Nebula Awards Showcase 2012

Starred review from March 12, 2012
From the cover by Nebula-winning artist Michael Whelan to the very last page, this remarkable anthology is filled with the very best of the SF and fantasy published in 2010. In addition to republishing or excerpting many winners and a few finalists from the 2010 Nebulas, Kelly and Kessel (Kafkaesque) have thoughtfully included selections from a few other speculative fiction awards, such as “In the Astronaut Asylum” by Kendall Evans and Samantha Henderson, which won the Rhysling Award for long-form poetry, and a snippet of Terry Pratchett’s I Shall Wear Midnight, winner of the Andre Norton Award for children’s and young adult SF/F. Readers will savor the writing of such well-known authors as Connie Willis (excerpts from Blackout and All Clear) and Kij Johnson (“Ponies”) as well as relative newcomers like Amal El-Mohtar (“The Green Book”) and Rachel Swirsky (“The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window”); all the inclusions are outstanding works of fiction.

March 15, 2012
The 2010 Nebula Award winners, as voted in 2011 by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (after a preliminary sieving), finally served up in 2012. The short-story winners, following a tie: Kij Johnson's "Ponies," a razor-slash across the jugular illustrating the unthinking cruelty of young girls; and Harlan Ellison's "How Interesting: A Tiny Man," something like a modern take on the point J.G. Ballard made long ago with "The Drowned Giant." Novelette winner Eric James Stone's "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made" features colossal energy-beings that live inside the sun, and--really--Mormonism (I know, I know--but read the story anyway). "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window," Rachel Swirsky's winning novella (concerning a matriarchal society whose chief wizard is betrayed by her monarch into perpetual enslavement) suffers from its staccato pacing and unfinished air. There are excerpts from Connie Willis' Blackout/All Clear (best novel) and Andre Norton Award winner Terry Pratchett's I Shall Wear Midnight. The Solstice Award (for impact on the field) was claimed by the late James Tiptree Jr. and illustrated with a devastating story of alien sex, "And I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill's Side." Other ballot finalists are represented by Geoff Landis, Chris Barzak, Shweta Narayan, Adam Troy-Castro, Aliette de Bodard and Amal el-Mohtar, and there's poetry from Kendall Evans and Samantha Henderson, Howard Hendrix and Ann K. Schwader. Not a banner year, all things considered, with greatest likely appeal to the younger section of the audience (but is it the audience that's getting younger, or the writers, or the voters?), and too often pallid, especially--perhaps unfairly--contrasted with a true heavyweight champion like Tiptree.

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May 15, 2012

From Kij Johnson's quietly sinister tale of the casual cruelty of children ("Ponies") to excerpts from Connie Willis's novels Blackout and All Clear, this collection of stories, poems, and longer fiction showcases the winners and nominees of the 2011 Nebula Awards, selected by the members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). A list of this year's nominees (and the winner) and a list of winners from 1965 to date round out this volume. VERDICT Attesting to the high quality of contemporary imaginative fiction, this is an important tool for readers' advisory, collection development, and expanding readers' sf and fantasy horizons.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2012
As one expects, the Nebula Awards Showcase is a volume of splendid stories covering the gamut of genres. It opens with an introduction by the editors, who discuss the changes in the genres covered by the award and how the field has grown. The first story is Kij Johnson's sublimely creepy Ponies, first published online at tor.com, a brutally accurate story about the price of fitting in. Those that follow are up to the challenge presented by the strength of the opener. Geoff Landis' The Sultan of the Clouds is a modern take on an old tropeterraforming, this time on Venus. The classics make an appearance with a story by James Tiptree Jr.; there are several fine examples of genre poetry; there are excerpts from two delightful novels, Blackout/All Clear and I Shall Wear Midnight; there's the brilliantly constructed, horrifyingor possibly wonderful, depending on your perspectivelook at a world in which life ends at birth, Arvees, by Adam-Troy Castro. Finally, there's The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen's Window, Rachel Swirsky's epic from the point of view of the immortal summoned spirit of a murdered woman.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)