Just a brief note to say that the Nebula winners have been announced. I’d read several of the nominees before (if you’re interested, browse here) and not for the first time, I was struck by the relatively high standards this sci-fi award sets compared to most “literary” awards. And the mainstream blinkered view that sees science-fiction as third-rate writing about little green men and nubile earthwomen clad in very little seems stuck in the dark ages of the genre.

Karen Joy Fowler’s Nebula-winning ‘What I Didn’t See’ is light years ahead of any of the New Yorker stories I’ve read this year (okay, bar the one by T C Boyle) and most of the short literary fiction that’s come my way in terms of concept and execution. And for strictly personal reasons, this is one of my favourite passages from the story: “Eddie had this idea once that defects of character could be treated with doses of landscape: the ocean for the histrionic, mountains for the domineering, and so forth. I forget the desert, but the jungle was the place to send the self-centered.”