NEBULA AWARDS 33

paper 0-15-600601-4 Nebula’s 1997 award-winners and ballot finalists are presented by Willis, who takes over from last year’s editor, Jack Dann. Representing Best Novel, there’s an excerpt from Vonda N. McIntyre’s splendid historical fantasy, The Moon and the Stars, while Jerry Oltion’s ghostly Apollo capsule, “Abandon in Place,” wins Best Novella, and “The Flowers of Aulit Prison,” Nancy Kress’s investigation of crime, society, and reality, has captured Best Novelette. The Best Short Story Award goes to “Sister Emily’s Lightship” from Jane Yolen. Also on show are impressive finalist yarns from James Patrick Kelly, Michael Swanwick, Gregory Feely, James Alan Gardner, and Karen Joy Fowler. The Rhysling Award Winners (for poetry) are W. Gregory Stewart and Terry A. Garey. Nelson Bond, represented by his story “The Bookshop,” has accepted Author Emeritus status (you’re forgiven if you’ve never heard of him). And Poul Anderson, virtuoso of short- and mid-length fiction—his typically brilliant “The Martyr” appears here—thoroughly deserves his Grand Master Award. Nonfiction enthusiasts, however, are in for a thumping disappointment. Maybe somebody decided that last year’s opinionated and thoroughly refreshing growls and hisses Simply Wouldn’t Do. But for whatever reason, 1997’s nonfiction is just anodyne scraps (the redoubtable Kim Stanley Robinson honorably excepted). No obituaries appear, despite the passing of Jerome Bixby (author of several all-time great short stories, plus a couple of the finest Star Trek scripts), of innovative editor/writer Judith Merrill, and of Australia’s greatest (and vastly underrated) SF novelist, George Turner. Even Bill Warren’s eagerly anticipated dissection of the year’s movies has been ditched. Terrific fiction, a Bronx cheer for the nonfiction.