“The 2001 Nebula Awards Showcase” highlights the year’s best science fiction and fantasy works and writers in America.

This compilation novel features the winners in the categories of novella, novelette, novel, short story and poetry. Other awards, The Grand Master and Author Emeritus are given to top authors for a collection of works.

“Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, highlight of the showcase, won the award for best novella, or a story that contains between 17,000 and 39,999 words.

Chiang tells a fascinating story about a woman working as a translator for the government. The new language she is trying to decipher just happen to belong to an alien race.

The woman in the story gives a straight beginning-to-end account of the task of learning the alien language. A second narration also enters the mix. The other story breaks up the linear alien language plot with a more personal story.

The woman is addresses her child in very circular style. Each segment in the personal story is presented out of order and increases the mystery of both stories.

Mary A. Turzillo was awarded best novelette for her story “Mars is No Place for Children.” A novelette is composed of between 7,500 and 17,499 words.

Turzillo takes the reader to the year 2202. The point of origin for the story is Mars.

“Mars is No Place for Children” would be considered standard science fiction in today’s market. In it, a strange illness seems to have infected a child born on Mars. The parents try desperately to find a cure for the child.

The little girl tells the story in diary form. Readers will be able to understand what is really happening to the girl even before she realizes it. But the true fact of the matter is something no one could have conceived.

“The Cost of Doing Business” brought the Nebula award for best short story to Leslie What. A short story has 7,500 words or less.

What’s story may be the best thing in the whole showcase. The story is easy to read and disturbing. She is able to set the scene with great precision and do it in a low number of words.

“The Cost of Doing Business” is set in the near future. In the story people are able to hire professional victims to take their places in certain situations.

It is a shocking story that will leave one pondering the future and the present.

Octavia E. Butler’s “Parable of the Talents” landed the coveted best novel award. A novel is writing composed of over 40,000 words.

The unfortunate thing is that the whole novel could not be reproduced for this volume. Instead, only the epilogue is printed – a strange practice since most people do not want to only read the end of a book.

It is best to find “Parable of the Talents” in its complete form and skip over the epilogue in the showcase.

Other features in this showcase include a couple of essays written about sci-fi and fantasy writings.

Some runners-up are also included, as well as work from Grand Master Award winner Brian W. Aldiss and Author Emeritus 2000 Daniel Keys.

“The Nebula Awards Showcase” is a quality book to pick up. It claims to feature the best of the best in this genre, and in this case it delivers on that promise. The works in this volume will entertain all readers even if they traditionally do not read sci-fi or fantasy stories.