Nebula Awards Showcase 2014

March 17, 2014
This delectable anthology fittingly honors the most recent Nebula Award recipients. While some of the stories, poems, and novel excerpts are a bit derivative, readers will still find a large measure of enjoyment in them. An excerpt from Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 includes a detailed manual on terraforming asteroids. Nancy Kress’s “After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall” is a tautly plotted and perfectly terrifying ecological dystopia for our times. Andy Duncan’s sweetly nostalgic “Close Encounters” is about an aging, forgotten survivor of a close encounter whose faith in his own experience is beginning to wane. The Nebulas aren’t the only awards heralded here. “Christmas Inn” by Gene Wolfe, who received the coveted Damon Knight Grand Master Award, is a Yule-infused fantasy full of the life-changing wonder found in the speculative genres, and in the holiday itself. The teenage protagonist of E.C. Myers’s Norton Award–winning Fair Coin would be perfectly at home in a Twilight Zone script. The 2011 Rhysling Award–winning poems are two riffs on the art of bookmaking. Fans, honorees, and readers new to speculative fiction will greatly appreciate these works.

April 15, 2014
Each year, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) gives out the Nebula Awards, one of the highest honors in speculative fiction. These honors showcase volumes that give readers an easy way to sample the chosen works. This year's collection includes the 2012 winners for best short story, novelette, novella, and a selection from the winning novel. Aliette de Bodard's "Immersions" is a fascinating look at a woman in the future who is trapped by the avatars that people use to interact with one another. The poignant "Close Encounters" by Andy Duncan is about a man who was famous once for having seen aliens and the young reporter trying to get him to tell his story one more time. Nancy Kress's masterly novella "After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall" is a dark puzzler of time travelers from a postapocalyptic future. VERDICT A bonus for short fiction fans are two of the finalists for best short story and essays in honor of Gene Wolfe, the 2012 winner of the Grand Master Award.

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