17,500 words) for 2024. The anthology also includes an excerpt from the winning novella (17,500-40,000 words) and brief synopses of all nominated novels and novellas. These tales represent what the SFWA members think are the best science fiction and fantasy works published in the United States in 2024. With such an illustrious pedigree, I expected the award winners and nominees to be near-classics. Instead, I got a mix of a few outstanding stories, some decent but not exceptional tales, and several complete misfires.

The short stories were the biggest disappointment for me. Three of the six nominees were outright failures, confusing and difficult to follow. I felt that vital information had been edited out to pare down their lengths. One story, “The V*mpire,” by PH Lee, concerns a vampire who pays a visit to an unsuspecting 14-year-old after the two “meet” on Tumblr in 2012. Since I’ve never used Tumblr and wasn’t familiar with a lot of the terminology kids used on the app when communicating with each other, I was at a loss for most of the story. In another story, “Evan: the Remainder,” by Jordan Kurella, the title character literally upchucks human bones and assembles them to make a Skeleton Boyfriend. Enough said.

Fortunately, the other three nominated stories were better. “Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones is a terrific piece of flash fiction about a prison planet and the fate of the prisoners sent there. To say more would spoil the surprise. “We Will Teach You How to Read—We Will Teach You How to Read” by Caroline M. Yoachim is a valiant effort that ultimately doesn’t live up to its premise. Denizens of a dying planet send messages to Earth written in a manner beyond human comprehension. They try to make humans understand their complex language by repeating a simple mantra that shows how they can read multiple lines at once. I was reminded of the theme from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” but the conclusion is weak.

The winning story, “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim, is based on a classic short story by Ursula K. Le Guin about the planet Omelas. For those like me who haven’t read Le Guin’s story, Omelas is a seemingly idyllic planet with a single deadly drawback. The powers-that-be choose one child as a scapegoat and imprison that child in a hole where he or she suffers unimaginable torment. Some people are upset by the whole idea and decide to end the child’s suffering quickly and permanently. Like Le Guin’s original, Kim’s story poses more philosophical and moral questions than scientific ones. I found the author’s style and additional questions raised intriguing.   

The novelettes are better than the short stories. The winner, “Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being,” despite its abstract title, is a humorous look at the practice of medicine in the interstellar future. A vaguely humanoid alien made of water (imagine the Michelin man) from an obscure species seeks treatment from a human doctor. Unfortunately, contact with that species has been almost nonexistent, and the doctor’s vast database can’t help her figure out how to treat her patient. “Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou is another excellent tale. The central character becomes increasingly isolated from the world at large because everyone she is close to starts disappearing. She can still communicate with them through chat and text, but can’t see or hear them. The story is a pointed commentary on our social media era, in which chat and text messages become substitutes for human interaction.

Another novelette by Eugenia Triantafyllou, “Joanna’s Bodies,” is also included in the anthology. If the title sounds familiar to movie fans, it should. The story is a variation of the movie Jennifer’s Body, about a teenager possessed by a demon. Here, Joanna and Eleni have been friends since childhood. However, when they grow up, Joanna is killed in an accident. Eleni discovers a spell that allows Joanna to inhabit other women’s bodies for short periods of time, but eventually develops misgivings about what she’s done. One other novelette worth mentioning is “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by Thomas Ha. This story imagines a future in which most media is digitized and periodically “improved” by publishers and authors. Even eyeglasses are equipped to change what a person sees for the “better.” The narrator stumbles across a rare thing: a “dead book” made of actual paper and ink, incapable of after-the-fact editing. The other nominated novelettes aren’t that good, and one, ”Another Girl Under the Iron Bell” by Angela Liu, is dreadful. It’s a story set in feudal Japan featuring exorcists and monsters. As with some of the other misfires in this collection, it’s much more confusing than entertaining.

In summary, Nebula Awards Showcase 60 contains four excellent or near-excellent stories (including the Award-winning novelette), two good stories, three average stories, and four bad ones. That’s too high a percentage of mediocre material for most anthologies, let alone a collection of what are supposed to be the best works of the year. Science fiction fans will probably find value in the synopses of the nominated novels and novellas. For that reason, I’m giving this anthology a slightly higher rating than the included stories merit. However, the collection was a major disappointment for me.  

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.