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Nebula Awards Showcase 2014

by Kij Johnson (Editor)

Other authors: Megan Arkenberg (Contributor), Aliette de Bodard (Contributor), Michael Dirda (Contributor), Andy Duncan (Contributor), Neil Gaiman (Contributor)8 more, Nancy Kress (Contributor), Shira Lipkin (Contributor), Ken Liu (Contributor), E. C. Myers (Contributor), Cat Rambo (Contributor), Kim Stanley Robinson (Contributor), Marge Simon (Contributor), Gene Wolfe (Contributor)

Series: Nebula Award Stories (48)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
744357,054 (3.57)1
"The latest volume of the prestigious anthology series, published annually across six decades! The Nebula Awards Showcase volumes have been published annually since 1966, reprinting the winning and nominated stories in the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. The editor selected by SFWA's anthology committee (chaired by Mike Resnick) is American fantasy writer Kij Johnson, author of three novels and associate director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. This year's Nebula winners, and expected contributors, are Kim Stanley Robinson, Nancy Kress, Andy Duncan, and Aliette de Bodard, with E.C. Myers winning the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book"--… (more)
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Showing 4 of 4
It was entertaining to read some "modern" SciFi, in contrast to the classics which had flying cars and spaceships but no cellphones or internet. However, I did not find anything outstanding in this book. ( )
  valdanylchuk | Aug 26, 2015 |
I doubt any of the shorter works in this year's set of entries is going to enter the canon of great science fiction. I can't judge the novels from the excerpts in this book.

I did enjoy Nancy Kress' "After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall", which won in the novella category. Aliette de Bodard's "Immersion", which won for short story, had a nice concept but the story didn't quite live up to it, in my opinion. The rest of the stories I didn't find very memorable. ( )
  TadAD | Dec 29, 2014 |
Nebula Awards Showcase 2014
Edited by Kij Johnson
Pyr
Reviewed by Karl Wolff

Once again I have the opportunity to review a volume of Nebula Award-winning authors and runners-up. Nebula Awards Showcase 2014, edited by Kij Johnson offers a variety of material to peruse and enjoy. Besides the winners and runners-up, there is an essay by Neil Gaiman on how to read the fiction of Gene Wolfe, this year's winner of Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master award. Johnson selects the Wolfe story, "Christmas Inn," a short story that reads like a Christmas holiday tale about family and togetherness. It also reads like a story about aliens, or cosmic horror, or humanity versus Nature. Which one is it? One of them, all of them? As Gaiman says, "(1) Trust the text implicitly. The answers are in there. (2) Do not trust the text farther than you can throw it, if that far. [...] (4) There are wolves in there, prowling behind the words." In addition, critic Michael Dirda likens Gene Wolfe's literary merit to Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy. Previous Grandmasters include Anne McCaffrey, Poul Anderson, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Robert Silverberg.

Kij Johnson edits this year's anthology. Johnson has a multifaceted career. She writes fantasy, worked as managing editor for Tor Books and TSR, is the creative director for AD&D settings Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms, and teaches creative writing at the University of Kansas "where she is associate director for the Study of Science Fiction." Like other awards, this year's winners left me largely unsatisfied. But I did find the runners-up entertaining.

The Nebula Award winner for Best Novelette, "Close Encounters," took an old premise, in this case humans encountering aliens and filtered it through the mind of an old farmer. Unfortunately, it comes across like William Faulkner-does-sci fi. The Noble Hillbilly patois distracts from the story. Writing dialect phonetically is a daring gambit.
Kim Stanley Robinson won the Nebula Award for Best Novel for 2312. This I did like, but I'm biased, since I've read his novels Antarctica and The Years of Rice and Salt. Robinson's novel is a Solar System-based, near-future, hard science "progressive" quasi-Utopian space opera. (I'm using the word progressive, because many of Robinson's critiques and ideals fall roughly into that niche of political leftism.) Robinson combines a crackerjack plot involving a suspicious death with stylistic experimentalism and fascinating digressions. In "Extracts (1)" he describes how to terraform an asteroid and populate it with animal and human life. The novel's experimental bravado, narrative drive, and just plain fun reminded me of Iain Banks's Culture novels.

The standout runner-up for Best Short Story was Cat Rambo's "Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain." Rambo's short story melded elements from steampunk, automatons, the Multiverse, and erotica into a precise little package. The story follows the misadventures of Tikka, Minor Propagandist for the planet Porcelain's Bureau of Tourism. She falls in love with a human tourist and complications ensue. What is so wonderful is that Rambo makes the lives and culture of planet Porcelain plausible. Imagine a world populated with Chinese porcelain figures. Life may look pretty on the surface, but Porcelain is a tyranny and the Bureau of Tourism a shark tank full of ambitious civil servants. On top of all that, these humanoid porcelain figures have to take care of themselves or else they'll crack and fissure. If that happens, they are about as useful as the low-class clays that also live on the planet. With the success of Guardians of the Galaxy and its exemplary CGI work, I'd love to see "Planet Porcelain" made into a feature film, or at least a short.

Nebula Awards Showcase 2014 has a lot to offer. With such variety, you will like certain stories but not others. But that's no different from Oscar winners and losers.

Out of 10/9.0; and higher for science fiction and fantasy fans.

http://www.cclapcenter.com/2014/10/book_review_nebula_awards_show_1.html ( )
  kswolff | Oct 3, 2014 |
The 2014 volume collects stories from the 2012 Nebula Awards. The title years are always confusing. This one seems a bit of a slimmer volume than usual with the whole thing coming in at less than 300 pages. They’ve stripped away almost all of the essays that cluttered up some of the recent years books, which is good since most of them weren’t very good, but there are less stories included too. We get the winning entries in the short story, novelette and novella categories plus two of the short story runners up, and a Gene Wolfe story to represent his winning the Grand Master Award. That’s all you get for complete stories. Aside from those, there are sizable excerpts from both the winner of the novel category and the winner of the best YA novel category. I don’t understand the point of reading a chunk of a novel if you’re not going to find out what happens and I would rather have some more of the shorter stories, especially as in previous years I’ve often found some of the runners up to be far superior to the winners.

Anyway, in terms of the stories, the book is dominated by the huge novella After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress. It’s over 100 pages on its own and was originally published as a separate book. It’s a good job it’s also one of the strongest stories in the book. There are two plotlines running alongside each other, one in a post-apocalyptic future and one in the present day where children are going missing with reports of them being taken by people who then disappear. It’s not really a spoiler to say time travel is involved. Eventually the present day storyline reaches the events that cause the situation in the future plot line. The story is very character driven and it’s well written and keeps you wanting to read.

Aside from that, the only story that especially stood out to me was the runner up short story The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species by Ken Liu. It’s a story presented almost like non-fiction, an examination of the ways different alien species record written language and make their own very different versions of books. It was a really entertaining story.

Of the others, Close Encounters by Andy Duncan was a likable UFO story but a bit predictable and the rest were readable but nothing that particularly stood out. Then the book closes with the Rhysling sci-fi poetry awards. The winner of the best short poem category wasn’t a poem, it was a short story. The woman who wrote it said it wasn’t a poem herself, but it seems the fact that a poetry magazine published the story was enough to make it eligible for the award. The people who wrote actual poems must be annoyed about that. It was good, but shouldn’t have won that award.
1 vote valkyrdeath | Sep 30, 2014 |
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» Add other authors

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Johnson, KijEditorprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Arkenberg, MeganContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
de Bodard, AlietteContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Dirda, MichaelContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Duncan, AndyContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Gaiman, NeilContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Kress, NancyContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Lipkin, ShiraContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Liu, KenContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Myers, E. C.Contributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Rambo, CatContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Robinson, Kim StanleyContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Simon, MargeContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Wolfe, GeneContributorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
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"The latest volume of the prestigious anthology series, published annually across six decades! The Nebula Awards Showcase volumes have been published annually since 1966, reprinting the winning and nominated stories in the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. The editor selected by SFWA's anthology committee (chaired by Mike Resnick) is American fantasy writer Kij Johnson, author of three novels and associate director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. This year's Nebula winners, and expected contributors, are Kim Stanley Robinson, Nancy Kress, Andy Duncan, and Aliette de Bodard, with E.C. Myers winning the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book"--

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