Nebula Awards Showcase 2015

The 12 stories, two novel excerpts, and three poems collected in this volume, all nominated by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) as the best short fiction of 2014, provide an attractive snapshot of the many forms of contemporary fantasy and SF. Best Novelette–winner “The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard is a hard SF tale about a race bred to serve as navigational minds for interstellar spacecraft. Both “The Sounds of Old Earth” by Matthew Kressel and “Alive, Alive Oh” by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley are elegiac meditations on the pain of exile from one’s home planet. A surprising number of stories have no overt fantastic content, among them Best Short Story–winner “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” Rachel Swirsky’s heartbreakingly poignant lament for a lost lover, and Best Novella–winner “The Weight of Sunrise,” Vylar Kaftan’s alternate history about the fate of the Incan empire. Essay tributes to the late Frank M. Robinson (a longtime author honored at the 2014 Nebula ceremony) and newly awarded SFWA Grand Master Samuel R. Delany (whose groundbreaking novella “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones” is also reprinted here) make this anthology simultaneously forward-looking and respectful of the genre’s history. (Dec.)