The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year. There is no cash prize associated with the award, instead the award itself being a transparent block with an embedded glitter spiral nebula with gemstones cut to resemble planets.

The fiction Nebulas are awarded in four different categories: novel, novella, novelette, and short story. From 1973 to 1977 and again from 1999 through 2008, a script award was also presented, but in 2009, that was replaced with the Bradbury Award. The categories are defined by length in words, as follows:

Starting with the 2009 awards, the Nebula Awards moved to a standard calendar year eligibility system. Works first published in the United States during the calendar year are eligible, even if they have previously been published elsewhere.

SFWA members can recommend works as suggested reading during the year. From November 15 until February 15 of the following year, SFWA members may nominate up to five works per category. The top six nominations in each category appear on the final ballot, with accommodations for ties. Voting takes place between February 20 and March 30. Number of nominations is used as a tie-breaker if necessary: if still tied, the tie stands and both works receive the award.

Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis (born 31 December 1945) is an American science fiction writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for Blackout/All Clear (August 2011). She was inducted to the Science Fiction Museum and Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009.

Willis's first published story, "The Secret of Santa Titicaca," appeared in Worlds of Fantasy in 1971. After receiving an NEA grant in 1982, she left her teaching job and became a full-time writer.

Willis is known for her accessible prose and likable characters. She has written several pieces involving time travel by history students at a faculty of the future University of Oxford. These pieces include her Hugo Award-winning novels Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, the short story "Fire Watch" (found in the short story collection of the same name), and the two-volume novel Blackout/All Clear. All but one of the Oxford University Time Travel tales have won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. The odd-man out, To Say Nothing of the Dog, won the Hugo Award but lost the Nebula.

Scott Edelman (born 1955) is an American science fiction, fantasy, and horror writer and editor. He became the editor of SCI FI Magazine (the official print magazine of The Sci Fi Channel) in 2002, and has edited the channel's online magazine Science Fiction Weekly since 2000.

He was the founding and only editor of the science fiction magazine Science Fiction Age, which was published from 1992 until 2000. He published and edited the semi-professional magazine Last Wave from 1982 to 1985, which was billed as "The Last Best Hope of Speculative Fiction" and published short fiction by Thomas M. Disch, Avram Davidson, and Ian Watson among other established authors. He was the founding editor of Rampage, a magazine covering professional wrestling, and has written unauthorized biographies of wrestlers Chyna and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Other magazines edited by Edelman include Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix, and Satellite Orbit.

In the 1970s, he worked in American comic books, in particular writing horror comics for both Marvel Comics and DC Comics. For Marvel he created the Scarecrow, and wrote some stories involving Captain America, Captain Marvel, and Omega the Unknown. He edited two issues of Marvel's self-produced fan magazine, FOOM, in the mid-1970s.

Paul Levinson (born 1947) is an American author and professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University in New York City. Levinson's novels, short fiction, and non-fiction works have been translated into twelve languages.

As a commentator on media, popular culture, and science fiction Levinson has been interviewed more than 500 times on local, national and international television and radio. He is frequently quoted in newspapers and magazines around the world and his op-eds have appeared in such major papers as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, New York's Newsday, and The New York Sun. He was interviewed in a short weekly spot early Sunday mornings on KNX-AM Radio in Los Angeles, from 2006 to 2008 on media-related news events and popular culture. He hosts four podcasts and maintains several blogs. In April 2009, The Chronicle of Higher Education named him one of Twitter's top ten "High Fliers".

In 1985 he co-founded Connected Education, offering online courses for Masters credit. He served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 1998 to 2001.

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books. As of 2011, King has written and published 49 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, five non-fiction books, and nine collections of short stories. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.

King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, British Fantasy Society Awards, his novella The Way Station was a Nebula Award novelette nominee, and in 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his whole career, such as the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (2004), the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America (2007).