Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America hold annual convention

Before Rachel Swirsky won the Nebula award for best novella Saturday, she went to an authors’ reception and learned some tips from veterans of the science fiction awards circuit.

“Apparently the Hugo makes a great paper-towel holder,” Swirsky says. “And if you put a sock over the World Fantasy Award,” it looks like a profile of Jacques Cousteau. But what to do with a Nebula — a heavy glass block — no one knew. And so Swirsky, a first-time author whose novella, “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window,” recounts the weary adventures of a resurrected magician, made a vow in her acceptance speech at the Washington Hilton:

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(Marvin Joseph/ WASHINGTON POST ) - Mark Levy had his books signed by his favorite authors attending the 2011 Nebula Awards. The Science Fiction Writers of America are holding their annual conference and a book signing event.

“I will figure out” what to do with a Nebula.

The Nebulas are the Screen Actors Guild of the sci-fi world, a prestigious, peer-selected award voted on by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. They are the centerpiece of the SFWA’s annual three-day conference, held this past weekend in Washington.

Swirsky took the novella prize; Eric James Stone took best novelette; Kij Johnson’s “Ponies,” an allegory about female bullying, tied for best short story with a piece by Harlan Ellison.

The winner in the main-event novel category was Connie Willis, a celebrated favorite — and former teacher of Swirsky’s — whose two-part “Blackout” and “All Clear” chronicles a group of Oxford historians who become stranded amid World War II when their time-travel assignment goes awry.

“It took me eight years to finish,” Willis said after the ceremony. “Around the five-year mark, people did start to point out that it was actually taking longer than World War II.”

One of the geekier pleasures of living in Washington is wandering past any large Hilton or Marriott, or the Mount Vernon Square Metro stop, and playing “Guess That Convention.” Are the participants wearing wool or hemp? Carrying tote bags (librarians) or plastic binders (engineers) or gourmet snacks (pharmacists)? How many of the men have ponytails? What is the costume situation? What strange and bizarre subgroup has landed in Washington, and what cultural practices have they brought with them?

The SFWA gathering is no outlandish Comic-Con. There are no roaming Spock ears, no “Battlestar Galactica” tribute get-ups. This is a writerly conference for writerly people wanting to improve their craft. Joe Haldeman is here, and Paolo Bacigalupi, and a bunch of other people whose names prompt squealing in this crowd. Inside the Hilton’s lower level, a couple hundred happy-looking attendees wearing a preponderance of planet-themed neckties shuffle from session to session.

In “Using Science in Science Fiction,” a panel of astrophysicists and engineers from NASA takes questions from writers who are searching for their next great plot in NASA’s latest great discoveries.

“Has anyone considered,” one participant asks the panel, “what calculation would be needed to measure the infrared heat exhaust from a Dyson sphere?”

Andrew Steele, a NASA astro­biologist, tells the group that no sci-fi alien can compete with the weirdness on planet Earth. What about the Cymothoa exigua, Steele suggests — a parasitic crustacean that crawls into the mouth of a fish, eats its tongue, then slowly becomes its tongue?