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Artist, Heather Oliver             

The Other Half of the Sky Nabs a Nebula

other half  webThe Other Half of the Sky has had an unprecedented four of its sixteen stories chosen for inclusion in two “Best of” annual compilations and was included in the coveted Locus recommended list.

It comes as an unalloyed pleasure that the anthology just won yet another accolade: one of the stories in The Other Half of the Sky received the Nebula Award for best novelette. The story is Aliette de Bodard’s “The Waiting Stars” (part of her Xuya universe), a haunting symphony of kinship, loss and healing.

Additionally, the anthology garnered two more outstanding reviews in a long and ever-lengthening roster:

Analog Magazine
Manic Pixie Dream Worlds

The concluding paragraph of the latter review is worth quoting:

“As a result we have a batch of stories here that don’t just feature women as protagonists, often characters of color and those with LGBT identities, but in which the societies within create wholly new ways of living: sociologically, technologically, ecologically. The social structures and worlds that these authors wrote are so unique and inventive that I kept forgetting that I was reading a book with a mission, that I was promised female protagonists, and thinking: Ah, yes. This is what science fiction should be.

Welcome to the future.

20 Responses to “The Other Half of the Sky Nabs a Nebula”

  1. C W Johnson says:

    Congratulations to you and to Aliette! Wonderful news.

  2. delagar says:

    I saw this last night in the middle of the night! Woo- hoo!

  3. Athena says:

    Thanku, thanku!

  4. Athena says:

    I saw it this morning — I’m in Greece which is seven hours ahead and woke up to a flood in my Inbox!

  5. Letty says:

    Great news, congratulations!

  6. Athena says:

    Thank you!

  7. Asakiyume says:

    Congratulations! That is wonderful news indeed!

  8. Athena says:

    Thank you!

  9. Cecily Kane says:

    Congrats and thanks for linking my review! I don’t think I’ve ever had a review of mine quoted before, and I’m glad it was this one because I think it’s one of my best-written. So I hope y’all all don’t mind that I feel like I’m getting to bask a wee bit in the glory.

    I read several reviews of this book elseweb and was pretty astounded to discover that there was a huge variance amongst reviewers’ “favorites list”; I found only one other review with a set of favorite shorts that aligned heavily with mine. That’s a mark of a stellar anthology IMO: when there’s something for everyone.

    I really hope there’ll be another one of these in the future, or something similar.

  10. Athena says:

    Cecily, thank you for the wonderfully perceptive review! I have noticed the variance in reviewers’ favorites, which is very satisfying. I’m planning the next SF anthology, this one focused on women scientists and on science being portrayed as neither hubris nor triumphalism.

  11. Cecily Kane says:

    You mean science that’s not heroic or villainous but rather a set of tools? 😀

    You’re welcome, and the next anthology sounds very cool.

  12. Athena says:

    Well, as a practicing scientist and a hopeless (hopeful?) romantic, I’m thinking more of science as fully integrated humanistic discipline/vocation! *smile*

  13. Christopher Phoenix says:

    Congratulations to both Aliette and you, Athena!! This is indeed wonderful news for The Other Half of the Sky.

    By the way, I very much like the idea of an anthology dedicated to stories focused on science as a fully integrated humanistic discipline/vocation. That is a direction that hasn’t been explored much in SF, or indeed fiction in general- at least I can’t recall any stories that have in recent memory!

  14. Athena says:

    Thank you! There are a few such books in mainstream literature: On the Nature of Human Romantic Interactions by Karl Iagnemma, Ship Fever and Servants of the Map by Andrea Barrett, Periodic Table by Primo Levi, The Movement of the Stars by Amy Brill… I’m sure there are more.

  15. jose says:

    Deserved! I enjoyed Ouroboros the most personally (even translated it to Spanish for friends and relatives!) but The Waiting Stars was so intense.

  16. intrigued_scribe says:

    Congratulations – wonderful news!

  17. Athena says:

    Thank you!

  18. Athena says:

    Thank you, dear friend!

  19. Gene says:

    I was wondering if you’d seen this: https://classicallyeducated.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/pc-runs-amok-in-science-fiction-community/

    Not good at all, and looks aimed at pushing back the progress made so far!

  20. Athena says:

    I hadn’t seen it, nor did it look (to me, at least, a classically educated polymath and globetrotter) interesting/novel enough to waste time or gray matter on.