Nussbaum, Abigail
Entry updated 21 April 2025. Tagged: Author, Critic.
(1981- ) Israeli programmer, blogger and critic, active in Fandom from 2005, beginning an ongoing critical blog, Asking the Wrong Questions, in that year; her reviews and criticism have also appeared in Strange Horizons, for which she served as reviews editor 2010-2014, and elsewhere. She won a 2017 Hugo award for best fan writer. A first impression generally conveyed by her numerous pieces is that of being in safe hands: her knowledge of the sf and fantasy fields, which she is inclined to differentiate sharply, is deep and readily deployed. Her enjoyment in the clocking and conveying of the storyable in various texts is manifest; her not-infrequent mid-review shifts into issue-sensitive criticism, where some texts she has clearly enjoyed on these grounds are graded down for discourse deficiencies (see Feminism), can sometimes disconcert. But this contextualizing rigour is consistent with any sense that the future of the genre is dependent upon understanding it. Much of this work has been assembled as Track Changes: Selected Reviews (2024), which won a BSFA Award as best long nonfiction.
Nussbaum has contributed more than forty entries, totalling around 30,000 words, to this encyclopedia. [JC]
Abigail Nussbaum
born Petach Tikva, Israel: 10 January 1981
works
- Track Changes: Selected Reviews (Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear: Briardene Books, 2024) [nonfiction: pb/Tom Joyes]
links
previous versions of this entry