The Board of Directors of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has, today, promulgated a new set of rules for the organization’s Nebula Awards. The new rules introduce sweeping changes to one of the more convoluted awards rules in the genre communities. In a published statement from SFWA President Russell Davis, “the Board has unanimously passed a resolution adopting an updated set of rules for the Nebula Awards.”
The updated awards rules have been posted on SFWA’s web site. Among the most significant changes to the rules are:
* changing eligibility from a one-year rolling basis to calendar year of publication
* changing the recommendation window from “any time” to a three-month nominations period (15 November to 15 February)
* limiting members to five nominations per category
* removing the preliminary ballot from the process
* abolishing the Nebula Award juries, which had had the ability to add one work in each category to the final ballot
* replacing the script award with a “Ray Bradbury Award for Best Dramatic Presentation” (specifically including motion pictures, television, Internet, radio, audio, and stage productions)
* explicitly defining the Ray Bradbury script and Andre Norton Young Adult awards as not Nebulas
Most of the changes will take effect immediately, but the rolling eligibility will be slowly phased out. Specifically, for the 2009 ballots only, works which were published after 1 July 2008 and already received at least five recommendations (but which did not make this year’s preliminary ballot), will be eligible in the next nominations period (and their current recommendations will be counted as nominations). Works published after 1 July 2008 which have not received five recommendations will be eligible in the next nominations period, but will not have recommendations carried over.
We expect to have more on this story soon.