NEBULA AWARDS: SHOWCASE 2000
edited by Gregory Benford
The 1998 Nebula Award winners faithfully appear here—Bruce Holland Rogers's Best Short Story, “Thirteen Ways to
Water”; Jane Yolen's Best Novelette, “Lost Girls”; Sheila Finch's Best Novella, “Reading the Bones”; and an excerpt from Joe Haldeman's Best Novel, Forever Peace—together with Rhysling Award (poetry) winners John Grey and Laurel Winter, and runner-up yarns from Geoffrey A. Landis, Walter Jon Williams, and Mark J. McGarry. George Zebrowski introduces 1998's Author Emeritus, William Tenn, whose acceptance speech reminds us, often amusingly, of the furious disagreements that have characterized science fiction down the years. Poul Anderson praises Grand Master Award winner Hal Clement, while the latter contributes his story “Uncommon Sense.” Elsewhere, nonfictionally, editor Benford (see above) looks back at the science- fictional 20th century. Jonathan Lethem kicks off this year's debate with his complaint that SF lost all hope of claiming literary respectability when in 1973 the SWFA voted Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama Best Novel, rather than Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Rejoinders in various hues issue from Gordon van Gelder and George Zebrowski—although nobody sees fit to remark on this year's Best Novel, where nostalgia beat out one of the finest, most wrenching SF novels ever written, J.R. Dunn's Days of Cain. Rounding out the proceedings, David Hartwell surveys the SF publishing scene, while Bill Warren eyeballs the movies.
Invaluable, not just for the splendid fiction and lively nonfiction, but as another annual snapshot, complete with grins and scowls.