Annal:2004 Nebula Award for Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Nebula Award in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Paladin of Souls: A Novel
- 2004 Hugo-Novel winner
- 2004 Nebula winner
- 2004 Mythopoeic-Adult finalist
- Score: 26.54
One of the most honored authors in the field of fantasy and science fiction, Lois McMaster Bujold transports us once more to a dark and troubled land and embroils us in a desperate struggle to preserve the endangered souls of a realm.
Three years have passed since the widowed Dowager Royina Ista found release from the curse of madness that kept her imprisoned in her family’s castle of Valenda. Her newfound freedom is costly, bittersweet with memories, regrets, and guilty secrets—for she knows the truth of what brought her land to the brink of destruction. And…
Cloud Atlas: A Novel
- 2005 Clarke shortlist
- 2004 Booker shortlist
- 2004 JT Black-Fiction shortlist
- 2004 NBCC–Fiction finalist
- 2004 Nebula nominee
- Score: 30.55
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, inveigles his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles…
- 2004 Campbell 1st
- 2004 Nebula nominee
- Score: 16.54
For a quarter of a century, mankind has known about the existence of the malignant omega clouds. Huge waves of deadly energy, they seem bent on destroying any civilization they come across. Now, Earth itself is in the line of fire—though not imminently. An omega is headed toward the planet, but it will not enter the solar system for nine hundred years.
Though research continues into the origin of the omegas and various theoretical scenarios for destroying them are suggested, there is no sense of urgency—until a Space Academy ship on a routine mission sends…
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
- 2004 Nebula nominee
- Score: 6.54
Jules is a young man barely a century old. He’s lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies…and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World.
Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now in the care of a network of volunteer “ad-hocs” who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches.
Now, though, it seems the “ad hocs” are under attack. A new group has…
- 2005 WFA–Novel nominee
- 2004 Nebula nominee
- Score: 12.55
William “Dead” Kennedy has problems. He’s haunted by family, by dead people with unfinished business, and by those perfect pop songs that you can’t get out of your head. He’s a 32-year-old Texan still in love with his ex-wife. He just lost his job at Pet-Co for eating cat food. His air-conditioning is broken, there’s no good music on the radio, and he’s been dreaming about ghost roads.
When Will’s cousin (“My dad married your Aunt Dot’s half-sister”) calls in the middle of the night about a dead girl haunting his garage, it seems like an easy way to make a…
The Knight: Book 1 of The Wizard Knight
- 2004 Nebula nominee
- Score: 6.54
A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm that contains seven levels of reality. Very quickly transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Abel and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, a sword he will get from a dragon, the one very special blade that will help him fulfill his life ambition to become a knight and a true hero.
Inside, however, Abel remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive the dangers and delights that lie ahead in encounters with…
