Tehanu

1990 fantasy novel by Ursula K. Le Guin

Tehanu

Cover of first edition, with the subtitle The Last Book of Earthsea (absent from later editions)

Author| Ursula K. Le Guin
Language| English
Series| Earthsea
Genre| Fantasy
Published| 1990 (Atheneum), 2012 (Saga)
Publication place| United States
Media type| Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages| 226
Award| Nebula Award for Best Novel (1990), Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (1991)
ISBN| 0-689-31595-3
OCLC| 19975630

Dewey Decimal

| [Fic] 20
LC Class| PZ7.L5215 Te 1990
Preceded by| The Farthest Shore
Followed by| Tales from Earthsea

Tehanu /təˈhɑːnuː/,[1] initially subtitled The Last Book of Earthsea, is a fantasy novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in February 1990 by Atheneum. It is the fourth of her Earthsea novels, written nearly twenty years after the first three novels. It was followed by further Earthsea stories, even though its subtitle initially proclaimed it as the last.[a]

The novel is viewed as an enlargement of the earlier Earthsea trilogy (marketed for young adults), as Tehanu presents an aging hero and heroine—Ged, a principal character in all three earlier Earthsea novels, and Tenar, the protagonist of the second in the series, The Tombs of Atuan. Tehanu won the 1990 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1991 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

Tehanu has been called Le Guin's best novel, featuring greater depth of characterisation than did her earlier books. Critics have commented that the novel responds to the first three Earthsea books, moving from male-oriented high fantasy to a feminist exploration of what Simone de Beauvoir called "immanence", a woman's situation in the world.

## Background

[edit]

Tehanu is the fourth book in the Earthsea cycle, which began with Le Guin's 1968 novel A Wizard of Earthsea and its protagonist, Sparrowhawk, whose true name is Ged. The author provided some description in a recorded afterword to the 2016 audiobook version: as Tehanu opens, approximately 25 years have passed since the events at the end of The Tombs of Atuan, "time enough for the girl Tenar to become a widow with grown children"; and "a day or two" has passed since the close of The Farthest Shore to Tehanu's Chapter 4, "Kalessin", "time enough for [that] dragon... to carry Ged from Roke to Gont."[b]

## Book

[edit]

### Plot

[edit]

Goha lives alone on Gont because her farmer husband Flint has died, and her two children, Apple and Spark, have grown up. A burned child is brought to her at Oak Farm, and she saves her life. The burns leave scarring on the child's face, and the fingers of one hand have been fused into a claw. Goha adopts her and gives the child the name Therru, which means flame.

Goha learns that the mage Ogion requests her presence at his deathbed in Re Albi. She sets out to visit him with Therru. On the way, she encounters a group of ruffians, one of whom is Handy, who claims to be Therru's uncle. Ogion reveals Goha as Tenar, and he says she must teach Therru. After his death, Tenar stays on at his cottage, assisted by Moss, a local witch, and Heather, a simple village girl. Ged (also called Sparrowhawk) arrives on the back of the dragon Kalessin, unconscious and near death, having spent all his wizardly powers in sealing the gap between the worlds of the living and the dead created by the evil sorcerer Cob. Tenar nurses Ged back to health, but when the new king Lebannen sends envoys to bring him back to Havnor for the coronation, Ged cannot face them. He accepts Tenar's offer to return to Oak Farm to manage things there in her absence and once more takes up life as a goatherd. While at Re Albi, Tenar is confronted by the local lord's wicked mage, Aspen, who attempts to put a curse on her, but is thwarted.

Tenar informs the king's men that she cannot reveal Ged's whereabouts, and they accept the situation and depart. Tenar is threatened by both Aspen and Handy, and she flees with Therru. Confused by Aspen's magic, Tenar is almost overtaken by Handy, but escapes to Gont Port, taking refuge in the king's ship. Lebannen takes Tenar and Therru to Valmouth, where Tenar eventually returns to Oak Farm to find that Ged is away tending goats in the mountains for the season. Tenar settles back into life on the farm, until one night when Handy and a few other men attempt to break into the house. They are driven off by Tenar and Ged, and the latter nearly kills one of them with a pitchfork. Tenar and Ged begin a relationship, acknowledging that they had always loved each other. Ged wants to settle down and live an ordinary life. Together, they teach and care for Therru and manage the farm. Tenar's son Spark returns home from the sea, demanding and getting the farm, as under Gontish law, it belongs to him.

Tenar receives word that Moss is dying and wants to see her. She, Ged and Therru leave for Re Albi. However, the message was a trap set by Aspen, who reveals himself to be a follower of the evil Cob. Tenar and Ged are led to the lord's mansion controlled by Aspen's magic. Therru runs to the cliff behind Ogion's cottage, where she calls to the dragon Kalessin for help, and reveals her true nature: she is "a double being, half human, half-dragon". Aspen and his followers bring both Tenar and Ged up to the clifftop. Under the influence of Aspen's spell, they are both moving to jump to their deaths when Kalessin arrives, burning Aspen and his men to ash. Kalessin addresses Therru by her true name Tehanu, calling her daughter, and asks if she would like to leave. Tehanu decides to stay with Tenar and Ged; they settle down to a simple life at Ogion's old cottage.

### Major characters

[edit]

See also: List of characters in Earthsea

Cover of 2012 edition (hardcover) with corrected title.

The primary characters of the novel are:[3]

* Goha, as known by her husband and locals, revealed to be Tenar, former priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, and the White Lady of Gont
* Ged, also called Sparrowhawk, the Archmage of Roke
* Aspen, revealed as Erisen, a twisted mage and follower of Cob
* Kalessin, a dragon, the eldest
* Therru, a burned child, revealed as Tehanu, and a woman-dragon

### Publication history

[edit]

Tehanu is the fourth novel set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea, published almost twenty years after the first three Earthsea novels (1968–1972); it was not the last, despite the subtitle of the first edition, which was later dropped.[4]

* Le Guin, Ursula K. (1990). Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea. Earthsea cycle. Vol. 4\. New York, New York: Atheneum (Simon & Schuster). ISBN 0689315953. and simultaneously Gollancz in London. Bantam Books reprinted the book in paperback.
* Le Guin, Ursula K. (author, narrator) & Sterlin, Jenny (narrator) (2016). Tehanu: The Earthsea Cycle, Book Four (audiobook). unabridged ed. Landover, Maryland: Recorded Books—RBmedia. ASIN B01G9EP4ZQ. Includes extensive interpretative and explanatory material composed and read by Le Guin, entitled "An Afterward From the Author".

The book has been reprinted many times, including in collections of the Earthsea series or "Earthsea Cycle" by publishers and imprints including Atheneum, Simon & Schuster, Pocket Books, Simon Pulse, and Penguin Books.

## Reception

[edit]

Michael Dirda, writing for The Washington Post, writes that after the "honored and loved" Earthsea trilogy of "deeply imagined" and "finely wrought" books marketed as young-adult novels, Tehanu is "less sheerly exciting" but perhaps "the most moving" as it examines how Ged and Tenar address their own old age.[5] The book revisits the Earthsea themes of balance, integration with one's personal shadow, and trust, but in Dirda's view giving them "a darker, more realistic edge".[5] Further, Tehanu presents the world from a woman's point of view, with a social structure that disfavours women, unheroic men, and child abuse. All this makes the book "meditative, somber, even talky".[5] Dirda notes that Tehanu "reveal[s] what happened to [the series'] hero and heroine in old age", and with its emphasis on these aging, earlier novel protagonists is thus an enlargement of the earlier Earthsea trilogy (which was largely marketed for young adults).[6]

Kirkus Reviews comments that "Yes, there are dragons; but the human story and its meaning are primary here. Unlike Ged's, Le Guin's power is undiminished." It notes that Ged and Tenar are "past middle age", reflecting the slower action, but "even young readers will be beguiled by the flawless, poetic prose, the philosophy expressed in thoughtful, potent metaphor, and the consummately imagined world".[7] The Science Fiction Review summarizes the novel as "Great things happen to great people, whatever their station in life, and wherever they may be. An excellent story and a fine capstone to Earthsea."[8]

## Analysis

[edit]

Richard D. Erlich describes the book as being liminal, like the Roman god Janus the doorkeeper, looking both backward (to male-oriented fantasy) and forward (to feminist analysis).[9]

The initial trilogy focuses on the character and quests of Ged, with Tenar as the central character of the second book. Sean Guynes, in Reactor Magazine, calls Tehanu Le Guin's best novel.[10] In his view, it goes beyond the initial trilogy in its willingness to show the reader the characters' dark sides as they grow older.[10] Like The Farthest Shore, it reflects on "power and its loss"; like The Tombs of Atuan, it focuses on gender; but unlike them, it makes use of a new "reflective distance", revisiting the trilogy and addressing "earlier faults" in its writing, just as The Tombs of Atuan had revisited Earthsea's lack of "a female protagonist".[10] Also in Reactor Magazine, Jo Walton finds Tehanu "problematic", writing that it is "a restless book with very strange pacing",[11] but that it is surprising that it "works as well as it does", given the competing demands of "the force of story" – plot, action – and Le Guin's evident intention to place "women's domestic lives" at the novel's centre.[11]

In an analysis from her doctoral dissertation – that Le Guin featured on her webpage – Sharada Bhanu argues that Tehanu functions with Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind as a second trilogy, unlike the first.[12] In Bhanu's view, the first looked at coming-of-age, while the second presented sexual experience and "middle-aged protagonists", seen "from the outside".[12] This changed the work's focus and "emotional tone".[12] The effect, Bhanu writes, is that the "second trilogy enlarges, interrogates and deconstructs the first", the "cultural ethos" now being feminism.[12] She quotes an Earthsea proverb, "Weak as women's magic; wicked as women's magic", and notes the male focus of the earlier trilogy, with women unable to enter the school of Roke. Tehanu compensates "by presenting a woman's world" from the now middle-aged Tenar's point of view, alongside sympathetic portraits of other women "of various ages and professions", and "weak and limited" men "even when well meaning".[12]

Ursula Le Guin's feminism as seen in Tehanu has been contrasted with that of Simone De Beauvoir (pictured).[13]

The literary scholar Richard D. Erlich devotes an entire chapter, "Earthsea Revisited", of his book Coyote's Song (on Le Guin's teaching stories) to Tehanu: it is the only Earthsea book to receive this treatment.[14] Most of this is an annotated summary of the plot, the notes drawing out literary and philosophical connections with her other works, and with those of other authors including Rilke's Duino Elegies, Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear, and the Tao te Ching.[15] Erlich writes that Le Guin and critics agree that Tehanu is "Le Guin's revising and revisioning of Earthsea".[9] A major strand of this consists of putting her "Is Gender Necessary? Redux" into a fiction presentation.[9] Ehrlich argues that the book has a Janus-like aspect, facing both back to her earlier, more male-oriented books, and forwards to feminist writings. He finds this "decorous"[9] for a story which combines emphasis on faces that have one side scarred – both Therru/Tehanu and Sparrowhawk/Ged – and "so much stress on doorways and liminality", attention to in-between space.[9] Erlich concludes the chapter by stating that it is "unquestionably feminist and highly interesting" that Tehanu completes the logical arc from The Tombs of Atuan and other stories towards having "definitely a female protagonist"; and by saying that Tehanu is "an open-ended work" which he (successfully[4]) hoped would not be "The Last Book of Earthsea" claimed in the subtitle.[16]

Erlich compares Le Guin's treatment of immanence in Tehanu to Simone de Beauvoir's usage in her 1949 book The Second Sex, "but with values reversed".[13] De Beauvoir used the term, along with "transcendence", non-metaphysically to denote a woman's situation, being trapped in daily household chores, which she saw as bad. Erlich writes that in The Tombs of Atuan, Tenar was trapped as a high priestess, isolated from daily chores, the point being in his view that high position can be a trap worse than being a 1940s housewife. Erlich writes that immanence is usually good in the Earthsea trilogy, and that Tenar gets to the goal of being, not doing some twenty years before Ged does. He summarizes Le Guin's position as valuing not only the male-style power that modern women may be able to seize from men, but also (in Le Guin's words) "the other room, where women live", meaning, he writes, "a domestic life", including the old-age unmarried partnership of Tenar and Ged.[13]

Erlich writes that what he calles "silences" are an important aspect of Tehanu. In his analysis of the text, he mentions multiple places where readers are obliged to fill in gaps from their "own lives and experience".[17] One such concerns the motives that drive the "villains" of the story, nowhere described by Le Guin. Erlich suggests that the reader needs to apply "a strong suspicion" of men's motives to get Tehanu to work. If the novel were high fantasy, he writes, then an evil wizard like Aspen would be simply a hook for "racist and sexist obsessions with purity and power".[17] But since the book only touches on high fantasy, and is otherwise more down-to-earth, Aspen's "blind misogyny and male pigheadedness" will, Erlich suggests, seem understandable in proportion to how common readers have found those evils to be in the "patriarchal world we inhabit".[17]

Tehanu's relationship to the initial Earthsea trilogy, according to Richard D. Erlich[14] | A Wizard of Earthsea
1968 | The Tombs of Atuan
1970 | The Farthest Shore
1972 | Tehanu
1990

|
|
|
|

Protagonist  | Ged | Tenar (and Ged) | Ged | Therru/Tehanu
Protagonist's gender  | Male | Female (and male) | Male | Female
Genre  | High fantasy | Fantasy / philosophical novel

## Awards

[edit]

Tehanu won the 1990 Nebula Award;[18] this made Le Guin the first person to win three Nebula Awards for Best Novel.[19][c] The book won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel,[21] and was nominated for both the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and the Homer Award.[22]

## See also

[edit]

* Tales from Earthsea, including "Dragonfly", a postscript to Tehanu

## Notes

[edit]

1. ^ Two short stories set in Earthsea preceded the trilogy. A fifth novel and a collection of stories and essays were published about ten years after Tehanu. See Earthsea Cycle series listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
2. ^ Le Guin says: "Between the last chapter of The Tombs of Atuan and the first chapter of Tehanu, twenty-five years or so pass, time enough for the girl Tenar to become a widow with grown children. Between the last chapter of The Farthest Shore and the fourth chapter of Tehanu, a day or two passes, time enough for the dragon Kalessin to carry Ged from Roke to Gont."[2]
3. ^ Joe Haldeman would go on to equal this number in 2006, winning his third Nebula for Camouflage. Three years later, Le Guin received a fourth Nebula for Powers. As of 2021, she holds the record for the most Best Novel Nebulas.[19][20]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Le Guin, Ursula K. (October 10, 2010). Ursula K. Le Guin reads from "The Wizard of Earthsea" (Reading). Washington Center for the Performing Arts: Timberland Regional Library. Event occurs at 1:05:45. Archived from the original on December 29, 2022. Retrieved December 28, 2022.
2. ^ Le Guin, Ursula K. (author, narrator) & Sterlin, Jenny (narrator) (May 31, 2016). Tehanu: The Earthsea Cycle, Book Four (audiobook). unabridged ed. Landover, Maryland: Recorded Books—RBmedia. Event occurs at 0:00-0:26 (of afterward). ASIN B01G9EP4ZQ. Retrieved December 4, 2024.
3. ^ Petty, Anne C. Dragons of Fantasy: The Scaly Villains & Heroes of Tolkien, Rowling, McCaffrey, Pratchett & Other Fantasy Greats, (Cold Spring Harbor, New York: Cold Spring Press, 2004)
4. ^ a b Tehanu title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB).
5. ^ a b c Dirda, Michael (February 25, 1990). "The Twilight of an Age of Magic". The Washington Post.
6. ^ Dirda, Michael (December 6, 2017). "What We Can Learn From Two Literary Masters: Ursula K. Le Guin and James Salter". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 30, 2024.
7. ^ "Tehanu, The Last Book of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin". Kirkus Reviews. January 15, 1990. Archived from the original on October 23, 2016. Retrieved November 30, 2024. "Tenar (the young priestess of The Tombs of Atuan...), now the widow of Farmer Flint, adopts a young child (Therru) who has been viciously abused and maimed by her own parents."
8. ^ "Science Fiction Review: Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea". Science Fiction Review. 1 (2): 75. Summer 1990.
9. ^ a b c d e Erlich 2009, p. 404.
10. ^ a b c Guynes, Sean (February 24, 2021). "Tehanu: Le Guin's Return to Earthsea—and Her Best Novel". Reactor Magazine. London, England.
11. ^ a b Walton, Jo (February 1, 2010). "A Woman on Gont: Ursula Le Guin's Tehanu". Reactor Magazine. London, England: Holtzbrinck-Macmillan.
12. ^ a b c d e Bhanu, Sharada (2007). "Tehanu: A Return to the Source". Not Two: An Indian Perspective on Western Fantasy Fiction for Children (PhD thesis). Chennai, India: Stella Maris College-Madras University. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007.
13. ^ a b c Erlich 2009, pp. 405–408.
14. ^ a b Erlich 2009, pp. 379–417.
15. ^ Erlich 2009, pp. 379–404.
16. ^ Erlich 2009, p. 416.
17. ^ a b c Erlich 2009, pp. 409–416.
18. ^ "1990 Nebula Awards". The Nebula Awards. Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. Archived from the original on August 19, 2021. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
19. ^ a b "Nebula Awards Winners By Category". Science Fiction Awards Database. Locus Science Fiction Foundation. Archived from the original on January 19, 2025. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
20. ^ Troughton, R. K. (May 14, 2014). "Nebula Awards by the Numbers". Amazing Stories. Archived from the original on January 27, 2020. Retrieved August 19, 2019.
21. ^ "Locus Awards 1991". Science Fiction Awards Database. Locus Science Fiction Foundation. Archived from the original on May 27, 2022. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
22. ^ "Ursula K. Le Guin Awards". Science Fiction Awards Database. Locus Science Fiction Foundation. Archived from the original on July 21, 2019. Retrieved August 19, 2021.

## Sources

[edit]

* Erlich, Richard D. (2009). "Earthsea Revisited: Tehanu". Coyote's Song: The Teaching Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin. Milford series: Popular writers of today. Vol. 72\. Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press. pp. 379–417\. ISBN 9781434457752.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Bernardo, Susan M.; Murphy, Graham J. (2006). Ursula K. Le Guin: A Critical Companion (1st ed.). Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313332258.
* Cadden, Mike (2005). Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults (1st ed.). New York, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415995272.
* Drout, Michael (2006). Of Sorcerers and Men: Tolkien and the Roots of Modern Fantasy Literature (1st ed.). China: Barnes & Noble. ISBN 978-0760785232.
* Martin, Philip (2009). A Guide to Fantasy Literature: Thoughts on Stories of Wonder & Enchantment (1st ed.). Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Crickhollow Books. ISBN 978-1933987040.
* Mathews, Richard (2002). Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination (1st ed.). New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415938902.

## External links

[edit]

* Wikiquote
* Tehanu title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
* Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea at Worlds Without End

* v
* t
* e

Works by Ursula K. Le Guin

Bibliography · Le Guin and Taoism

Earthsea|

| Novels|

* A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
* The Tombs of Atuan (1971)
* The Farthest Shore (1972)
* Tehanu (1990)
* The Other Wind (2001)

|

Short stories|

* "The Word of Unbinding" (1964)
* "The Rule of Names" (1964)
* "Firelight" (2018)

Collections|

* Tales from Earthsea (2001)
* The Books of Earthsea (2018)

Adaptations|

* Earthsea (miniseries) (2004)
* Tales from Earthsea (film) (2006)

Related|

* Universe
* Characters
* Ged
* Earthsea Revisioned (1993)

Hainish
Cycle|

| Novels|

* Rocannon's World (1966)
* Planet of Exile (1966)
* City of Illusions (1967)
* The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
* The Dispossessed (1974)
* The Word for World Is Forest (1976)
* Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995)
* The Telling (2000)

|

Short stories|

* "The Dowry of Angyar" (1964)
* "Winter's King" (1969)
* "Vaster than Empires and More Slow" (1971)
* "The Day Before the Revolution" (1974)
* The Shobies' Story (1990)
* "The Matter of Seggri" (1994)
* "A Man of the People"
* "Coming of Age in Karhide" (1995)
* "Old Music and the Slave Women" (1999)

Related|

* Ansible

Annals of the Western Shore|

| Novels|

* Gifts (2004)
* Voices (2006)
* Powers (2007)

|

Other
fiction|

| Novels|

* The Lathe of Heaven (1971)
* Very Far Away from Anywhere Else (1976)
* The Eye of the Heron (1978)
* Malafrena (1979)
* The Beginning Place (1980)
* Always Coming Home (1985)
* Lavinia (2008)

|

Short stories|

* "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1973)
* "The Diary of the Rose" (1976)
* "The Wife's Story" (1982)
* "Paradises Lost" (2002)

Collections|

* The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975)
* Orsinian Tales (1976)
* The Compass Rose (1982)
* Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (1987)
* A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994)
* Unlocking the Air and Other Stories (1996)
* The Birthday of the World (2002)
* Changing Planes (2003)

Children's books|

* Catwings (series) (1988–1999)
* Cat Dreams

Non-fiction|

* The Language of the Night (1979)
* Dancing at the Edge of the World (1982)
* Steering the Craft (1998)

* v
* t
* e

Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel

1970s and 1980s|

* The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien (1978)
* Harpist in the Wind by Patricia A. McKillip (1980)
* Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg (1981)
* The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe (1982)
* The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe (1983)
* The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (1984)
* Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A. Heinlein (1985)
* Trumps of Doom by Roger Zelazny (1986)
* Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe (1987)
* Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card (1988)
* Red Prophet by Orson Scott Card (1989)

1990s|

* Prentice Alvin by Orson Scott Card (1990)
* Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin (1991)
* Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper (1992)
* Last Call by Tim Powers (1993)
* The Innkeeper's Song by Peter S. Beagle (1994)
* Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop (1995)
* Alvin Journeyman by Orson Scott Card (1996)
* A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin (1997)
* Earthquake Weather by Tim Powers (1998)
* A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin (1999)

2000s|

* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (2000)
* A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin (2001)
* American Gods by Neil Gaiman (2002)
* The Scar by China Miéville (2003)
* Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold (2004)
* Iron Council by China Miéville (2005)
* Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (2006)
* The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner (2007)
* Making Money by Terry Pratchett (2008)
* Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin (2009)

2010s|

* The City & the City by China Miéville (2010)
* Kraken by China Miéville (2011)
* A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin (2012)
* The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross (2013)
* The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (2014)
* The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (2015)
* Uprooted by Naomi Novik (2016)
* All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (2017)
* The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin (2018)
* Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (2019)

2020s|

* Middlegame by Seanan McGuire (2020)
* The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin (2021)
* Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee (2022)
* Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang (2023)
* Witch King by Martha Wells (2024)

* Best Novel (1971–1981)
* Best SF Novel (1980–present)
* Best Fantasy Novel (1978–present)
* Best First Novel (1981–present)
* Best Horror Novel (1989–1997, 1999, 2017–present)
* Best Young Adult Book (2003–present)
* Best Novella (1973–present)
* Best Novelette (1975–present)
* Best Short Story (1971–present)

* v
* t
* e

Nebula Award for Best Novel

1966–1980|

* Dune by Frank Herbert (1966)
* Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany and Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (1967)
* The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany (1968)
* Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin (1969)
* The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1970)
* Ringworld by Larry Niven (1971)
* A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg (1972)
* The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov (1973)
* Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (1974)
* The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1975)
* The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (1976)
* Man Plus by Frederik Pohl (1977)
* Gateway by Frederik Pohl (1978)
* Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre (1979)
* The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke (1980)

1981–2000|

* Timescape by Gregory Benford (1981)
* The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe (1982)
* No Enemy But Time by Michael Bishop (1983)
* Startide Rising by David Brin (1984)
* Neuromancer by William Gibson (1985)
* Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (1986)
* Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (1987)
* The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy (1988)
* Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold (1989)
* The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough (1990)
* Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (1991)
* Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick (1992)
* Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (1993)
* Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (1994)
* Moving Mars by Greg Bear (1995)
* The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer (1996)
* Slow River by Nicola Griffith (1997)
* The Moon and the Sun by Vonda N. McIntyre (1998)
* Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman (1999)
* Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler (2000)

2001–2020|

* Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear (2001)
* The Quantum Rose by Catherine Asaro (2002)
* American Gods by Neil Gaiman (2003)
* Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon (2004)
* Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold (2005)
* Camouflage by Joe Haldeman (2006)
* Seeker by Jack McDevitt (2007)
* The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (2008)
* Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin (2009)
* The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (2010)
* Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (2011)
* Among Others by Jo Walton (2012)
* 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (2013)
* Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (2014)
* Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (2015)
* Uprooted by Naomi Novik (2016)
* All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (2017)
* The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin (2018)
* The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (2019)
* A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker (2020)

2021–present|

* Network Effect by Martha Wells (2021)
* A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark (2022)
* Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang (2023)
* The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (2024)

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*[LC Class]: Library of Congress Classification
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