As an active member of SFWA, I get to recommend works and vote on the final selections for the Nebula awards. Currently, the preliminary ballot is sitting in my "to do" pile, waiting for me to vote. I've been trying to catch up with my reading in the shorter categories (short story, novelette and novella) before making my picks. Most of the magazines help out by making works on the ballot available online. You can go to Asimov's and F&SF for some of the stories on the ballot, even if you're not a member of SFWA. There are some pretty good stories there, so read them while they're still there.

One of the happy discoveries I've made in going through these stories is "Will You Be an Astronaut?" by Greg van Eekhout. This is a good story told in a terrific style that's deceptively simple. It's the kind of thing that's done so well that it makes me remember why I'm still reading SF in the first place. I'm at a loss why this story was not picked up for one of the annual best-of-the-year anthologies, but I see it has been reprinted in the New Skies anthology, edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. If you haven't seen this one already, do yourself a favor and read it here.

I was so taken with van Eekhout's story, I know I'll be looking for his name from now on. Googling for his name uncovered another great story, "In The Late December," on the Strange Horizons website. Go read that one, too.

Yes, I sound like a commercial, and no, I don't know the guy. Frankly, I'm jealous, and I have a red spot on my forehead from slapping myself repeatedly while saying, "Why didn't I think of that?"