Every Nebula Award winner for Best Novel, ranked by readers
The Nebula is chosen by professional writers in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Here are its 49 science fiction Best Novel winners, ranked by how much readers love them.
The highest rated: Network Effect by Martha Wells, ★ 4.44 from 1,650+ ratings.
The ranking
1. Network Effect
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (2021) · · Won 2021
Murderbot has inconvenient feelings and a much bigger problem.
2. Dune
Won the Hugo and Nebula Awards (1966) · · Won 1966
A desert planet. An empire in the balance. A future that refuses to stay written.
3. Ender's Game
Won the Hugo and Nebula Awards; finalist for the Locus Award (1986) · · Won 1986
Ender's Game is a 1985 military science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card.
4. The Dispossessed
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1975) · · Won 1975
Two worlds, opposing ideals, and a physicist trying to build a bridge.
5. The Stone Sky
Won the Hugo and Nebula Awards (2018) · · Won 2018
Humanity will finally be saved or destroyed in the shattering conclusion to the post-apocalyptic and highly acclaimed NYT bestselling trilogy that won the Hugo Award three years in a row.
6. Flowers for Algernon
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo Award (1967) · · Won 1967
Until he was thirty-two, Charlie Gordon --gentle, amiable, oddly engaging-- had lived in a kind of mental twilight.
7. Parable of the Talents
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (2000–2001) · · Won 2000
Environmental devastation and economic chaos have turned America into a land of depravity.
8. The Left Hand of Darkness
Won the Hugo and Nebula Awards (1970) · · Won 1970
An icy world. A solitary envoy. A radical question about being human.
9. Speaker for the Dead
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1987) · · Won 1987
Ender Wiggin, the young military genius, discovers that a second alien war is inevitable and that he must dismiss his fears to make peace with humanity's strange new brothers.
10. The Forever War
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1976) · · Won 1976
A soldier returns from battle to a world that has moved on without him.
11. Rendezvous with Rama
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1974) · · Won 1974
Something enormous has entered the solar system. The door is open.
12. Doomsday Book
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards; finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (1993) · · Won 1993
Somewhere in the future, ordinary history students must travel back in time as part of their university degree.
13. Ancillary Justice
Won the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo and Nebula Awards (2014) · · Won 2014
A starship’s intelligence. One remaining body. A very personal reckoning.
14. The Calculating Stars
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (2019) · · Won 2019
Earth needs an escape plan. A gifted pilot needs a seat at the table.
15. Neuromancer
Won the Hugo and Nebula Awards (1985) · · Won 1985
A hacker’s second chance leads into the machinery of a wired future.
16. A Master of Djinn
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo Award (2022) · · Won 2022
Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P.
17. The Gods Themselves
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1973) · · Won 1973
The year is 2100 A.D.… And Man no longer stands alone in the universe.
18. The Claw of the Conciliator
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo Award (1982) · · Won 1982
The Claw of the Conciliator is a science fantasy novel by American writer Gene Wolfe, first released in 1981.
19. Gateway
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1978) · · Won 1978
Gateway is a 1977 science-fiction novel by American writer Frederik Pohl.
20. A Song for a New Day
Won the Nebula Award (2020) · · Won 2020
In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world.
21. Ringworld
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1971) · · Won 1971
The ' (1970–2004), by science fiction author Larry Niven, is a part of his Known Space set of stories.
22. Annihilation
Won the Nebula Award (2015) · · Won 2015
An expedition enters a landscape that does not want to be understood.
23. The Windup Girl
Won the Hugo and Nebula Awards (2010) · · Won 2010
What Happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And what happens when said bio-terrorism forces humanity to the cusp of post-human evolution?
24. Startide Rising
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1984) · · Won 1984
David Brin: “Startide Rising” (1983) This is a sci fi story about a Terran (Earth) crew of neo-dolphins and humans on the starship “The Streaker”.
25. The Speed of Dark
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke and Locus Awards (2003–2004) · · Won 2004
In the near future, disease will be a condition of the past.
26. Red Mars
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo and Locus Awards (1993–1994) · · Won 1994
Red Mars is the first novel of the Mars trilogy, published in 1992.
27. Seeker
Won the Nebula Award (2007) · · Won 2007
In the far future when space travel is comm0nplace, antiquities dealers Alex and Chase find/sell artifacts, come across a cup from Seeker, a huge spaceship that left Earth 9,000 yrs earlier.
28. The Fountains of Paradise
Won the Hugo and Nebula Awards; finalist for the Locus Award (1980) · · Won 1980
In the 22nd century visionary scientist Vannevar Morgan conceives the most grandiose engineering project of all time, and one which will revolutionize the future of humankind in space: a Space Elevator, 36,000 kilometers high, anchored to an equatorial island in the Indian Ocean.
29. Slow River
Won the Nebula Award (1997) · · Won 1997
Slow River is a science fiction novel by British writer Nicola Griffith, first published in 1995.
30. Dreamsnake
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1979) · · Won 1979
In a world devastated by nuclear holocaust, Snake is a healer.
31. Stations of the Tide
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Awards (1992–1993) · · Won 1992
The story of a nameless bureaucrat who is sent by the Office of Technology Transfer, charged with restricting the flow of dangerous technologies, to the planet Miranda to search for a fugitive in possession of forbidden technological knowledge.
32. Falling Free
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo Award (1989) · · Won 1989
Leo Graf was just your average highly efficient engineer: mind your own business, fix what's wrong and move on to the next job.
33. The Quantum Rose
Won the Nebula Award (2002) · · Won 2002
The Quantum Rose is a science fiction novel by Catherine Asaro which tells the story of Kamoj Argali and Skolian Prince Havyrl Valdoria.
34. Rite of Passage
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo Award (1969) · · Won 1969
After the destruction of Earth, humanity has established itself precariously among a hundred planets.
35. Blackout/All Clear
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (2011) · · Won 2011
Blackout and All Clear are the two volumes that constitute a 2010 science fiction novel by American author Connie Willis.
36. Moving Mars
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo and Locus Awards (1994–1995) · · Won 1995
The young may not remember Mars of old, under the yellow Sun, its cloud-streaked skies dusted pink, its soil rusty and fine, its inhabitants living in pressurized burrows and venturing Up only as rite of passage or to do maintenance or tend the ropy crops…
37. The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (2008) · · Won 2008
The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a 2007 novel by American author Michael Chabon.
38. Man Plus
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo and Locus Awards (1977) · · Won 1977
Earth is in crisis.
40. No Enemy But Time
Won the Nebula Award (1983) · · Won 1983
No Enemy But Time is a 1982 science fiction novel by Michael Bishop.
41. Babel-17
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo Award (1967) · · Won 1967
During an interstellar war one side develops a language, Babel-17, that can be used as a weapon.
42. A Time of Changes
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo and Locus Awards (1972) · · Won 1972
In the far future, Earth is a worn-out backwater and humanity is spread across the galaxy on worlds that began as colonies, but now feel like home, each with its own long history of a thousand years or more, and each with its own unique…
43. Darwin's Radio
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo and Locus Awards (2000–2001) · · Won 2001
"Virus hunter" Christopher Dicken is a man on a mission, following a trail of rumors, government cover-ups, and dead bodies around the globe in search of a mysterious disease that strikes only pregnant women and invariably results in miscarriage.
44. Camouflage
Won the Nebula Award (2006) · · Won 2006
An unidentified artifact, found seven miles below the surface of the sea, stumps the scientists examining it but calls out to the two immortal creatures who have wandered the Earth for centuries, never crossing paths until now.
45. All the Birds in the Sky
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo Award (2017) · · Won 2017
An ancient society of witches and a hipster technological startup go war as the world from tearing itself.
46. Timescape
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Locus Award (1981) · · Won 1981
Timescape is a 1980 science fiction novel by American writer Gregory Benford (with unbilled co-author Hilary Foister, Benford's sister-in-law, who is credited as having "contributed significantly to the manuscript").
47. Forever Peace
Won the Hugo and Nebula Awards; finalist for the Locus Award (1998–1999) · · Won 1999
Joe Haldeman returns with a story about the horrors of war -- and how we might move past them.
48. The Einstein Intersection
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Hugo Award (1968) · · Won 1968
The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula Award for best science fiction novel of 1967.
49. 2312
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo and Locus Awards (2013) · · Won 2013
The year is 2312.
How we ranked
Every science fiction novel that won the Nebula Award for Best Novel. Fantasy winners are not part of this library. Books are ranked by a weighted rating: each book’s average is blended with the library average as if it had 100 extra ratings, so a few enthusiastic votes cannot outrank a book thousands of readers love. Ratings are web-aggregated averages. The list updates automatically as new award results come in.