read the Nebula Award anthologies

Novellas

• Sequential vs. simultaneous awareness; free will vs.fate’s dancer. Wow. :D

• I really, really liked the first half of this novella… but the second half was odd. :|

Novelettes

• An epistolary story of a dying girl’s search for Sojourner Truth. A well-crafted universe. :)

Short Stories

• Surrogate Victims, grief and restitution; this curious story hits hard. :)

• Is the future deterministic or in flux? I feel odd giving this story a smiley because this really was horrific but it was very well-done so… :)

• This is an incredibly dense and multi-layered story. Kudos to Aldiss for such an amazing portrayal of the mind of a madman. :)

Novellas

• A fascinating world but an uninteresting story. Moral: spoon-feeding leads to insipidness, do things for yourself. :|

Novelettes

• Weeding the royalty. :)

• ...when you’re protected by a time-traveler? Great premise. :)

• What is a person’s reality when true memories are forgotten and false ones are programed in? The ending made me laugh. :)

• An interesting concept that runs into problems right away. If a character is no longer synced in time and cannot manipulate objects how can he wear clothes? Or eat? :|

Short Stories

• A strange tale of science and enchantment, of the intersection of the two and of things best left alone. :)

• A poignant tale of the light of lost days captured in glass. :)

• A remix of human history as done by alien children. Also, best title ever. :)

• A quirky and weird look at relationships in the future are like when interaction/stimulation can come just from plugging your mind into a computer and sharing data. I think this scenario is much closer than the author thinks. :)

• Normally I love xenofiction where the aliens are actually alien, but this story never quite made sense.:|

• A interesting look at how fantasies are shaped by reality. A nice, if obvious, twist. :)

Oddly, despite the fact that this book is called Nebula Awards Showcase 2000, these are the winning stories from 1998.

Novellas

Reading the Bones, Sheila Finch

• The birth of the written word. :)

Novelettes

Lost Girls, Jane Yolen

• A modern day Wendy hits Neverland like a storm. :D

Lethe, Walter Jon Williams

• What makes a person who they are? Body, mind, soul, memories? A terrible and wonderful story. :D

The Mercy Gate, Mark J. McGarry

• This story had marvelous potential… abandoned cities, tomb robbers/archaeologists, a mysterious force that destroyed hundreds of worlds, shapeshifters, soul temples, etc. Somehow, it never seemed to quite gel. :|

Short Stories

Thirteen Ways to Water, Bruce Holland Rogers

• I’m not actually sure why this is considered SF/F, let alone the winning entry. There’re maybe two paragraphs with a vaguely paranormal slant but otherwise it’s a straight up tale of an eco-hippie Vietnam vet. :(

Winter Fire, Geoffrey A. Landis

• Molecular stills, music, math and the siege of Salzburg as seen through the eyes of a little girl. Lovely, terrible and frighteningly possible. :)

Uncommon Sense, Hal Clement

• A rather pointless story of crustaceans with molten metallic blood on Deneb. :|

Novellas

• This was one of those stories where it was obvious from the begining how it was going to end (badly). It was not one of the ones that made the journey worthwile. :|

• Aliens vacation in a Victorian farmer’s pond and suck the life out the world around them. Wonderful. :D

Novelettes

• Fishing for dinosaurs in the oceans of Venus. :|

Short Stories

• A dystopian future involving rebel anarcists armed with jelly beans. :)

• Hilarious. I’m never joining a book club. :D

• Mechanical vs mental glitches. Can you tell them apart in a cyborg? :)

• I wish Earth had Diamondwood forests. Strangely charming. :)

• I supposed there must be some literary merit in a story about humanity scavanging a slowly decompsing giant, but I don’t get it. :(

The Nebula Awards were first awarded in 1965 by the SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America) in four categories determined by length.

Since the beginning, they’ve published anthologies including the winning novella, novelette and short story (the winning novel is understandably excluded) as well as some of the runner ups. There have been 45 collections published to date, 22 of which belong to my local library. I’m going to work my way through them.