Views from Medina Road

Prompted by the release of this year's preliminary Nebula Awards ballot, and Cheryl Morgan's remarks thereon, I did some comparison of the SFWA lists against an independent source -- Locus Magazine's annual recommended reading lists, compiled by Locus reviewers and guest critics, all of whom presumably read many books each year. (Disclosure: I had no input into Locus's lists for novels, nor any into SFWA's Nebula ballots. I'm an affiliate member or somesuch of SFWA, but all that gets me is a copy of the membership roster once a year.)

I examined Locus's 2002 Recommended Reading List (and the '01 List for titles with '02 US publication dates), and SFWA's 2002 Nebula Awards preliminary ballot and 2003 Nebula Awards preliminary ballot. Considering that SFWA recognizes only US publication, and considering its multiple-year eligibile rule, I considered from all lists only those novels with 2002 US publications. (Given the Nebula rules, if a 2002 book hasn't made it to a preliminary ballot by 2004, it never will. That's why this comparison doesn't consider 2003 novels.) I also disregarded Locus's YA novel recommendations. Without further comment, here are three lists.

2002 Novels recommended by Locus that reached a Nebula preliminary ballot

Lion's Blood, Steven Barnes (Warner Aspect)
Kiln People, David Brin (Tor)
The Mount, Carol Emshwiller (Small Beer)
Light Music, Kathleen Ann Goonan (Eos)
A Scattering of Jades, Alexander C. Irvine (Tor)
Chindi, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
The Impossible Bird, Patrick O'Leary (Tor)
Ombria in Shadow, Patricia A. McKillip (Ace)
The Scar, China Miéville (Macmillan; Del Rey)
Bones of the Earth, Michael Swanwick (Eos) [reached final ballot in '03]
Ruled Britannia, Harry Turtledove (NAL)

Also, Kelley Eskridge's Solitaire (Eos) reached the final ballot in '03, though it had not appeared on the preliminary ballot; presumably it was added by the jury, which has the option of adding one item per category to the final ballot

Novels recommended by Locus that failed to reach any Nebula preliminary ballot

The Eye of Night, Pauline J. Alama (Bantam Spectra)
The Sky So Big and Black, John Barnes (Tor)
Origin: Manifold 3, Stephen Baxter (Voyager; as Manifold: Origin Del Rey 2002)
Vitals, Greg Bear (Del Rey)
Transcension, Damien Broderick (Tor)
Shadow Puppets, Orson Scott Card (Tor)
Kushiel's Chosen, Jacqueline Carey (Tor)
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll (Tor)
The Lady of the Sorrows, Cecilia Dart-Thornton (Macmillan Tor Australia; Warner Aspect)
Schild's Ladder, Greg Egan (Gollancz; Eos)
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde (Hodder & Stoughton; Viking 2002)
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, Jeffrey Ford (Morrow)
The Alchemist's Door, Lisa Goldstein (Tor)
Guardian, Joe Haldeman (Ace)
Evening's Empire, David Herter (Tor)
The Summer Country, James A. Hetley (Ace)
A Fistful of Sky, Nina Kiriki Hoffman (Ace)
Smoking Poppy, Graham Joyce (Gollancz; Pocket 2002)
Probability Space, Nancy Kress (Tor)
Fires of the Faithful, Naomi Kritzer (Bantam Spectra)
The Fall of the Kings, Ellen Kushner & Delia Sherman (Bantam Spectra)
A Bed of Earth, Tanith Lee (Overlook)
Just Like Beauty, Lisa Lerner (Farrar Straus Giroux)
Warchild, Karin Lowachee (Warner Aspect)
Child of the Prophecy, Juliet Marillier (Pan Macmillan Australia 2001; Tor)
The Devil and Deep Space, Susan R. Matthews (Roc)
Whole Wide World, Paul McAuley (Voyager; Tor 2002)
Voyage of the Shadowmoon, Sean McMullen (Tor)
The God Who Begat a Jackal, Nega Mezlekia (Picador USA)
The Red Church, Scott Nicholson (Pinnacle)
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
Chasm City, Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz; Ace 2002)
The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam)
Spaceland, Rudy Rucker (Tor)
The Isle of Battle, Sean Russell (Eos)
Permanence, Karl Schroeder (Tor)
The Book of Splendor, Frances Sherwood (Norton)
A Winter Haunting, Dan Simmons (Morrow)
The Omega Expedition, Brian Stableford (Tor)
Coyote, Allen Steele (Ace)
The Visitor, Sheri S. Tepper (Eos)
The Golden Age, John C. Wright (Tor)

Novels not on Locus' recommended reading lists, that made Nebula preliminary ballots

Hidden Empire: The Saga of Seven Suns, Book 1 -- Kevin J. Anderson (Warner Books, Jul02)
Diplomatic Immunity -- Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen, May02)
Fitcher's Brides -- Gregory Frost (Tor, Dec02)
Maximum Ice -- Kay Kenyon (Bantam, Feb02)
The Consciousness Plague, Paul Levinson (Tor, Feb02)
Picoverse, Robert A. Metzger (Ace, Mar02) [reached final 2003 ballot]
Technogenesis, Syne Mitchell (Roc, Jan02)
Fallen Host -- Lyda Morehouse (Roc, May02)
Dreams of the Compass Rose, Vera Nazarian (Wildside Press, May02)
Hominids, Robert J. Sawyer (Analog, Apr02; Tor, May 2002)
Argonaut, Stanley Schmidt (Tor, Jul02)
The Peshawar Lancers, S.M. Stirling (ROC/NAL, Jan02)