
All works receiving ten (10) or more recommendations during their period of eligibility shall be placed on the
Preliminary Ballot in their appropriate categories. The Preliminary Ballot must be mailed to active members no
later than January 15.
12. Members will nominate no more than five works in each category on the Preliminary Ballot. These ballots shall
be returned to the Nebula Award Report editor or independent agent (as indicated on the ballot) before the
Preliminary Ballot closing date, which will be not less than 28 days after the date of distribution of the Preliminary
Ballot. The five works in each category receiving the most nominations will be placed on a Final Ballot.
13. The Final Ballot will be published and distributed by the Nebula Award Report editor to all active members
within fourteen (14) days after the Preliminary Ballot closing date.
14. Members will cast numerically ranked votes for works on the Final Ballot, writing 1 for the first choice in each
category, 2 for the second, and so on; or, instead of ranked votes for nominated works, members may vote for "No
Award." If any ranked vote is cast in a category, a vote for "No Award" in the same category will be disregarded.
Members may leave any category completely unmarked; their ballots will only be counted in categories in which
they have cast ranked votes or voted for "No Award."
15. Votes for "No Award" will be counted before ranked votes are counted. If forty (40) percent or more of the ballots
received in a particular category received are marked only for "No Award," then no Nebula Award will be given in
that category and votes in that category will not be counted.
16. Ranked votes for nominated works are counted by the "Australian ballot" method defined in this paragraph. On
the first count of ranked votes for nominated works in a category, only first-ranked choices are counted. If any work
is the first choice of a majority of the ballots cast for works in that category, it is declared the winner of the Nebula
Award for that category. If no work has received a majority of first-ranked votes on the first count, additional counts
will be made, as follows: The work which received the lowest number of best-ranked votes on the latest previous
count is removed from further contention. Each ballot cast for the removed work is now counted for the work, still
in contention, which received the next-best-ranked vote on that ballot. If no work that is still in contention has been
marked with a ranked vote, that ballot is not counted again for that category. Additional counts will be made,
removing the last-place work from contention each time, and adding next-best-ranked votes from its ballots to the
totals for the works still in contention, until one work receives a majority of the votes cast in the latest count in that
category, in which case that work is declared the winner of the Nebula Award for that category; or until only two
works remain with exactly the same number of ballots counted in their favor, in which case the work, of those two,
which received the greater number of first-ranked votes on the first count is declared the winner of the Nebula
Award. If both works also had the same number of first-ranked votes on the first count, the voting is declared a tie,
and both works will receive the Nebula Award.
17. The Final Ballot will be tabulated by an independent agency. To be counted, properly prepared Final Ballots
must be received by the Final Ballot closing date, which shall be not less than 28 days after the date of distribution of
the Final Ballot.
18. Nebula Juries
a. The SFWA President shall appoint, and the Nebula Awards Report editor administer three Nebula juries, each
consisting of at least three (3) and not more than seven (7) members. In the case of the Dramatic Script Nebula Jury,
at least two members of that Jury shall have had at least one script professionally produced.
b. The Short Fiction Jury shall have the option of adding one work to the Final Ballot in each of the three short
fiction categories (short story, novelette and novella).
c. The Novel Jury shall have the option of adding one work to the novel category.
d. The Script Jury shall have the option of adding one work to the Script category. The Script Jury shall also be
charged with ensuring, to the best of its ability, that the Nebula for best script is presented to the primary writer or
writers of an actual script. Accordingly, the Jury shall be responsible for requesting a copy of the production script
for each script on the Preliminary Ballot, and reviewing the attribution on those scripts, to ensure that the Award
shall accurately reflect the true authorship of the Work. The Jury may disqualify productions where authorship is
unclear or in doubt, or the accredited authorship consists of more than four individuals, with no primary author.
Such disqualified productions will not appear on the Final Ballot.
e. A Jury may not add to the Final Ballot a work written by a member of that Jury.
19. The Nebula Jury shall consider only eligible works published between January 1 and December 31 of the year for
which awards will be presented.
20. The president shall have the power, at his/her discretion, to call for the presentation of a Grandmaster Award. A
maximum of one Grandmaster Award can be presented each year with no requirement that an award be presented
in any particular year. Nominations for Grandmaster Award shall be solicited from the Board of Directors, with the
advice of participating past presidents, who shall vote, with participating past presidents, to determine its recipients.
In case of a tie, the president's vote shall decide.