The Nebula Awards

The fiction is wonderful, from the breezy if forgettable "DaVinci Rising" to the earthy, cerebral yet wrenching "A Birthday", the writing is still as good as Science Fiction ever was, which is to say it's pretty terrific. But please, enter more fiction and cut out some essays! If I want essays, I'll hunt them down at a library (I doubt that I'd spend a great deal of money to read this many of them). The point of sci-fi is to read the stories. Some background on the authors and the stories is useful and enjoyable, and the balance is difficult to find, but this volume leaves you aching for more stories, which isn't altogether a bad thing (and may be the intent). Once you're there, though, don't miss the stories. Would you believe a near-future story on abortion that pulls no punches yet leaves you wondering just where the author is coming from? How about an alternate history that makes you believe that a Balkanized America was not only possible, but likely? How about a "protective" universe that kills those that get too close to the truth? You gotta buy this book, you'll like it a lot -- despite all the non-fiction, not because of it, because the fiction is that good. You'll wonder why you don't read more of this.