Nebula Awards 2007 ed Mike Resnick

Somehow, somewhere along the line, this has become a yearly book group selection. I think it initially grabbed our fancy in 2003 and we've been reading them ever since. Some years are better than others, but that's how it goes.

This year's selection contained a decent but not outstanding variety. Since these are all short stories I shan't summarize much, but mostly just offer my opinion.

Magic for Beginners and The Faery Handbag by Kelly Link. Magic for Beginners was just okay. I thought it was simplistic and incomplete and could have been better as a longer piece of work. The Faery Handbag was rather well done and contained some nice little twists for a short story.

The End of the World as We Know It by Dale Bailey. This was a really cool short story. Initially I found the fragmented writing style a bit annoying: the author would digress into historical bits about other end of the world events then jump back into the main story. However, as the story progressed the end of the world bits began to make more sense and I found myself looking forward to them. This story also had overtones of realism that I found to my liking.

Still Life with Boobs by Anne Harris was...well, I didn't like it. The premise of this story was this woman's boobs detach themselves and go off on their own, often at embarrassing moments. I found nothing interesting or funny about this story. It was discussed at book group that this story was a metaphor for embarassing moments women have. It still wasn't interesting or funny.

Men are Trouble by James Patrick Kelly. This was just okay. Future world where the 'devils' took away all the men and somehow impregnate the women to propegate the race. The heroine is hired by a devil to solve a mystery of a suicide and as the reader follows her they find out some rather dark aspects of this all female world. Rather feminist from a male author.

Identity Theft by Robert Sawyer was tedious at best. A private investigator novel set in the future on Mars, but with an 1940's flair. The story just didn't work - to many poorly done cliques.

I Live With You by Carol Emshwiller. Was kinda creepy-odd. A person? Shadow? Other being? Slinks around and takes up residence in peoples houses and does stuff. And then eventually goes away. Speculation was this was a metaphor for a shy person coming out of thier shell.

Camouflage by Joe Haldeman. This is the novel excerpt the nebula awards always put in. We read it for book group last year and enjoyed it as we do most of Haldeman's works.

The Resurgence of Miss Ankle-Strap Wedgie by Harlan Ellison. This was not sci fi or fantasy and was written ages ago while Harlan worked in Hollywood. It is set in early Hollywood where a producer and his cronies find an old film star waitressing in a diner and decide to bring her back to the big screen. It's a fascinating look at people and personalities. While I really didn't care for the story itself, the writing was absolutely amazing. I kept reading for that reason alone.

In between all the stories various authors discuss a variety of topics in the sf&f world, such as small publishing houses, past Nebula awards, where the field is going, artwork in sf&f, and so on. I usually skip most of these and did so again in this volume. Except for the blurb on Harlan, that was interesting. So for 2007, this was a mediocre selection with only a couple stories really worth reading.