The finalists for the prestigious 2024 Nebula Awards have been announced and Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s Lost Ark Dreaming (Tordotcom) and Sofia Samatar’s The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain (Tordotcom) are both finalists for Best Novella!

Lost Ark Dreaming is a high-octane post-climate disaster novella set off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, in a world in which survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers. The towers’ most affluent rule from their lofty perch at the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level. What follows is a tale of vengeance and entanglements, focusing on three lives: Yekini, an earnest, mid-level rookie analyst; Tuoyo, an undersea mechanic mourning a tremendous loss; and Ngozi, an egotistical bureaucrat from the highest levels of governance. They will need to work together if there is to be any hope of a future that is worth living—for everyone.

Suyi Davies Okungbowa is a Nigerian author of fantasy, science fiction and general speculative work. His recent books include the novel Son of the Storm, first in the epic fantasy trilogy, The Nameless Republic. His debut godpunk fantasy novel David Mogo, Godhunter (Abaddon, 2019), won the 2020 Nommo Ilube Award for Best Speculative Novel by an African.

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain is a mystical, revolutionary space adventure following an unnamed protagonist, referred to only as “the boy,” whose whole world changes when he is yanked from his menial job in the bowels of a mining starship and given an opportunity to be educated at the ship’s university alongside the elite. Overwhelmed and alone, the boy forms a bond with the woman he comes to know as “the professor,” a weary idealist who has spent her career striving for validation from her more senior colleagues, only to fall short at every turn.

Sofia Samatar is an American author of Somali descent, whose first novel, A Stranger in Olondria, won the 2014 William L. Crawford Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and was included in Time Magazine’s list of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time.

The Nebula Awards annually recognize the best works of science fiction or fantasy published in the United States. The awards are organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA).

The winners will be announced at the 60th Annual SFWA Nebula Awards Conference, which will be held online and in-person from June 5–8, 2025 in Kansas City, Missouri. Registration for the conference, in both formats, is now open here.

Congratulations to Suyi Davies Okungbowa and Sofia Samatar!