Three works won both Nebula and Hugo Awards for fiction published in 2011 and awarded in 2012, the second most recent year when this has happened, and 27 years after the most recent previous instance. Personally I think that of the “triplet years”, this is the strongest, well ahead of 1979/80 which is its nearest rival. I know that others will disagree with me; judge for yourself:
| 1970/71 | Short Story/Novelette | “Slow Sculpture”, Theodore Sturgeon |
| Novella | “Ill Met in Lankhmar”, by Fritz Leiber | |
| Novel | Ringworld, by Larry Niven | |
| 1975/76 | Short Story | “Catch That Zeppelin!”, by Fritz Leiber |
| Novella | “Home is the Hangman”, by Roger Zelazny | |
| Novel | The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman | |
| 1977/78 | Short Story | “Jeffty is Five”, by Harlan Ellison |
| Novella | “Stardance”, by Spider and Jeanne Robinson | |
| Novel | Gateway, by Frederik Pohl | |
| 1979/80 | Novelette | “Sandkings”, by George R.R. Martin |
| Novella | “Enemy Mine”, by Barry B. Longyear | |
| Novel | The Fountains of Paradise, by Arthur C. Clarke | |
| 1984/85 | Short Story | “Bloodchild”, by Octavia E. Butler |
| Novelette | “Press Enter ■”, by John Varley | |
| Novel | Neuromancer, by William Gibson | |
| 2011/12 | Short Story | “The Paper Menagerie”, by Ken Liu |
| Novella | “The Man Who Bridged the Mist”, by Kij Johnson | |
| Novel | Among Others, by Jo Walton | |
| 2017/18 | Short Story | “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™,” by Rebecca Roanhorse |
| Novella | All Systems Red, by Martha Wells | |
| Novel | The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin |
Taking the 2011/12 group in increasing order of length:
Second paragraph of third section of “The Paper Menagerie”, by Ken Liu (depending exactly how you count the sections):
Sometimes, the animals got into trouble. Once, the water buffalo jumped into a dish of soy sauce on the table at dinner. (He wanted to wallow, like a real water buffalo.) I picked him out quickly but the capillary action had already pulled the dark liquid high up into his legs. The saucesoftened legs would not hold him up, and he collapsed onto the table. I dried him out in the sun, but his legs became crooked after that, and he ran around with a limp. Mom eventually wrapped his legs in saran wrap so that he could wallow to his heart’s content (just not in soy sauce)
When I read it for the 2012 ballot, I wrote:
Like the Resnick [“The Homecoming”], this is a tale of familial drama, with a marginal (but significant) sfnal element; the narrator explains how he allowed himself to become estranged from his Chinese mother, who had the magical gift of making origami creatures come alive. I thought this was more honest and much less cloying than the Resnick story, daring to actually be sad. The metaphor is fairly heavy (and we never find out the names of the Chinese girls who translate the mother’s words to him and to his father at crucial moments), but it’s very beautifully written and captures the marginalised schoolboy very memorably.
I still liked it very much on re-reading. The narrator’s estrangement from his mother is cultural as well as emotional, and the magical paper animals are a well executed metaphor.
You can find PDF copies of “The Paper Menagerie” in various places around the internets. If you want a hard copy, it is (not surprisingly) included in Ken Liu’s collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, which you can get here.
It won the Hugo pretty convincingly, though had been only in second place at the nominations stage.
Two other short stories were on both ballots, “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, by E. Lily Yu (who won what was then the Campbell Award), and “Movement”, by Nancy Fulda, which was my personal favourite.
Second paragraph of third section of The Man Who Bridged the Mist, by Kij Johnson:
The clock in the room in which he slept didn’t work, so one day he used his penknife to take it apart. He arranged the wheels and cogs and springs in neat rows on the quilt in his room, by type and then by size; by materials; by weight; by shape. He liked holding the tiny pieces, thinking of how they might have been formed and how they worked together. The patterns they made were interesting but he knew the best pattern would be the working one, when they were all put back into their right places and the clock performed its task again. He had to think that the clock would be happier that way, too.
When I first read it in 2012, I wrote:
I thought this was a brilliant story of a world not quite our own, with a hero-engineer dealing with the challenges of a river of deadly mist and of facing up to his own emotional needs – an odd but effective mixture of immersive fantasy and basic technology. Excellent stuff, which I really hope wins the award.
Again, I still like this story. Re-reading it, I was interested that the world where the story is set is equivalent to early modern in technology, but has much better gender equality; the emotional core of the story is the bridge-builder’s love affair with one of the river sailors who will be put out of business by the bridge. You can get The Man Who Bridged the Mist as a standalone volume here.
It won the Hugo narrowly enough as these things go, having been second-placed on the nominations ballot.
Unusually there were four other novellas on both the Hugo and Nebula ballots: “The Ice Owl”, by Carolyn Ives Gilman; “Kiss Me Twice”, by Mary Robinette Kowal; “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary”, by Ken Liu; and Silently and Very Fast, by Catherynne M. Valente.
Second paragraph of third chapter of Among Others, by Jo Walton:
I managed to say thank you as well as goodbye. The aunts each kissed me on the cheek.
When I read it in 2012, I loved it and in due course voted for it.
I must admit that at various points in this novel I wondered how Jo Walton had got inside my head. Her narrator is a teenager in 1979-80, growing up reading Vonnegut, Zelazny, Heinlein and all the classics of science fiction, coping with the usual pains of growing up. Of course, Mor has a few extra problems that I didn’t have: no real friends at school, a move to a different country (Shropshire is very different from South Wales), dealing with a new family, and coping with the physical and emotional scars of the car accident which killed her sister and was conjured by her sorcerous mother. Rather like Buffy, Mor finds the terrors of adolescence taking supernatural and physical form; there’s also an interesting dialogue about England and Wales going on in the background (mostly). I was completely captivated by it; I am a couple of years younger than the heroine and her creator, but basically we are the same generation and Among Others hit me squarely in the memories. (I do wonder if it will appeal as much to those who are much older or much younger.)
I finished reading this at Eastercon (that’s how far my bookblogging is lagging my actual reading) and loved it still. My previous summary missed two important points. First, in Among Others, fairies are real and among the problems that Mor is navigating her way through. Second, one of the joyful aspects of the book is Mor’s encounter with sf fandom, through a group in the local library, at a much younger age than I really started to engage – although I was active in CUSFS and Jómsborg as a student, I have only been regularly attending conventions since 2002, when I was in my mid-thirties. I wish that I had started sooner. You can get Among Others here.
It won the Hugo pretty convincingly, and topped the nominations poll as well.
Embassytown, by China Mieville, was also on both ballots.
In the novelette category, the Hugo went to “Six Months, Three Days”, by Charlie Jane Anders, and the Nebula to “What We Found”, by Geoff Ryman. Each was also on the other ballot. Also on both ballots were “Fields of Gold”, by Rachel Swirsky, and “Ray of Light”, by Brad R. Torgersen, which I personally thought was terrible but was runner-up for the Hugo.
The Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form and the Ray Bradbury both went to The Doctor’s Wife, arguably making this year a quadruplet rather than a triplet. Captain America: The First Avenger, Hugo and Source Code were all on both ballots.
Next in this sequence: the winner of Hugo, Nebula and lots of other prizes in 2014, Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie.
