Nebula Awards 21: Sfwa's Choices for the Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy 1985

While this latest collection of Nebula winners and selected nominees is a mixed bag, the best of them are treasures. Orson Scott Card's ""The Fringe'' portrays a crippled teacher in barren Utah who must deal with his students' resentment about a range of postholocaust deprivations. In ``Sailing to Byzantium'' by Robert Silverberg, a future elite who recreate great cities of the past become perpetual tourists in their own time. Perhaps best of all is James Blaylock's ``Paper Dragons,'' where the boundaries between science, myth and nature dissolve as an eccentric tinkering in his garage with crystal, silk, scrap and piano wire seems to construct a dragon that may blink its eyes and fly away. There are also three critical essays, two of which (by Algis Budrys and Gregory Benford) are stimulating reevaluations of science fiction. Foreign rights: HBJ. (January)