" still beats the pants off the third act of "Batman Begins," so I can't grudge the Nebula voters that..... ;-)
