Nebula Awards Showcase 2006


Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 is an anthology of award-winning science fiction short works edited by Gardner Dozois. It was first published in trade paperback by Roc/New American Library in March 2006, which also issued an ebook edition in July 2009.

Summary

The book collects pieces that won or were nominated for the Nebula Awards for best novel, novella, novelette and short story for the year 2005, a profile of 2005 Damon Knight Memorial [Grand Master Award|grand master winner] Anne McCaffrey and a representative early story by her, various other nonfiction pieces related to the awards, mostly by past Nebula Grand Masters, and the two Rhysling Award-winning poems for 2004, together with an introduction by the editor. Not all nominees for the various awards are included, and the best novel is represented by an excerpt.

Contents

  • "Introduction"
  • "The Green Leopard Plague"
  • "Basement Magic"
  • "Dry Bones"
  • "The Masters Speak: Introduction"
  • *"Science Fiction Century"
  • *"The Way It Was"
  • *"Teaching the Art"
  • *"Change and Okay In All Around I See"
  • *"Then and Now"
  • "The Voluntary State"
  • "Grand Master Anne McCaffrey: An Appreciation"
  • "The Ship Who Sang"
  • "Coming to Terms"
  • "Embracing-the-New"
  • Paladin of Souls
  • "Zora and the Zombie"
  • "Film: The Year in Review"
  • "Travels with My Cats"
  • "Just Distance"
  • "Octavia is Lost in the Hall of Masks"
  • "The [Cookie Monster (novella)|The Cookie Monster]"

    Reception

in The [New York Times Book Review] finds an overall theme of nostalgia in the anthology, observing in it "a parade of inner children, undigested, intact and fully liberated from the authors whose psyches once sheltered them." He sees the Rowe story, which he cites as "the speculative work possessing the year's most striking literary imagery", as metaphorically "an extremely potent representation of the science-fiction and fantasy community's complicated relationship with the idea of nostalgia". He singles out for particular mention the stories by Klages, Sanders, McCaffrey, Vinge and Rosenbaum. He also notes the "unrepentantly nostalgic essays" of the past grand masters' essays in "The Masters Speak" section.
The anthology was also reviewed by Gary K. Wolfe in Locus no. 543, April 2006.