One of the difficulties with reviewing a complete series is that some of the volumes will be weaker than others. The 2001 Nebula Awards anthology marked the nadir of the series as a whole, with the exceptions of the 1978 and 1983 volumes. Three of the six stories had been reprinted in various Year's Best anthologies the year before. Even one of the essays was a re-print.
Silverberg opened the Nebula Awards Showcase 2001 with the three short form winners:
"Story of Your Life," by Ted Chiang won Best Novella. A story of precognition and first contact, it's more and more impressive with each re-reading, genuinely moving and proving there is no theme that cannot be revitalized if the author is good enough.
"Mars Is No Place for Children" by Mary A. Turzillo is set on Mars. Despite its political correctness, it's reminiscent of the Heinlein juveniles, and not one of the greatest Nebula winners of all times.
Leslie What's "The Cost of Doing Business" won Best Short Story. It's as sour a work as won the Nebula in years, and endorsed Silverberg's view that "the awards don't primarily go to crowd-pleasers," but is at least effective.
Although the winners are selected by the SFWA, it is tradition that the editor has the discretion to select offerings from a pool of the winners of Best Novel, Grand Master and Author Emeritus, and also has leeway in selecting runners-up and ancillary material.
Silverberg's selection ran to an extract from the Best Novel, Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Talents. The epilogue was an odd part of a novel to include -- especially as in the case of The Parable it's so completely unrepresentative of the rest of the novel. It was however followed by one of the better summaries of the year in science fiction, that presented by Gary Wolfe.
But the paucity of Silverberg's choices was shown by the novella runner-up, "The Wedding Album," by David Marusek, and Michael Swanwick's "Radiant Doors," a short-story finalist, both widely available, and the 1958 story "Judas Danced" from Grand Master Brian Aldiss, as was an autobiographical essay by Daniel Keyes, who received the Author Emeritus award (presented to an author who is no longer active, but has in the past made a significant contribution to the genre).
Silverberg's selection highlighted an alarming trend.
The 1996 winners were the last digest-sized volume, and included two novellas, three novelettes, and four short stories, and none of the stories appeared in the other Year's Best. Against this Silverberg's seven story selection were a re-print from the Grand Master winner, a novel extract, the three winners, and two runners-up -- both of which appeared in the other Year's Best, one from the year before.
Most of this was caused by a subtle and insidious price rise. With Harcourt's redress of the Nebula Award volumes, the 1996 contents (the last digest-sized volume) had dropped by 2001 by some 30,000 words -- effectively squeezing out a whole novella, two novelettes, or almost the entire short story ballot. Little wonder that Silverberg struggled. However, his actual choices failed miserably. Where were the stories by Andy Duncan, Brian Hopkins, Constance Ash or Frances Sherwood, all of whom made the final ballot for the first time?
The Nebula Award anthologies exist to generate income for the SFWA, to provide a shop window for the organization's members, and to promote the Awards themselves. The 2001 volume failed most of those criteria.
Fortunately, the series began to improve, slowly but surely.
