Nebula Awards Showcase 2016. edited by Mercedes Lackey

NEBULA AWARDS SHOWCASE 2016

RATED 75% POSITIVE.   STORY SCORE: 3.43 OUT OF 5  

14 STORIES : 1 GREAT / 8 GOOD / 3 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 2 DNF 

2014 seems to have been a pretty weak year for short Science Fiction.  Not only were these finalists heavily imbalanced towards fantasy, but much of it was pretty middling stuff.  Especially the Novelettes.  For a issue of a magazine, this wouldn’t be an issue, but this was an anthology of award finalists and I expected better.

Grab your own copy at this link.

Like every anthology of Nebula Awards - given each year by the SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America), there is a question of what belongs within and what is kept out of the book.  This volume includes all the short story and novelette finalists.  The winning novella is included as well, but the other novella finalists are included only as very short excerpts.  I neither read nor reviewed those snippets.

While [the stories] might leave you deciding you are absolutely never going to reread a story, you will never be sorry you read it in the first place.

-Mercedes Lackey (from the introduction)

I disagree with that sentiment.  Many of these award nominated stories are not ones I’m likely to read again, but it will because there is little left after a first read for a lover of science fiction.

One story stands proudly above the rest, joining the ranks of The Very Greatest Science Fiction Stories:

• Yesterday's Kin • (2014) • novella by Nancy Kress. A superb long novella. A geneticist is pulled out of her university work and summoned to assist the aliens in saving the human race from spores that will kill all humanity in a few months. Meanwhile, her three children struggle with their own issues. Two are isolationists who believe that this is actually an alien plot. The other is addicted to a new street drug that allows him to experience other personalities when high.

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NEBULA AWARDS SHOWCASE 2016 IS RATED 75% POSITIVE  

14 STORIES : 1 GREAT / 8 GOOD / 3 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 2 DNF  

How do I arrive at a rating?

1. A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide • (2014) • short story by Sarah Pinsker
   Good. A rural young man receives a replacement bionic arm that may have memories of its own.

2. The Breath of War • [Universe of Xuya] • (2014) • short story by Aliette de Bodard
   Good. War is over this for this space soldier, but her dangerous pregnancy is still to come. She doesn’t have her ‘breath-sister’ and being she carved and then breathed live into.

3. The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family • (2014) • short story by Usman T. Malik
   Average. Scientific asides frame a story of middle eastern terrorism and the cycle of revenge and violence that destroys families.

4. The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye • (2014) • short story by Matthew Kressel
   Good. Two beings have been on a star-harvesting mission for a very very long time when they discover some space debris that happens to be a human woman. The woman promptly dies, but that so intrigues these beings that the woman is recreated over and over thousands of times to help the Meeker learn.

5. When It Ends, He Catches Her • (2014) • short story by Eugie Foster
   Good. A woman dances in a theater with no audience and no music. Subtle hints of a catastrophe in the outside world slowly reveal themselves. Then her dance partner arrives and we are in a horror story.

6. The Fisher Queen • (2014) • short story by Alyssa Wong
   Good. The middle daughter of three wants to fish for mermaids in the Mekong like her father, but what happens to them after they are caught will change her forever.

7. Jackalope Wives • (2014) • short story by Ursula Vernon
   Good. A young man captures a Jackalope for his wife, but the process goes horribly wrong and he must turn to his Grandma for help

8. Sleep Walking Now and Then • (2014) • novelette by Richard Bowes
   DNF. Sleeping walking, open elevator shafts, and futuristic New York City. This never managed to hold my interest.

9. The Devil in America • (2014) • novelette by Kai Ashante Wilson
   DNF. Mages with pre-slavery magic are chased across them by a devil - or something. Poorly structured and confusing. Google says the ending is great, but I couldn’t get there.

10. The Husband Stitch • (2014) • novelette by Carmen Maria Machado
    Average. A sexually explicit retelling of the old scary story wherein a wife has a ribbon around her neck that nobody is allowed to untie.

11. The Magician and Laplace's Demon • (2014) • novelette by Tom Crosshill
    Good. The Artificial Intelligence and a cadre of Magicians who manipulate unlikely situations play a game of cat and mouse over a thousand years. Solid storytelling, but superb interplay of ideas through conversations.

12. We Are the Cloud • (2014) • novelette by Sam J. Miller
    Average. The wireless internet of future New York is run through implants that harvest the brains of the poor. A young man about to age-out of foster care meets another young man on the skids. This was such a missed opportunity. Started with the chance to roll with a cool 21st century cyberpunk concept and ended up with two guys doing porn for money.

13. A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i • (2014) • novelette by Alaya Dawn Johnson
    Good. In a world where Vampires won an enslaved humanity, one woman manages the ‘concentration camps’ that provide luxury human blood to wealthy vampires. A well described world and interesting characters.

14. Yesterday's Kin • (2014) • novella by Nancy Kress
    Great. A superb long novella. A geneticist is pulled out of her university work and summoned to assist the aliens in saving the human race from spores that will kill all humanity in a few months. Meanwhile, her three children struggle with their own issues. Two are isolationists who believe that this is actually an alien plot. The other is addicted to a new street drug that allows him to experience other personalities when high.