Now that Parks And Recreation is over, Nick Offerman is finally free to commit to his full-time career of being America’s avuncular, genial dad. While Offerman’s various dad-interests—wood-working, history, sweetly singing funny and beautiful love songs—are rightly legendary, he’ll be unveiling yet another one soon in Chicago, when he hosts the 50th Annual Nebula Awards for excellence in science fiction and fantasy writing on June 4 through 7.
You see, Offerman is apparently also a huge science fiction fan, a long and storied branch of delightfully dorky fatherly pursuits. That’s presumably why he volunteered to be Toastmaster for the annual award ceremony for the Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers Of America, allowing him the perfect venue to tell a lot of jokes about three-laws-compliant robots and then do that little smile that he does. He’ll be joined for the festivities by former NFL punter and acclaimed nerd-jock ambassador Chris Kluwe, as well as a lot of science fiction writers who have never had the good luck to be on TV. (Notable writers at this year’s awards include Larry Niven, Cixin Liu, and Ancillary Sword author Ann Leckie.)
So far, the Nebulas don’t seem to have been faced with anything like the level of controversy that erupted around the similar Hugo Awards this year, when a coalition of authors known as the Sad Puppies ran an organized campaign to dominate the ceremony’s slate of nominations. That might have something to do with the Nebula’s closed nomination process, which only allows members of the SFWA to nominate and vote on works. Or it’s possible that, the moment the shouting started, Offerman poked his head out of his den, told everybody to stop shouting and go outside and play, and then returned to his Civil War book and good whiskey with a contented shake of his head.