The 2001 Nebula Awards includes eligible works first published or released in 2000 and 2001. Winners were announced during the Nebula Awards Weekend at the Westin Crown Center in Kansas City on April 27, 2002.

A special President's Award was presented to publisher Betty Ballantine for her service in the field of science fiction. Betty and her husband Ian Ballantine brought mass market paperback publishing to the United States, and later founded Ballantine Books, which was one of the earliest houses to publish a line of paperback science fiction novels, and was thus instrumental in introducing science fiction in novel length as a viable commercial mode.

Founded in 1965, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America began with about 80 writers. It now has over 1,000 members. Active members of SFWA vote for the Nebula Awards. The awards are given each year for the best novel, novella, novelette, and short story eligible for that year's award. The script category was added in recent years. Each year, an anthology, including the winning pieces of short fiction and several runners-up, is also published. Each spring the awards are given out at the Nebula Awards Banquet over a weekend of meetings and panel discussions.

The Grand Master Award is given to a living author for a lifetime's achievement in science fiction or fantasy or both. Nominations for the Grand Master Nebula Award are made by the president of SFWA and awarded after approval of a majority of the SFWA officers.

Robert A. Heinlein (1974)

Jack Williamson (1975)

Clifford D. Simak (1976)

L. Sprague de Camp (1978)

Fritz Leiber (1981)

Andre Norton (1983)

Arthur C. Clarke (1985)

Isaac Asimov (1986)

Alfred Bester (1987)

Ray Bradbury (1988)

Lester Del Rey (1990)

Frederik Pohl (1992)

Damon Knight (1994)

A.E. Van Vogt (1995)

Jack Vance (1996)

Poul Anderson (1997)

Hal Clement (1998)

Brian Aldiss (1999)

Philip Jose Farmer (2000)