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The best part of a good anthology is experiencing and enjoying the range of writing styles, new ideas, and different voices that the authors present. When the anthology is the annual Nebula Awards volume, it is always an outstanding encounter because these short stories and poems were selected by a jury of accomplished writers as the best science fiction and fantasy stories of the year.
This volume represents the 1994 winners: "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge," by Mike Resnick, "The Martian Child," by David Gerrold, and "A Defense of the Social Contracts," by Martha Soukup. The Nebula runners-up incorporated here are "The Matter of Seggri," by Ursula K. Le Guin, "Understanding Entropy," by Barry Malzberg, "Inspiration," by Ben Bova, "Virtual Love," by Maureen McHugh, "None So Blind," by Joe Haldeman, and "I Know What YouÕre Thinking," by Kate Wilhelm.
Resnick's story of Olduvai Gorge was inspired by his safari in Botswana. He writes an eons-long tale, akin to an Olaf Stapledon theme, portraying the many species and personalities of the region from the indigenous peoples to the slave-trading invaders to the European explorers and exploiters to the American paleo-anthropologists. His future-millennium perspective is both moving and enlightening--so much so that "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" won all the science fiction novella awards for that year.
David Gerrold's "The Martian Child" takes a fact known to all parents--that children really are alien beings--and develops an amazing semiautobiographical scenario involving a science fiction writer with a Martian child. Gerrold was a very successful writer for the television series Star Trek.
The other stories range from the ambiguities of a Utopia based on the element of noise in a culture being someone's pain ("A Defense of the Social Contracts") to an examination of gender/sex/love in the Hainish worlds by Ursula Le Guin. The collection includes eight essays analyzing the status of science fiction literature and films in 1994.
Larry D. Woods is a Tennessee State University Professor and Nashville attorney.
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