The 2015 Nebula Awards were a pretty big deal for me. They were presented here in Chicago, and I was able to attend for the first time. I was also asked to present the award for Best Novelette of the Year, an honor I won’t soon forget.

In addition I got to catch up with old friends, and meet plenty of new faces — folks like Rachel Swirsky, Liz Gorinsky, Aliette de Bodard, Lawrence M. Schoen, Cixin Liu, and many more. The Nebula Awards Weekend is relaxed, fun, and attended by the best and brightest writers and editors in the industry. It’s a great place to meet and chat with your favorite writers — not to mention get lots of free books.

They also give out some Nebula Awards, of course. And the Nebula Awards Showcase collects the winners and finalists in a handsome anthology, as it has every year since 1966. The Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 is the 50th volume in the series, and it looks like one of the strongest in recent memory.

This year editor Mercedes Lackey elected to take a rather eclectic approach — to include every short story and novelette nominee and winner, and limit herself to excerpts in the novella category (with the exception of the winner). Here’s the complete TOC.

Short Story

“Jackalope Wives,” Ursula Vernon (Apex 1/7/14) — Winner

“The Breath of War,” Aliette de Bodard (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/6/14)
“When It Ends, He Catches Her,” Eugie Foster (Daily Science Fiction 9/26/14)
“The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye,” Matthew Kressel (Clarkesworld 5/14)
“The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family,” Usman T. Malik (Qualia Nous)
“A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide,” Sarah Pinsker (F&SF 3-4/14)
“The Fisher Queen,” Alyssa Wong (F&SF 5-6/14)

Novelette

“A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” Alaya Dawn Johnson (F&SF 7-8/14) — Winner

“Sleep Walking Now and Then,” Richard Bowes (Tor.com 7/9/14)
“The Magician and Laplace’s Demon,” Tom Crosshill (Clarkesworld 12/14)
“The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado (Granta #129)
“We Are the Cloud,” Sam J. Miller (Lightspeed 9/14)
“The Devil in America,” Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com 4/2/14)

Novella

Yesterday’s Kin by Nancy Kress (Tachyon) — Winner

Excerpt from We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory (Tachyon)
Excerpt from “The Regular” by Ken Liu (Upgraded)
Excerpt from “The Mothers of Voorhisville” by Mary Rickert (Tor.com 4/30/14)
Excerpt from Calendrical Regression, Lawrence Schoen (NobleFusion)
Excerpt from “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)” by Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean, Summer 2014)

Novel

Excerpt from Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals)

You can find the complete list of 2015 Nebula nominees here.

The 2015 Nebula Awards Weekend in Chicago. That’s me on the far left,
checking out the freebie table. Photo by Keith Stokes

And we previously covered several earlier volumes in the Nebula Awards Showcase series:

Nebula Awards One and Two From Stealth Press
Cloud Sculptors, Dragon Riders, and an Unearthly Craps Game: Nebula Award Stories 3, edited by Roger Zelazny
Nebula Awards Showcase 2014, edited by Kij Johnson
Nebula Awards Showcase 2015, edited by Greg Bear

Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 will be published by Pyr Books on May 3, 2016. It is 320 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our coverage of the best in upcoming fantasy here.