Living Canon

Nebula Awards 2017: Complete list of winners

The 2017 Nebula Awards celebrated a year when science fiction and fantasy were firmly in conversation with contemporary issues, complex identities, and voices that challenged genre conventions. N.K. Jemisin’s The Stone Sky claimed the Best Novel award, completing the remarkable feat of winning the Nebula for the third consecutive year in her Broken Earth trilogy—a dominance that underscored both the trilogy’s artistic achievement and the science fiction community’s embrace of her visionary worldbuilding. Across the shorter fiction categories, this year’s winners demonstrated the Nebula Awards’ commitment to recognizing diverse storytelling approaches: Martha Wells’s All Systems Red captured Best Novella with its distinctive unreliable narrator, while Rebecca Roanhorse’s provocatively titled Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™ took Best Short Story by centering Indigenous perspectives in speculative fiction.

The 2017 Nebula Award winners also reflected a broader shift in what the science fiction establishment was choosing to honor. Kelly Robson’s A Human Stain won Best Novelette with a narrative that interrogated consent and bodily autonomy in unsettling ways, while Sam J. Miller’s The Art of Starving earned Best Young Adult by weaving themes of class struggle, sexuality, and disability into its protagonist’s story. These selections painted a portrait of a genre increasingly willing to prioritize emotional and social complexity over traditional tropes, making the 2017 Nebula Awards season a particularly fertile moment for those tracking where speculative fiction was heading.

Below, you’ll find the complete list of winners and finalists across all categories from this landmark year in the Nebula Awards.

Best Novel

Best Novelette

Best Novella

Best Short Story

Best Young Adult