Nebula Awards Showcase 2002: The Year's Best SF and Fantasy (Paperback)

~ Kim Stanley Robinson (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Selected by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America® Nebula® Awards Showcase 2002 presents the finest award-winning fiction of the year-and includes insightful commentary about the current state of science fiction.

"Invaluable, not just for the splendid fiction and lively nonfiction, but as another annual snapshot, complete with grins and scowls." (Kirkus Reviews)

"Would serve well as a one-volume text for a course in contemporary science fiction." (New York Review of Science Fiction)

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Roc Trade; First Edition edition (April 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451458788
• ISBN-13: 978-0451458780
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #921,718 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A welcome improvement to the Nebula books!, September 8, 2005

By	Peter D. Tillman (Taos, NM USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

_____________________________________________
This new "Showcase" format is a welcome improvement over some of the soggy, dull Nebula anthols of the 80's and 90's. Check 'em out, starting (appropriately enough), with the 2000 volume: sfwa[dot]org[slash]pubs

The 2002 volume is an unusually good one. The leadoff story, "Daddy's World" by Walter Jon Williams, takes a killer look at cybernetic family values. He narrowly lost the Nebula to Gardner Dozois, below, in a thematically related story.

macs, by Terry Bisson, the Nebula short-story winner, is Bisson's take on the OKC bombings. I didn't much care for it, but that's a minority opinion, I think.

Stellar Harvest, a new story in the "Lydia Duluth" series by Eleanor Arnason, is fast-paced and fun, a fine entry to her neat new series.


Linda Nagata's Nebula-winning "Goddesses" is a profoundly hopeful near-future love-story -- that technology can improve poor peoples' lives, and enrich the rich helpers' lives in the process. Nagata writes with assurance and grace, touching on wealth & poverty, women & men, love, charity, religion and how we'll live a few years from now -- all without being preachy or dull. One of the year's best. Not to be missed. You can read the story online at scifi[dot]com.

The wrapup story is Gardner Dozois' great "A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows", my favorite Dozois story ever. Dozois writes, in the Nebula anthology intro, {quote} [This] is my take on two of the major areas of debate of science fiction in the 90's, the posthuman condition and the idea of living into a Vingean singularity...[end quote]

"From the first heraldic image to the last, this is Dozois at his most
intense, personal, and skillful." --Kim Stanley Robinson, in his introduction.

All this plus the usual insightful commentary, by such luminaries as Gwyneth Jones, Andy Duncan, Damon Knight, Gene Wolfe, Ken MacLeod, and many more. So it's one of the better Nebula volumes in many years. Check it out.



Happy reading--
Pete Tillman

[in case you wonder, this [quote] business is because Amazon has lately been bouncing "quoted material" over 20 words(!) long. Bah]

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, October 8, 2002

By	shaw6 (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This book is a collection of ho-hum stories. The Nebula awards must be looking the other way - David G Hartwell has a far superior collection in Best SF 7.

Only a few days after reading it, not one story has stuck in my mind.

5.0 out of 5 stars Cream, February 19, 2008

By	J. O. Middleton - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I love this series and am saddened by the jaded review by the gentleman from Australia. Whether I recall a story or stories x days later is not the issue. Rather, to me, it is in the moment of the story in the present tense not in this judgmental attitude where I ascribe value. It took me away with it. Sure not all stories strum the fullest chord. No problem. I appreciate the assistance of helping me sift through the chaff.