Nebula Awards Showcase 60. edited by Stephen Kotowych. 2025
NEBULA AWARDS SHOWCASE 60
RATED 79% POSITIVE. STORY SCORE: 3.8 OUT OF 5
14 STORIES : 3 GREAT / 6 GOOD / 4 AVERAGE / 1 POOR / 0 DNF
For a long time we feared that the Nebual Awards Showcase was dead. Fewer and fewer Year’s Best anthologies were being published. Although the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) was still giving out Nebula Awards, they weren’t publishing the stories in a book form that is easy both to read and the archive for the future.
This is too bad because the Nebula Awards Showcase has been a staple of my SciFi reading:
“Nebula Awards Showcase 2001.” edited by Robert Silverberg. - 75%
“Nebula Awards Showcase 2010.” edited by Bill Fawcett. - 75%
“Nebula Awards Showcase 2016.” edited by Mercedes Lackey. - 75%
Then in 2025 the Showcase came roaring back with six volumes being published in the first half of of the year. I’m definitely going to read them.
Stephen Kotowych edits the 60th volume and his description of the new structure of the book is music to my ears. It solved by biggest criticism of the anthologies. Not enough of the stories. I also found the summaries of the novellas and novel to be quite helpful. There are books on this list that I wasn’t planning to read until these summaries.
“Long-time readers of Nebula Awards Showcase volumes may notice a change to the content of this volume from earlier entries in the series. This new format had a soft launch in the last few volumes, as we played catch-up after a five-year interruption in the annual publication of the Nebula Awards Showcase, but it is the format we plan to use in this and future volumes, even as next year's entries grow to contain new Nebula Awards categories.
In short, we’ve elected to focus on publishing full stories and fewer excerpts or original essays. Reaction to so many excerpts of longer works in previous volumes was mixed. I can understand why: longer works like novels were meant to be experienced in full and not in part.
In this volume, therefore, you’ll be able to read the full short story and novelette winners and finalists alongside descriptions of the Best Novel, Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction, Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and Game Writing winners and finalists. We hope those descriptions intrigue you enough to seek out those works in full, many of which are best enjoyed in entirely different formats.
One exception to this “no more excerpts” switch is in the Novella category. Some have argued that the novella is the ideal length for SFF work, and it's hard to argue the fact that we’re living in a golden age of science fiction and fantasy novellas. However, for the purposes of the Nebula Awards Showcase, this golden age of novellas has its drawbacks.
Don’t misunderstand: We’re thrilled for the success that our novella-writing colleagues have found with work at these lengths, but their success means that you can acquire many of today's novellas as standalone books, and reprint rights to the full work are simply not available for an annual series the same way that they were when novellas mainly showed up inside SFF magazines. So, we're adapting (again) to the times.”
—-Stephen Kotowych, Introduction
But How are the stories?
While I love the existence of the Nebula Awards Showcase - and we always find it worth reading - the anthologies tend to rate pretty average on my scale. I can’t entirely blame it on the industry’s obsession with fantasy, but I’m well aware how my dislike of fantasy plays out in these scores. If you like fantasy, this volume may speak more to you.
But let’s not dwell on the weaker stories. Three stories quality for my All-Time Great List:
Five Views of the Planet Tartarus • (2024) • short story by Rachael K. Jones
Great. Very brief and very powerful. The horrifying and ultimately bittersweet story of convicted criminals who are sentenced to “eternal life” as punishment. Manages to flip your empathy in very a few pages.
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read • (2024) • short story by Caroline M. Yoachim
Great. Structurally experimental “story” of an alien transmission from a dying civilization that reads all things at once. They try to make us understand through a multi-column structure that has echoes of House of Leaves.
Loneliness Universe • (2024) • novelette by Eugenia Triantafyllou
Great. An uncanny analog of the ways that modern life breaks your most important connections and tries to reassemble them in the digital world. A woman returns to Greece to reconnect with an old friend. She slowly discovers that she is unable to communicate or interact with anyone she cares about. She comes to believe that she has slipped into an alternative universe - a Loneliness Universe - where she can only have superficial interactions with people around her.
NEBULA AWARDS SHOWCASE 60 IS RATED 79% POSITIVE
14 STORIES : 3 GREAT / 6 GOOD / 4 AVERAGE / 1 POOR / 0 DNF
Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole • [Omelas] • (2024) • short story by Isabel J. Kim. (*WINNER OF THE NEBULA - SHORT STORY)
Good. I hate stories that rework Omelas. (The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas • (1973) • short story by Ursula K. Le Guin.) They are often self righteous and too proud of their own morality - something Le Guin managed to avoid in the original. This has that, but also an evil sense of humor that makes it rise above.
The V*mpire • (2024) • short story by P. H. Lee
Average. Young teenage boy who is drawn to a trans identity spends a lot of time in the cesspool of Tumblr. Vampires are real and they are manipulating threats of cancel culture to exploit young impressionable people. The prose is almost impossible to tolerate if you are an adult as it swims deep in teenage internet subculture. What’s the analogy here? Woke People are vampires who prey on children? I can’t believe that the modern science fiction establishment who permit such a story to be a Nebula finalist.
Five Views of the Planet Tartarus • (2024) • short story by Rachael K. Jones
Great. Very brief and very powerful. The horrifying and ultimately bittersweet story of convicted criminals who are sentenced to “eternal life” as punishment. Manages to flip your empathy in very a few pages.
The Witch Trap • (2024) • short story by Jennifer Hudak
Poor. A muddled fantasy about witches that seems designed to wine
Evan: A Remainder • (2024) • short story by Jordan Kurella
Average. A trans-man, newly separated from the husband, starts vomiting human bones that eventually climbs out of the grave to be his skeleton boyfriend.
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read • (2024) • short story by Caroline M. Yoachim
Great. Structurally experimental “story” of an alien transmission from a dying civilization that reads all things at once. They try to make us understand through a multi-column structure that has echoes of House of Leaves.
Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being • (2024) • novelette by A. W. Prihandita. (*WINNER OF THE NEBULA - NOVELETTE)
Good. An alien comes to a medical practitioner who holds the license to a database of alien medical care. Unfortunately, this alien doesn’t appear in the database.
Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka • (2024) • novelette by Christine Hanolsy
Good. A charmingly cozy, sapphic fairy tale with magical Russian style. A water-spirit falls in love with a young woman and has to go on a quest to recover her when the woman is married off to a wealthy man in a nearby town.
Joanna's Bodies • (2024) • novelette by Eugenia Triantafyllou
Average. Horror story about two friends, one of whom is dead. The living friend uses magic to take over the body of other women as hosts for her dead friend. Too reliant on the reader knowing the movie “Jennifer’s Body.”
Another Girl Under the Iron Bell • (2024) • novelette by Angela Liu
Good. Wuxia fantasy from a. monsters point of view. The monster used to have feelings for a person, but now it is under the control of a warrior monk. The monk sends the monster and a young man on a mission. After completing the mission, the monster is to kill the young man. Of course, things aren’t quite that simple.
The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video • (2024) • novelette by Thomas Ha
Average. The discover of a “dead Book” leads to obsession and danger in a world where society is obsessed with altering and revising texts to make them “Perfect.”
What Any Dead Thing Wants • (2024) • novelette by Aimee Ogden
Good. During the terraforming of a new world, ghosts of living things are created and much be exorcised. The process is secular but deeply moving to the man who performs them. One day, he meets a ghost claiming to be a man who crashed on the planet years ago. And he doesn’t want to be exorcised.
Loneliness Universe • (2024) • novelette by Eugenia Triantafyllou
Great. An uncanny analog of the ways that modern life breaks your most important connections and tries to reassemble them in the digital world. A woman returns to Greece to reconnect with an old friend. She slowly discovers that she is unable to communicate or interact with anyone she cares about. She comes to believe that she has slipped into an alternative universe - a Loneliness Universe - where she can only have superficial interactions with people around her.
The Dragonfly Gambit (excerpt) • short fiction by A. D. Sui
Good. A fast, dialogue-driven sapphic space opera about revenge and betrayal, set against the backdrop of a crumbling empire, with clear echoes of Battlestar Galactica. Entertaining and sharply voiced that reads better as a submission for a future movie. Read my full review here.
