Nebula Awards 28


Nebula Awards 28 is an anthology of award winning science fiction short works edited by James Morrow, the third of three successive volumes under his editorship. It was first published in hardcover and trade paperback by Harcourt Brace in April 1994. The book has also been translated into Polish.

Summary

The book collects pieces that won or were nominated for the Nebula Awards for novella, novelette and short story for the year 1993, various nonfiction pieces related to the awards, and tributes to recently deceased author Fritz Leiber, together with one of the two Rhysling Award-winning poems for 1992 and an introduction by the editor. Not all nominees for the various awards are included.

Contents

  • "Introduction"
  • "Is Science Fiction Out to Lunch? Some Thoughts on the Year 1992"
  • "Even the Queen"
  • "Danny Goes to Mars"
  • "Matter's End"
  • "In Memoriam: Fritz Leiber"
  • "Gentleman Fritz"
  • "Doing It Right"
  • "A World Without Fritz"
  • "Let There Be Fandom"
  • "The July Ward"
  • "Lennon Spex"
  • "The Mountain to Mohammed"
  • "Hopeful Monsters: The SF and Fantasy Films of 1992"
  • "Song of the Martian Cricket"
  • "Vinland the Dream"
  • "Life Regarded as a Jigsaw Puzzle of Highly Lustrous Cats"
  • "City of Truth"

    Reception

in Analog Science Fiction and Fact takes issue with the editor's assertion "that most of the fiction here says something about the nature of science," observing "both that a great deal of SF has always dealt with the nature of science and that Morrow stretches a bit to find profundity in some of the stories." Regardless, he writes "the book offers an excellent overview of 1992" and "very school and town library in the country should have this series. So should everyone who wants to keep up with the field." After briefly listing the fiction and verse content, he notes that Lowe and Clute in their overviews of the year's genre films and novels in the genre "oth seem impatient for SF to get about the task of reinventing itself. He also notes the three memorials to Fritz Leiber and Pohl's "glimpse of fandom's early days," excerpted from his 1979 autobiography The Way the Future Was.
The anthology was also reviewed by Russell Letson in Locus no. 401, June 1994, Don D'Ammassa in Science Fiction Chronicle no. 175, August 1994, and no. 177, October 1994, and Kevin G. Helfenbein in The [New York Review of Science Fiction], September 1994.

Awards

The book placed eleventh in the 1995 Locus Poll Award for Best Anthology.