Science fiction Hugo and Nebula - some early dual winners (novel)

Science is made up of so many things that appear obvious after they are explained.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

The phrase was his own, created to describe to himself what had happened to him. He hadn't used it often, but he'd never had to explain it. They always knew what he meant.

Twice more, unnoticed, she had buried herself in rock, and each time she sensed and knew, and each time when Odeen would explain matters to her, she knew in advance what it was he would explain.

Normally, he never went into so much detail, but these circumstances were scarcely normal. This might be the last gram he would ever send to those he loved. He owed it to them to explain what he was doing.

He wandered among the tanks for a long time, and often came back with her to the laboratory and the aquaria, submitting his physicist's arrogance to those small strange lives, to the existence of beings to whom the present is eternal, being that do not explain themselves and need not ever justify their ways to man.

New slang term for the type of operation whose main object was to gather Tauran artifacts, and prisoners if possible. I tried to find out where the term came from, but the one explanation I got was really idiotic.



Have you read any Hugo- or Nebula-winning novels? Do you plan to?

Are you eligible to nominate for the 2012 Hugos? Have a particular book in mind?